The cool thing about Swoopo is that you can look at previous auctions. It is kind of time consuming but you need to go back as far as you can and see what happenned in older auctions. It is also important to note the time that the auction occurred. You will notice that there is a big difference between bidding at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday and 3:00 AM on a Tuesday.
Most working stiffs will be free on Saturday but not at 3:00 AM on Tuesday. Use this to your advantage to minimize the number of people bidding against you.
You may also want to take in consideration Time Zones.
If you live on the East Coast try early morning auctions. If you live on the West Coast try late evening auctions. You will eliminate a large number of people by picking the right time to bid.
There is a very interesting rule regarding the placement of Bid Butlers. The rule states that a Bid Butler will place a bet automatically when there is a certain amount of time left on the clock. The time ranges from 10-1 seconds left.
You can use the single bid technique to your advantage given this rule. Let’s take a look. In this scenario we will assume that you are bidding against two other opponents who are using a bid butlers. This technique actually works even better if more people are using Bid Butler’s, but we will use 2 other people to keep the example simple.
If you are against one other Bid Butler you need to commit to going the distance and winning no matter what. You also need to bid when there is exactly four seconds left on the clock. In this scenario you will use fewer bids than the person using the Bid Butler.
In the example of single bidder who bids at the 3.5 second mark vs. the bid butler who bids randomly between 10 and 1 seconds. I haven’t checked the randomization, but we will assume an even distribution between 10 and 1. Remember the same person can not bid 2x in a row.
BB = Bid Butler
SB = Single Bidder
Bidding Table
The number values indicate when the person will bid with the amount of time remaining.
| BB1 |
BB2 |
Single Bidder |
Person Bidding First |
| 10 |
1 |
3.5 |
BB1 |
| 9 |
2 |
3.5 |
SB |
| 8 |
3 |
3.5 |
BB1 |
| 7 |
4 |
3.5 |
BB2 |
| 6 |
5 |
3.5 |
BB1 |
| 5 |
6 |
3.5 |
BB2 |
| 4 |
7 |
3.5 |
BB1 |
| 3 |
8 |
3.5 |
BB2 |
| 2 |
9 |
3.5 |
SB |
| 1 |
10 |
3.5 |
BB2 |
| 2 |
9 |
3.5 |
SB |
| 3 |
8 |
3.5 |
BB2 |
| 4 |
7 |
3.5 |
BB1 |
| 5 |
6 |
3.5 |
BB2 |
| 6 |
5 |
3.5 |
BB1 |
| 7 |
4 |
3.5 |
BB2 |
| 8 |
3 |
3.5 |
BB1 |
| 9 |
2 |
3.5 |
SB |
In this example there were 18 trials. If you were bidding against two other people you would expect to bid 1/3 of the time or be forced to bid 6 times. From the example above the person using single bidding only used 4 bids. They saved 1 bid for every 9 rounds of bidding.
Of course this is a lab example. In a real world example if you were against two other bid butlers they would more than likely have similar price ranges plugged in against each other. In that scenario you may bid first and then the next 9 bids Swoopo would force the Bid Butlers against each other and the single bidder would not be included in the bidding at all. So instead of using two bids per 9 trials you would have only used one or possibly none. This is the power of using Single Bidding.
It would seem like this is the way to go however remember that single bidding runs the risk of missing the chance to actually place a bid. If you are to slow or your computer freaks out you have just lost a big opportunity.
One of the advantages to using the Swoopo single bid is that you can avoid the BBPW (Bid Butler Price War) situation. A Bid Butler Price War is when two bidders have Bid Butlers with the exact same price range and number of bids in their Bid Butlers. Swoopo rakes in the cash on these situations. What happens is that all of the Bid Butlers get added together automatically and the time gets incremented. All the single bidders sit back and watch you burn through your bids when this happens.
The risk you take with a single bid is from the time you click on the bid button to the time it registers on the Swoopo server may be too small. You see that there are 3 seconds left and click bid. Your computer sends the message to the Swoopo data center and to your surprise it says auction ended you lost. Huh?
This is because as your message traveled from your computer across the Internet to the Swoopo server it didn’t have enough time to complete the transaction. The Internet is a volatile place in terms of connections and how messages get transmitted back and forth. You just can’t guarantee with certainty that your message will get there in enough time.
It will however get there most of the time and we can use that strategy to help us force people using Bid Butlers to Burn through Bids.
Auctions start off as 20 second auctions. If the time gets below 20 seconds then the next bid resets the clock to 20 seconds. If several people are using bid butlers at the same time the auction will increase by 20 seconds for everyone while different parties are using Bid Butlers in the same price range.
Gradually this moves down to 15 seconds and finally 10 seconds. The bidding is more difficult with less time and the change for making an error increases.
Swoopo places a limit of 8 wins per month per account. This is what keeps the sharks from dominating Swoopo. The open auction allows anyone to bid. Beware these are shark infested waters. Only experienced bidders should even attempt an Open Auction as this is where all the expert Swoopers hang out.
The beginner auction is where you get your feet wet with Swoopo. You bid against other rookies who have yet to win something in the world of Swoopo. If there is anything you find remotely interesting in the beginner auction you should get it. Once you win any auction on Swoopo you will no longer have the opportunity to win a beginner auction.
