I think much of their frustration resulted from their expectation of being able to win an auction with only a few bids.

How frustrating for them. And for me. I try my hardest to teach good Swoopo principles and in this case…I failed.

I wrote a very long reply in the forum. But for you my dear Swoopers, I spent some time editing. Here is the trimmed up version of my response:

Setting Bid Expectations

You should make sure to bid on items that are priced relative to the amount of bids you have or can afford. My usual rule of thumb is 10%. This means you should be willing to spend up to 10% of the item’s value in bids on that auction.

Say you’re bidding on a Macbook Pro and you have 200 bids. That item is much too large for your amount of bids on hand.

If you wait until your research shows the auction is nearing a close and decide to jump in…you’re playing it too safe. Your 200 bids will not get you to the finish.

This strategy of carefully researching auctions is one I recommend in the Manual, and it’s the most consistent, but it’s also expensive. If you plan to go into an auction in that way, you’d better go with guns ablazin’ and be ready to invest what you need to win.

If You Have Few Bids

If you’re low on bids (or only care to purchase 100 or fewer), you should do either of these:

1. Bid on smaller items like a small bid pack. Or a video game or household item. With a smaller item, you can take the research-based approach I describe above. It’s a cheaper item, so you now have enough bids to do it right.
2. Bid on the large item anyway, but take a BidButler Early approach. With a large item, you can’t wait until the auction is stocked with people, no matter how favorable the stats are and how close the auction is to previous end prices. You simply don’t have the funds to see it through. But you can go into the auction early and hope to catch other bidders off-guard. You just might get a deal like our forum member mentioned: a $600 gift card for 53 cents.

Which Strategy Should You Choose?

The second approach above will be a low percentage play, but might pay off in the end. And of course the top approach is higher percentage, but there’s a lower reward (you don’t win a $600 gift card, you win a video game).

Whichever approach you choose is up to you, but I think this better explains how you should set expectations based on your purse.

A Placeholder Bid is simply a single bid cast in an auction. If you see an auction that you think you’d like to bid on, but based on your Swoopo knowledge decide that you should wait, you can cast a single placeholder bid. You can then continue to follow this auction, and if and when Swoopo closes it, you can return and begin bidding when the time is right.

Because the auction is closed, you no longer need to worry about new bidders Swooping in and outbidding you on the auction. And because no new bidders are welcome, the overall competition in that auction will steadily decline as the auction goes on. You’ll ultimately have a much greater chance of winning the auction and in a shorter amount of time.

Put simply, it’s a small fee to allow you access to the best, most profitable auctions.

Now you know the basics of Placeholder Bids and why you should use them. I explain this strategy much more in-depth in the Swoopo Manual. In the next post, I’m going to explain how Placeholder Bids are skewing our Swoopo Analytics statistics and why that matters to you.

So What Are Closed Auctions?

Last year Swoopo began “closing” auctions on occasion. When an auction is closed, no new bidders are allowed to participate for the remainder of the auction. This means that the competition in a closed auction is only those people who have already bid in that auction at least once.

It’s hard to say for sure why Swoopo began closing auctions, but most Swoopers would agree they were trying to improve the auction experience. Some auctions stretched far too long and involved too many bidders. The press and others who don’t understand Swoopo would pounce on these skewed auction results and use them as an example of why Swoopo is a bad deal.

Closing auctions allows Swoopo to ensure that it will end in a reasonable amount of time, that the winner will get a good bargain and that those who’ve spent bids already are rewarded with a greater chance of winning.

Closing Is A Mystery

Swoopo doesn’t reveal if and when an auction will be closed. This mystery around closed auctions can sometimes be frustrating to bidders, but it’s necessary. You see, if bidders knew when an auction was going to close, it would have opposite the desired effect. Bidders would flood into the auction hoping to get in before it closed (much like a dance club 30 minutes before last call).

This would be true regardless of whether they closed auctions based on time, bids, competition or any other metric. If Swoopo decided to close auctions based on a metric that other bidders could measure and track, it would result in too much competition and it would defeat the purpose of the closed auction.

Therefore, Swoopo closes auctions arbitrarily. Or if they do have an algorithm in place for when an auction closes, I haven’t been able to crack it. I also haven’t read anyone else who has learned with any certainty when an auction will close.

If you can’t predict closed auctions, can you still use them to your advantage to win more Swoopo Auctions? The answer, of course, is yes.

