WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

5 Steps To A Powerful Marketing Plan

We all believe that we have the best product or service we can offer. We spend much of our time making sure that we stay abreast of the latest innovations and trends. Revising, refining, and re-inventing to stay on top of the hill.

The Best Kept Secret

So how are you letting the world know you are ready and available to solve their problems? Having the best-designed mousetrap does nothing for your pocketbook if no one knows about your mousetrap. Add to the mix the ability to find the right someone’s that could benefit from your mousetrap.

Enter the world of MARKETING. From Wikipedia, “Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers.” Be sure that you pay attention to the word value.

When was the last time you made a purchase of service or goods just because the price was right? I’m not talking about game shows here. I’m talking about handing over your hard earned cash for something you did not need or want simply because of price. (There is a TV show about those types of people whose house is overrun with stuff.)

You make a decision to buy based upon the value you place on the benefit of your purchase. Realize I said benefit, not feature. Features are worthless unless I can see a benefit for me. Your mousetrap painted in my favorite color red (feature) means little when it is destined to be thrown in the trashcan after it catches that pesky mouse.

Telling me that it is designed to be quick enough on the snap to catch even the craftiest rodent or you will personally come and eradicate the varmint is a definite benefit to me. Send me two please.

Hey You, Look Over Here!

Isn’t that what you are trying to accomplish? Unless you are communicating your message to those who may see benefit in your product or service, you have no sales. No sales, no business.

There is a right way and a wrong way to get the word out. It has little to do with the vehicle you use, be it newspaper ads, postcards, radio, Internet, email, or any other method. It has more to do with saying the right things, at the right time, to the right people.

It Is Called a Marketing Plan

Every business needs a current, actionable marketing plan. Big or small, home based or enterprise, without a marketing plan you are doomed to failure. You will be jumping at the next golden opportunity that is parlayed to entice you to spend your money with them.

I believe that there are 5 key components to having a good marketing plan. Here they are:

The Right Marketing Message.

There are three questions you must answer for your prospective client:

1. Why do I need it?

Does it solve a problem?
Will it make me feel/look better?
Does it save me time/money?
You must first and foremost answer this question before moving on.
2. Can I trust you?

Do you have any testimonials?
What is your background/experience/time in business?
Do you have any references?
How can I feel assured/guarantees
3. What will it cost?

This is the place where you must deliver value
No one wants to spend money, they want to… see #1
People buy value no matter what the price
I put them in this order because that is the order of importance. Notice that price is the last thing I think about. A good marketing message will answer these questions in a compelling way. Once you write your marketing message you can package it and communicate in many channels.

If you are not good at writing copy, then hire someone! You will lose much more than you save by trying to do it yourself. My suggestion is find a copywriter that can write 80% about #1 and 20% about #2 & #3. Most businesses that do it themselves have it backwards. No wonder they lose.

Know Your Best Marketing Channels.

There are 100 or more ways to market your business. However, not all channels perform equally well for every business. You need to experiment and find the 5-10 channels that work best for your business. This will be the focus of activity in your marketing plan.

If you have the right message, you can adapt it to fit any marketing channel.

Here are just a few to consider in no particular order; Radio, Television, Web Site, Blog, Direct Mail, Local Magazine, Email, Local Networking Groups, Billboards, Auto Wraps, and the list goes on. The key is to see how your competitors are doing it and do it better by focusing on getting the right message out there.

Set Your Marketing Budget.

How much can you spend on acquiring new customers? Businesses must create and operate by a marketing budget. How much you spend can vary by business category, but a good rule of thumb is 8-10% of your gross. My goal for businesses I coach is to get a 10X return on marketing dollars spent. If you are consistent in doing this, every month, your bottom line will grow.

By setting a budget you are more likely to discipline yourself to spend more wisely and effectively. Do you know how much it costs you now to get a new customer? How much do you want your business to grow this year?

You can get a better idea of these numbers in my book “You Learned Business Math in Grade School” available at Amazon Kindle.

Create a Marketing Calendar.

Marketing experts agree, “Consistency is Key”. Studies have shown that it takes from 5-14 repeated messages to convert someone to a customer. That is if you have a good message.

Once you know your best channels/mediums and have your best message, you should schedule your marketing activities on a timeline or calendar. Plan what you are going to say and where you are going to say it, each week/month/year. If you are not comfortable doing this, please hire an expert. You will be glad you did.

Create and Monitor Your Dashboard.

The biggest mistake I see business owners make is not tracking and measuring the performance of their marketing efforts. You must have a “Dashboard” that identifies your activity and tracks to result of every thing you do. You must track every new lead that comes your way. Where are they coming from? Which version of the message did they respond to?

Evaluate every channel each month. Smart businesses know where every piece of new business comes from! Spend more time and money on the marketing activities that generate the most and best leads.

When searching on a search portal, Google or Bing, your advert will occur next to or on top of the organic search results for the search phrase you entered. PPC advertisements are known as “sponsored ads” with the Google results page and “ads” with the Bing results page.

Advertisers place bids for individual search phrases. When a searcher clicks on your ad, you will be charged based on the amount you bid for that search phrase. The more that you’re willing to bid for any specified search term, the higher your advert will appear within the sponsored listings. The larger the pay per click service’s network, the higher the bids the advertisers will be willing to pay for high positions.

It’s important to closely track the performance of your advertising and marketing right from the start. The ultimate measure of the overall performance of the pay per click advertising campaign will be the return on investment (ROI) of every advert.

Pay per click affords advertisers a high degree of control and the capability to effortlessly measure the outcomes of their campaigns. Control is the major advantage of PPC advertising and marketing but considering that all the advertisers with which you compete also have the same control, pay per click campaigns have to have active monitoring and management.

The major attraction that any pay per click service provides to advertisers is its capability to distribute advertising. Pay per click also makes it possible for advertisers to target different geographic locations with a selection of specific countries and languages to target.

A typical Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisement as it’s shown on the search portal.

PPC Advertising campaign management (Headline / Title)

We setup and manage Google AdWords & Bing / Microsoft Advertising campaigns (Description)

domain.name (Display URL)

Headline / Title: The hyperlink in the headline will redirect visitors through the pay per click service to the URL set by the advertiser.

Description: All pay per click services restrict the length of advert copy to a number of lines and/or a specified number of characters.

Display URL: A display URL is shown to reveal to the searcher where the advert will take them. The display URL doesn’t necessarily reflect the exact page to which a visitor will be sent.

Both Google and Bing advertisers can run parallel campaigns using the very same search terms. The same advertisements which are utilized in search results may also appear in Google AdSense and Microsoft Advertising contextual advertising. Google and Bing offer a contextual advertising option through which advertisers can open up their campaigns for distribution by way of Google’s and Bing’s networks, which comprises large numbers of individual Internet websites, news sites, and content portals.

Google’s main advantage will be the size of the AdSense network, as well as the power to reach a variety of smaller Internet websites. AdWords advertisements are always displayed on the Google search portal. Advertisers can decide whether or not to distribute their adverts by way of Google’s AdSense network of partners.

There is a range of second tier players who could possibly offer useful services and more cost-effective advertising and marketing alternatives in many instances. You’ll find Pure pay per click providers, Regional providers and Vertical market providers, who specialize in distinct kinds of products or services.