Penny auction wiki

Before going in to details allow me to specify what's a penny auction and why people are attracted to them.

Penny Auctions have a two level value system for the users.

• First level: The above the line and supper obvious value is the ability to buy super pricey products at large discount rates. But this is a just a stimulus to start participating.

This lies on the surface of almost every penny auction site out there, showing off iphones and ipads with prices way bellow $100

• Second level: The below the line value is this. Penny auctions have a far higher entertainment value than any other form of online auctions, daily deal sites or even the most elaborate e-shop.

This becomes obvious when you first start using PA sites and try and win your first item. Penny auctions introduce an element of social competition. You have to compete with other bidders (users) in order to win the item.

To sum up Penny Auctions, are primary a form of online entertainment that encourages users to actively participate and form strategies to try and win as many items as possible.

If your interested in starting your own penny auction or using one for your bidding delight there are still some things you should consider.

• Penny auctions are not the same thing as any other form of e-commerce you could have encountered earlier.

PAs offer a unique user experience. Just like a shopper rushing true a mall to get ahead of every one else to the best "on sale" items, driving pleasure and adrenalin not from the money saved but from the experience in general. So do PA bidders get the entail emotional rush from bidding and competing, being engaged in the process is what matters the most.

• Penny auctions are a bit more complicated (on the programming level) than regular auction sites and far more complicated than e-shops. The amount of server load generated by a common well to be PA site is frighteningly large.

What this means is this:

If your a user, take some time and poke around, if the site seems buggyor laggy your better of taking your money else wear.

If your the site's owner You should strongly consider investing in a good dedicated server to host your site that can handle a lot of actively from your clients. If your server crashes when there are about 500 users bidding away to win a super awesome mac book, there's a strong posterity they wont come back.

• It's possible to win on penny auction and it's possible to run a honest penny auction and stay profitable.

Penny auctions are only as healthy and successful as the amount of traffic they can generate, convert and successfully handle (without crasing the server)

Note to PA owners: when your users feel safe and happy bidding on your site they will keep coming back. Why shouldn't they? It's important to grow your user base and activity. Deciding to outsmart your users by implementing bid bots or any other questionable method will doom your business. As users will leave your site quickly and you'll end up spending more and more to try and attract new users that just wont bid.

Note to users: Be a smart bidder do your research, is the PA auction is well known and there's nothing fishy about the reviews and testimonials. Bid away to your dearest pleasure. This might turn in to one of the funnest experiences you can find online if you'll stay sharp.

New note: http://www.arrowoutletinfo.com/key.php - Math PHd students reveled bot bidders on a PA site while studding human-auction interaction patterns.

• Plan ahead, never forget entertaining or not business is business it's not a magic money maker. Work hard and your rewords will be plenty. How big do you want your auction to be? How active do you want to be?

• Decide on your "BIG IDEA" what will set you apart from your competitors? Apart from that who will be your competitors? You can have a niche oriented PA site offering crazy deals for lets say DJ and Audio equipment, or you can aim at a broad market providing general electronics and goods. And still how will you spice things up? Special events? Special auction types?

• Don't forget to get licensed, even if you have an online business an occupational license from the country or city you operate out of is a must. Its a simple step to take but an important one.

• Technical setup. You'll need the right tools to do the right job. Just like you need to rent a building and buy equipment to run a regular store in your neighborhood you'll need certain things to open up your auction on the internet.

• First: Get a domain name that will have a double function. It will be the URL that people will use to access your penny auction AND serve as your brand name

• Find a hosting that can handle a lot of punishment. PA sites generate massive server loads in addition to that to run a penny auction script correctly the server your using as hosting needs to fit some requirements. (common server set up will look something like this LAMP stack: OS (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X), Web server (Apache, IIS), MySQL, PHP 5).

• Get your hands on a platform (penny auction software) that will power your future PA site. Play close attention to make the right decision. It’s a highly competitive market, promise of quality and control are given as easily as they are broken. Prices for ready to use penny auction software packs varying from several hundred bucks to several thousand (individual development could cost you up to $10k+). One important thing you must note! Apart from offering different front and back end feature the main thing to pay attention to is the productivity of the code. It can be a software package that has over a 100+ features but it will shut down as first waives of heavy traffic hit your site. Developing a good platform requires deep knowledge of programming and understanding of networking. So the initial production is extremely time consuming if when done correctly. So going with a 400$ script might not be your best bet that is if you don’t plan on running a single auction once a month from your house for 30 users. As stated previously PA sites generate monstrous server loads.
• design a web site that will be user friendly, easy and fun to use. Consider things that will bring your customers the best experience, make sure that it will work in all browsers, that a person can navigate around the site using mostly his intuition. And lastly that the website uses all the frontend and backend features provided by the PA software at maximum efficiency.
• Plan and launch your marketing campaign. You may have thought up off the best penny auction site on the web and are honest to the bone. But if people wont come to your site it will be all for nothing.