Get Items
at Incredibly Low Prices Through Zbiddy Auctions
Ah, the wonders of the Internet. It’s not enough that so
many retailers these days are offering sizeable discounts for all sorts of
items; now Zbiddy (www.zbiddy.com) is also
offering online auctions that will allow you to purchase items at truly
unbelievable prices.
What is Zbiddy?
Zbiddy is a penny auction site that puts normally expensive
items up for bidding. Although there are many gift cards, jewelry, home and
garden tools and accessories, and kid’s games available for auction, Zbiddy
offers a lot of appliances, computer products, cameras, and sporting goods as
well.
Zbiddy offers auctions instead of a straight retail deal,
but unlike other auctions you have to pay 60 cents for every time you increase
your bid (either by 10 cents or by a cent) on an item. This rule tends to
discourage those annoying Internet trollers who seem to get a kick out of
bidding on traditional auction sites just to annoy serious bidders, and as a
result only serious bidders are left to compete for an item. This rule also
amply rewards those who take the time to employ a proper strategy for more
effective bidding. And the rewards are great. In fact, as I write this I just
saw an iPad with Retina display Wi-Fi 16GB which retails for about $500 go for
less than $200!
How to Participate
Once you visit the Zbiddy homepage, you immediately get to see many items up for auction, with their currently high bids and time left posted for each item. Even a quick check on some items can get you salivating to join right away, especially when you see $900 iPhones going for less than $90 with just a few seconds left.
You need to take a deep breath, and calm down. Even Zbiddy
itself recommends that you first look around and figure out an appropriate
bidding strategy before you begin to commit yourself. Although having customers
immediately start bidding may be profitable for Zbiddy, this auction company is
rightly concerned about making sure that their customers have a worthwhile
bidding experience.
First you need to register. That’s easily accomplished when
you click on their registration page and fill out the information Zbiddy
requires: your first and last name, email address, and ZIP/Postal Code. You’ll
get a confirmation email to notify you that you have registered successfully.
If you don’t receive your confirmation, make sure that your email service is
not directing the email to your spam tray.
Once this is done, you can now purchase bids. Each bid costs
60 cents, and they come in convenient 50, 75, 300 and 800 bid packages. Each
time you place a bid on an item, the number of bids remaining on your account
is reduced by one. You don’t always have to buy your bids for the set prices,
however. You get free bids if you refer a friend to a site, and you can
actually place bids for items up for auction.
Handy Auction Tips for
a More Successful Bidding Experience
Again, you must muster the determination to resist the
temptation of immediately making bids on all the great items right away. Here
are some pieces of advice that you should heed so that you will have a more
enjoyable—and more profitable Zbiddy experience.
- Read the FAQs and Help
sections carefully. They’re there for a reason, and you should familiarize
yourself with all the guidelines.
- Study the bidding patterns
for the items. You may notice that some auctions end during times when
most people are otherwise occupied (sleeping, having their morning
rituals, or busy at work). You can mark these time periods so that you can
enter your bids when the competition level is low.
- There are also times when
there’s a sort of frenzy around a certain product, and most of the others’
attention is on a particular auction. When this happens, you may be able
to win an item for a steal because there’s no one else paying attention to
it.
- Pick only one or two items
to bid on so that you don’t lose track and you can concentrate more
effectively. If you’re a newcomer to Zbiddy, check out their beginner
section which is exclusively only for those who haven’t won an auction
yet. There are also items in which it is free to bid—as the name suggests, you can bid without having
the bids in your account reduced.
- Don’t bid too early.
Instead, if you’re interested on an item offer your bid when there’s only
ten seconds or so left on the timer.
- Once you’ve committed to
an item, make sure you have enough bids in your arsenal so that you don’t
run out of ammunition. Replenish your bid credits as you go along.
- Finally, remember that
this is a competition; you can’t win all the time if you define winning as
ending up with a product you like. Instead, try to have fun with the
auction as if it’s a game—this makes sure you are a winner whether you end
up getting the item or not. At the very least, you end up learning
something which should make you better at it.
Unlike other traditional auction sites, all the items on
Zbiddy are brand new and factory sealed. If you win, you pay what you bid plus
the shipping costs. Currently, Zbiddy ships only within the US, although the
site is working hard to provide shipping for customers based in Europe.
Points to Consider
There may be times when a penny auction site like Zbiddy may
not be ideal for your shopping needs. If you have to have something, you may be better off getting what you need
from traditional retail websites rather than trying your luck with online
auctions.
Some new customers have also been quick to make complaints
and hurl accusations about a scam in their online reviews. In the age of quick
online gratification, such reactions from those who lost out on their desired
items are quite understandable. They are however somewhat unfair when you think
about it; it’s like complaining that a bicycle is a scam product because you don’t
know how to ride a bike and you failed to balance yourself on it on your first
try. All the auctions that Zbiddy host are essentially legit competitions; you
shouldn’t expect to win on your first few tries.
To make it easier for a newbie to win something, Zbiddy sets
aside an auction category exclusively for those who have not yet won anything
on the site. It is highly recommended that you try these auctions first, so
that you can bid on inexpensive items. Bidding on these items allows you to try
out several auction strategies so that you can see what works for you.
Conclusion
Although the beginners category is filled with more
inexpensive items, if you take the time to check out the items you’ll see that
they’re all inexpensive compared to
other items selling for their regular price. Where else can you go to submit a
winning bid of less than $70 for an item which retails for more than a thousand
dollars? With Zbiddy, you can easily find items you would like to own, and with
the right strategy and bidding tactics you can actually own them for
ridiculously low prices.