In the next post (Placeholder Bids 102) I’m going to explain how you can use Placeholder Bids to get access to closed auctions and win more auctions.

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The other day, though, I received an email from Al, who was kind enough to share his Swoopo journey from start to big victory. I’ll let Al take it from here.

Hi Matthew, A funny thing happened on the way to quitting swoopo. I kept logging onto swoopo, but not so much to bid, but to watch. I was really disgusted with swoopo bec it seemed like nothing really worked. I finally realized it was all about my attitude going in to the auctions. Let me explain.

About a month ago, I was doing really well, strategy wise, on a macbook auction, and then made a simple bid butler mistake (didn’t realize my BB ran out) and lost the auction. So I swooped it now, bec I already had $400 into it. Even though I got my computer, I was really upset. It seemed like no matter what I just couldn’t win that stinkin computer! As I was watching some auctions, I started seeing certain strategies that repeated, and I thought, maybe if I learned more about how certain successful bidders approached an auction I could give myself a better chance to win something. Well, I decided to become an expert on the macbook auctions, Not the macbookpro, the macbook. I learned avg bids to win, pricing, days, times, even the reds that frequented this particular computer auction. (Especially their strategies) I decided that if I ever got back into an auction, I was going into the auction to either win it, or swoop it now. No other attitude would suffice, and it would also help me stay the course.

I faced off against 7 different reds, 3 of which I was VERY familiar with having lost to them quite a number of times in the past. I used bid butlers exclusively, and really didn’t need swoopo analytics bec it simply didn’t matter. I was going to bid butler until the end, either way.

My stats showed that in the last two months there were 25 auctions for apple macbooks. Avg bids to win 421. It took me 422 bids to win.. How’s that for statistical accuracy! I’m not delusional, it also takes some luck in that the people I was bidding against didn’t have the same commitment to winning this particular auction on this particluar day. But at least, I now know I can win on swoopo. Oh, I HAVE won 3 different bid auctions, but that doesn ‘t compare to winning an actual item like a computer.

Thanks for your help. If you want to copy and post this somewhere on your forum to give others the incentive to keep trying, that’s fine with me. Have a good night.

–

Al S.

Thanks Al for sharing…

Suppose I just hop onto a few auctions and try my hand.  Are you of the opinion that I would likely lose every one without better preparation? i.e. are there that many ‘Swooper Heroes’ out there that jo schmo, using individual bids and repeatedly waiting until the clock runs down to bid  - can’t win?

I replied honestly to Wes and I thought the answer was worth sharing with everyone…since it’s important to the existence of Swoopo Manual and heck, even Swoopo:

You absolutely have a chance without preparation. Some folks buy my guide after their first win wanting to know more…and only then realize how lucky they got Swoopo will always have a degree of luck, and the point of the Manual + Swoopo Analytics is to make it as little luck and as much skill as possible.

So there you have it folks, straight from the horse’s mouth. You DON’T need to buy the Swoopo Manual. That is, if you’re willing to cross your fingers and hope to get lucky. If you want to turn Swoopo into a game of skill (at least as much as is possible) then you should consider learning a little more about how folks are winning month after month.

I think I know where you could go for that…

1. Knowing when isn’t knowing how
2. Auction data that isn’t real time isn’t real useful

Today I’m going to explain the first of these two reason using a little parable.

The New Fishing Hole

Your neighbor knocks on the door at the crack of dawn one spring and tells you he found a great fishing hole on your local lake. It’s in a little cove on the east side, well shaded and has plenty of cracks and crevices that fish just love (at least the big fish you’re after).

Your neighbor has spent years on the lake finding the absolute best place to fish and thinks he’s found it this time. He also knows from years of practice that the best time to fish is 5am to 7am…right as the sun is coming up. That’s why he’s standing in your doorway so early on a weekend morning.

You haven’t fished in years. Your pole is rusty, your lures are rusty and worst of all…your technique is rusty. You haven’t practiced fishing other than playing Bass Hunter at the pub. But your neighbor’s done the hard work and found the fishing hole for you, so you’re confident you’ll land one and make the trip worthwhile.

Excited, you head out the door with your neighbor and you drive to the lake, hop in his fishing boat and troll out to the cove. You both cast your lines into the water and wait.

Soon, your neighbor and you both have a bite on your line. You get excited and jerk your pole immediately. Unfortunately, the fish hasn’t fully taken the bait yet…and it swims away. You curse to the sky and begin preparing your line for another cast.

