Thinking About Mistakes We Make as Bidders: Part 1

Everyone makes mistakes. Let’s see how we can try to prevent some of them.

Are you a new bidder that feels like they just can’t win? Did you get for first few wins easily and now find yourself in a bidding slump where you feel like you just can’t win again? Or are you a more seasoned bidder who has quite a few wins under your belt but feel like you have just hit a plateau with your bidding? Well, let’s examine how we are bidding and maybe we can improve your bidding so you can go on to get that next big win at DealDash.

The cost of bids – Are you paying too much for your bids? If you’re buying your bids at full price then the answer is “Yes! You are paying too much for bids.” It’s a much better practice to wait for a big sale on bids and buy the largest bid pack than to buy bids whenever you run out and pay top dollar for them.

Just imagine yourself in a bidding war over a laptop – you’ve already put hours and hours into the auction, you’ve put a ton of bids in and you’re not about to give up…But then…you’re almost out of bids…And the current bid price that day is .18! If you had bought bids a few days ago they might have only cost .16, .15, or even .12 on special sale days. If the person that you’re bidding against in this fictional auction had bought their bids at .14 versus you buying them at .18 they are going to be able to bid significantly longer than you yet spend the same amount of money.

Long story short, the person who pays the least for bids and buys them in the biggest bid pack is going to be able to bid for longer, outlasting the competition on auctions. Also, if you’re buying tiny bid packs whenever you run out of bids instead of buying big bid packs when they are on sale then you’re just wasting money, and that in itself is a mistake.

 

Not setting goals for yourself – The other mistake that I would like to talk about today is not setting goals for yourself. You have to crawl before you walk, and walk before you run; so why are you trying to bid on a 50″ TV before you have even won at $10 gift card? Bidding smart means that you have to start small, get to know the bidding terrain around DealDash, study the competition, and get a few small wins before you try for the “big score”. If you are trying to win a $200+ item before you have won a few small ones to see how things really work then that is a mistake. However, it’s easily corrected by setting some goals for yourself and work on achieving them before you move on to more difficult auctions. For example:

  1. Win a $10 gift card to Burger King
  2. Win a $25 gift card to Shell gas
  3. Win a $50 gift card to Target
  4. Win a $100 gift card to Wal*Mart

If you’ll notice, these goals are all to win gift cards. The reason being most people would eventually use all of the above gift cards, so even if you don’t win these auctions while you are practicing your bidding you can BIN (Buy It Now) them for face value, get free shipping, and you are not out any extra money. Once you have attained your bidding goals and feel confident then you can move on to bigger, better, and more difficult to win auctions.

I hope that you found this article helpful in your quest to better wins at DealDash. Please keep an eye on DealDash Blog on Wednesday for Part 2 of this article. Good luck and happy bidding everyone!