Be smart. Read the material here first and then dominate your Swoopo Beginner Auction.
In this auction Bid Butlers are not allowed. This auction requires good timing and patience. You should also have a very reliable computer and stable Internet connection.
The key to this type of auction is being able to go the distance. You want to find a key amount of buffer time that you can get your bid in without missing your opportunity.
One of the biggest mistakes people make in this type of auction is not bidding. Often times they will count the number of bidders and see that several people are bidding. Typically you will see four people bidding. Everyone thinks the other three will bid at the last section to increase the time. What happens is that everyone ends up staring at each other wondering why they didn’t bid and how that other guy ended up with their prize.
This is similar to other auction types with the exception that instead of the price rising $0.15 it rises a penny. This is an advanced auction type. Typically higher priced items are listed under the penny auction type. If timed well this can be extremely profitable, but they are also very competitive.
Consider the case of a $1,199 television penny auction I recently saw listed. The final price for the 42 inch Philips television was $24.07. For the guy who had to buy this in the end it was a total steal. Remember that this was a penny auction so all bidders combined spent $1,807 dollars on this auction. Not a bad deal for Swoopo. Even if you had the majority of the bids you may have come out ok, but you have to be willing to spend a lot and not screw up in the end.
Sometimes you can do well even if you have the majority of the bids. I’ve seen a 37 inch go for $7.05 when it retails for $1,299. Even if you had all of the bids you would have only spent $528.
The important thing to understand about penny auction is that it is very easy to get in at the end, but in order to win you may need to spend hundreds of dollars in bids and even after spending hundreds there is no guarantee you will win.
Running Out of Bids
The first way you can lose is not setting your number of bids high enough. Let’s take the example of working against a single opponent bidding against you. In this example you both start bidding at $10.
- You $10 (Bid 1)
- Opponent $10.15
- You $10.30 (Bid 2)
- Opponent $10.45
- You $10.60 (Bid 3)
- Opponent $10.75
- You $10.90 (Bid 4)
- Opponent ($11.05)
- You $11.20 (Bid 5)
- Opponent $11.35 (Winner)
Son of a. If you set the Bid Butler bids too low then you run the risk of losing because you were not placing enough bids. Luckily you can add more bids to your Bid Butler, but you must start $1 higher than the current end price you want to bid on. In other words, you may need to start with a Bid Butler, add more to your Bid Butler and then use single bids to get it up to the point where your Bid Butler starts working again.
Did you catch that? It was really important. Using our example from above let’s say we ran out of bids with our Bid Butler and want to use this feature again. My bid butler would need to be set to $12.35, but the bid will never get there because we’re in Swoopo land not regular auction land. My opponent is already winning so he can’t bid again. You only have 15 seconds to reactivate the Bid Butler. You may set it to $12.35 to kick back in, but the whole time the clock is ticking. After you set it you need to click Single bid to move the price to $11.50. You have to keep using single bid against your opponent until the price gets above $12.35 and then you can rely on your bid butler.
But wait, if you read some of the other posts you remember that having too many bids qued up in your Bid Butler can cause a cascading effect where you and another Bid Butler burn through bids faster than Lebron James driving a lamborghini.
This is what makes Swoopo difficult and frustrates people not only do you have to understand the fundamentals of Swoopo you must understand that you cannot have one blanket strategy that works every time. You must read the room and know who else is involved. Future post will be related to reading the room and when to apply the correct strategy.
Bid Butlers are the automated bidding tool built into Swoopo to help you automatically place bids. At first thought you would think they are there to help automate the bidding process, but as with everything in Swoopo they are really there to help make the game more complicated and interesting.
Let’s cover the fundamentals of the Bid Butler first. You pick a staring price an ending price and the total number of bids you are willing to use.
Let’s say we are buying item X. It is currently selling at $8. We set our Bid Butler to start bidding at $10 all the way to $20 and we are willing to use 5 bids. Bid Butlers are the most complicated part of Swoopo and you must understand their pros and cons in order to win at Swoopo.
The Bid Butler will automatically place a bid for you when the clock is between 10 and 1 second. This is very important to know as we will use this fact later in single bidding to work against the person using the Bid Butler.
The last fundamental fact to understand is what happens when two people both use a Bid Butler with the same price range.
This is the worst thing that can happen in Swoopo land and should be avoided at all cost. This will burn through bids faster than an Indy speed car.
Sticking with our example from above if two people both set Bid Butlers to go from $10 – $20 with 10 bids each this is what would happen as soon as the $10 threshold was broken. Both Bid Butlers would place all bids. Both players would have used all ten bids at the exact same time. You would go from 5 seconds left and then all of a sudden the price would jump to $13 all bids would be used. The time would also jump. The first bid would set the time remaining to 15 seconds and then the remaining 19 bids would increment the time by 20 seconds 19 times adding a total of 380 seconds.
A person using single bidding would just sit back and watch as two opponents burned through 20 bids each.
I think the best way to understand the Bid Butler is to understand the limitations and ways you will lose with a Bid Butler when you thought you would win. We have several posts under advanced strategies that cover in-depth ways you can face a challenge with the Bid Butler.