Your neighbor, on the other hand, has done this thousands of times. He waits patiently after the bite and 30 seconds later, he’s confident the fish is on the line. He jerks the pole just hard enough to ensare the fish and begins reeling slowly and steadily. In  5 minutes flat, he’s holding a beauty of a big-mouthed bass triumphantly over his head as you snap a picture for the local paper.

The Moral?

Knowing the best time and place isn’t enough…you need to have skills. The Swoopo Manual was written with an emphasis on the actual techniques used by Swoopo pros to win big. Only after you’ve read and understood these techniques does the data do any good.

When one Swoopo guide increased the number of auctions they analyzed (5,000! 10,000!), I would get emails from users saying:

“This guide has 10,000 auctions and yours has 3,000… why should I buy yours?”

The Auction Data Lie

Before I continue, I should note: Swoopo auction data is important. Analyzing auction data has been a powerful tool for the best Swoopo bidders and we’ve just now launched a whole new data set with a huge new amount of Swoopo auction history. But….

Having historical auction data in spreadsheets on your computer for you to reference is maybe 20% of the formula needed to win. It’s nice, it helps to understand which auctions to bid in and which to ignore…but there are two huge holes in historical data.

1. Knowing when isn’t knowing how
2. Auction data that isn’t real time isn’t real useful

The Data Peddlers Are Gone

Those Swoopo gurus selling false hope in the form of Excel spreadsheets have long since faded to the background. Their data-only approach was voted down by the market and they no longer show up in Google for important key terms. Their guides haven’t been updated in months and their websites are growing dusty and dated.

The Swoopo Manual + Swoopo Analytics live on and continue to thrive by teaching people what they really need to know in order to succeed on Swoopo. And in my next post, I’ll explain point #1 above: why knowing how is more than important than knowing when and where.

I might hold off on it till after Christmas because I read somewhere that there’s more competition on Swoopo auctions during the holiday shopping season, which drives the prices up, so I think I might wait til after Christmas so there won’t be so much competition and I’ll have a better chance at it.

I don’t know where Abe read this, but I thought it was worth clarifying a few things about how Swoopo works and why things aren’t as cut & dried as some in the Swoopo world make them seem.

Swoopo Controls the Inventory

When you look at the upcoming auctions page and see the current and future auctions Swoopo is running, you’ll realize this: Swoopo controls those auctions. Swoopo decides when to have more new auctions and when to have fewer. They decide how many PS3′s to sell and how many Ginsu Knives to sell.

In this way, Swoopo auctions are a game of supply and demand, except Swoopo is the only thing controlling supply.

They’ve Done This Since the Beginning

Back when Swoopo first launched in the United States, they probably listed fewer auctions than they do today. There were fewer users back then and Swoopo hadn’t yet been written up in various national publications. If they had listed as many auctions as they do today, those auctions would only have a handful of bidders and would cause Swoopo to lose money. Not only that, but the bidding would be quite boring, too! (Yes, you can have fun and win too folks)

So Let’s Talk Christmas

If more bidders flock to Swoopo this holiday season to get great deals on popular gifts for their loved ones…it doesn’t necessarily mean higher prices for the winning bidder. If Swoopo notices the new group of bidders they can start launching more auctions on a daily basis. They increase the supply, which means lower prices for bidders and still amazing deals for the winners.

Just because it’s holiday season does NOT mean that you can’t get great deals on Swoopo.

If They Control the Inventory…

Smart readers are probably now thinking: If they control the inventory, what’s the point of knowing the best time of the day to bid? What’s the point in knowing the best days of the week? Isn’t all that data at the mercy of the Swoopo gods now?

The short answer is no. You can still study trends and learn more about Swoopo faster than they can implement supply/demand changes. I know this because I see in our data that some auctions have MUCH higher average savings than others. And the best Swoopo bidders only bid on certain auctions and at certain times of the day. They know the data too (or at least can SEE it in action) and act accordingly.

I’ll write more about the supply/demand vs. data issue in another post. For now, just know that you can treat the holiday season like any other on Swoopo as long as you follow the best practices of great Swoopo bidders and arm yourself with the latest data.

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If you are a Swoopo Manual owner, you should receive an email today with instructions on how to join the community and start interacting with other bidders. And if you haven’t yet purchased the Swoopo Manual, click here to learn all about it.