This blog post is to help bidders learn a few of the basic building blocks to a winning strategy. If you’re an experienced bidder, it might be useful to revisit some of these ideas and think about whether or not there’s room to refine your strategy.

If this is your first experience with DealDash, congratulations! DealDash is the longest running pay-to-bid site of its kind in the United States, and currently provides service to over 1.5 million registered users. Everyday people visit the site, have a great time bidding and looking through the thousands of available items, and many customers (even the new ones) win great deals on products they love.

But winning isn’t a matter of luck on DealDash: bidders who win do so because they’ve taken the time to learn how the auctions and the website work. By keeping these few pieces of advice in mind you can save yourself both time and money and learn what the best bidders already know!

Watching Auctions Pays Off More Than You Might Think

Watching auctions on DealDash might not be as much fun as watching your favorite TV show, but it pays off for bidders. The MOST IMPORTANT thing to do to create a winning strategy is to learn how bidders behave in the auctions (this is advice from some of the most experienced bidders on DealDash)! Spend a little bit of time watching how bidders react, who bids when, and what kind of products attract more bidders. Watch and learn…then win!

Read Through the Website and Some of the Blog Entries

DealDash regularly posts information to help people learn how to win, both in this blog and on the website. While the blog provides summaries of key strategies and provides some context on how they can be used to your advantage, the website contains raw data that you can use to make decisions. Pages like the Winners page lets you see who’s winning what, when they’re winning it, and for how much – all of them important pieces of information. Information like that can tell you who might be a power bidder, or highlight a couple of hours when the items sold for unusually cheap prices. The blog, on the other hand, highlights some of the particulars of bidding and helps illustrate how certain features, concepts, and ideas can be your key to winning auctions.

Familiarize Yourself with the Tools of Your Trade

DealDash has several unique features to help bidders in their quest for bigger and better wins. Many of the tools are easy to use and understand, but surprisingly some people don’t take the time to learn about them before bidding. Here’s a few example of things you can use to help you learn to win auctions:

• Bookmarks – You can bookmark auctions that you’re interested in and then view them all on the same page

• The BidBuddy – The BidBuddy is an automated bidding tool that places bids for you even while you’re away from the computer.

• No Jumper Limits – One of the most frustrating experiences for bidders is when they’re reaching the end of the auction.

It’s down to you and one other bidder (who may or may not be your arch nemesis)…and you’re bidding back and forth trying to outlast each other. It’s been a long, hard-fought battle, but now you can see the light at the of the tunnel…and then another bidder joins the auction.

Nothing is worse for bidders than the above situation, which is why DealDash has implemented “No Jumper” auctions. These No Jumper auctions prevent new bidders from joining after the item price reaches $5 (sometime less if there’s a sale), thereby limiting the number of bidders who can join that particular auction. There’s less competition in these auctions, and so they’re easier to win!

The “Buy it Now” Helps you Save Money

People come to DealDash to win great deals in the auctions, but nobody wins all the time. That’s why there’s the “Buy it now” (BIN) option. This lets you buy the item from the auction at a regular price. You read that last sentence and though “Where’s the deal in that?”. Well, when you BIN an item, you get all your bids back from that auction for FREE, and so you can use them in another auction. Many new bidders don’t realize this at first, but this can actually help you save a lot of money on bids, and you still get the product you want. It really minimizes the risk of using your bids and then walking away with nothing. That’s why bidding DealDash is a risk-free proposition!