Penny Auction Power Bidders
Power bidders strike fear into the hearts of most regular penny auction bidders because power bidders prove time and time again that they are willing to spend virtually an unlimited amount of bids in order to win an auction. If you have trouble against power bidders then the old saying goes… “If you can’t beat them, join them.” This article takes a look at what it takes to become a power bidder and the most effective strategies used to battle them.
What is a Power Bidder
Power bidders are people who bid and bid and bid until they win. They will over pay, they do not have a bid budget and they will simply spend as much money on bids as it takes to win the auction. Once a power bidder starts, he does not stop until the auction is over and he has won. Power bidding strategy is one that is a long term approach that relies on paying more for some auctions to prove your power bidder status and using that reputation to win other auctions fast and cheap.
The problem is that most penny auction sites have powerbidders. All of the sites listed on PennyAuctionSites.com for sure have their own fair share of power bidders to contend with.
Here is an example of a power bidder overpaying for an auction in order to beef up their power bidding status. This guy spent $2400 to win a $500 gift card. If this does not say “do not bid against me!” I do not know what does. This is an example of a power bidder reputation being strengthened.
Power Bidding Basic Strategy
The long term power bidding strategy works by paying a lot for certain auctions and establishing a reputation as a bidder not to be bid against. This reputation then works by allowing you to win future auctions with little resistance.
Your job as a power bidder is to strike fear into opponents and intimidate them into not bidding against you.
The power bidding strategy is designed to use your reputation to your advantage and let you win a lot of auctions for hardly any bids because everyone knows that it is futile to bid against you. The catch is that you will have to prove yourself as a power bidder before anyone gives you this respect. You must be willing to spend a ton of $$ on bids and must be willing to over bid to win auctions in order to create your power bidding persona. The power bidding style is one of the most effective penny bidding styles bidders can employ if they are willing to spend the money to create the reputation.
In the short term, the power bidding strategy can be quite costly. Just because you work to spend a ton of bids once it does not mean that you will automatically be given respect next time. I have seen people trying to establish a power bidder reputation by over paying on bid packs time and time again and still getting stiff resistance on current auctions. You have to be willing to go the distance time and time again and you have to have deep pockets and a willingness to spend a lot of money on bids and risk a lot of money in the process.
Power Bidder Strategy Advantages and Drawbacks
Every penny auction strategy has it’s advantages and drawbacks, and the power bidding strategy is no different. The advantages of power bidding are that you are likely to win a lot of auctions with little to no resistance. You can pick up a lot of items for fewer bids than virtually anyone else, except another power bidder. You can pretty much have your choice of items up for auction and unless you are up against another power bidder or new bidder who does not care about your power bidder reputation you are likely to win them for a relatively small amount of bids.
The drawbacks to power bidding is that there is no guarantee that just because you have a scary reputation as a power bidder that someone else is not going to bid against you. You could even go up against another power bidder and then one of you is going to have to back down at one point or another. Power bidder battles are one of the biggest drawbacks to this strategy because you can spend a ton of money against another power bidder and still come up empty! Not only can you spend a ton of money, but you do not win the auction and you do not get the tons of bids spent to appear in your history, either! Part of the appeal to a power bidder of winning an auction with a ton of bids spent is that it will go in their history and serve to re-inforce the power bidding persona.
Strategies to use against a Power Bidder
One of the most effective styles to battle a power bidder is the bidding style we call the war of attrition bidding strategy. This bidding style is designed to spend as few of your bids as possible while keeping the auction running as long as possible. Most of the time, power bidders are using an ‘anytime auto-bidder’ meaning that whenever anyone outbids them, they automatically bid again. To compete with this strategy you need to be active in an auction that has a power bidder in the drivers seat and multiple single bidders fighting against them. In this setting, you can compete with the power bidder spending a fraction of your bids compared to how many the power bidder is forced to spend. It is hard to battle a power bidder unless you are willing to spend a lot of bids in the process so one of the best ways to beat power bidders is to just hunt for auctions where power bidders are not present.
Best Penny Auction Sites for Power Bidders
Power bidders do well at most penny auction sites but there are a handful of things you need to know about the auction site before deciding to be a power bidder there.
The first thing you need to find out is what kind of history and information can you find out about the other bidders. If the penny auction site has no way to show how many bids you spent, or no way to pull up the history of other bidders, or yourself, then it is not as beneficial to become a power bidder there. The reason for this is because even if you are willing to go the distance every time it does not do you much good if other people can not easily access that information about yourself when deciding to bid on an auction you are on or not.
For example, on SkoreIt you can set your profile to show your wins over the past 28 days. Other bidders can click on your name and see what you won and how many bids you spent. They can even click on the auction and see the details showing how much you spent and the auction details. Having this ability is important for power bidders because it is this information that is used to strike fear into other people into not bidding against you.
When you can access this information, it makes becoming a power bidder much more valuable compared to sites like nailbidder.com that do not allow you to click on an individual bidders name to pull up their history. All you have to go by here is reputation from the other bidders that notice you will bid forever, which is much less valuable overall because only a small percentage of bidders are online at any given time and a smaller percentage of bidders know that you are a power bidder.
See our article on different penny auction bidding styles for more types of bidding tactics.