Let's bring PAW and excitement to Penny Auctions back!

It's been nearly 4 yrs now and PAW is still dedicated to providing bidders with a place to discuss both good and bad experiences with penny auctions, but what can I do to bring the excitement back and offer a better experience for you here? Glad to see some of our longtime bidders back here as well as so many new members! Thank you!

It's been nearly 4 yrs now and PAW is still dedicated to providing bidders with a place to discuss both good and bad experiences with penny auctions, but what can I do to bring the excitement back and offer a better experience for you here? Glad to see some of our longtime bidders back here as well as so many new members! Thank you!

Forum activity sure has gone down some since I first started here, but quite frankly I am not sure what can be done to improve that. There's really only so much you can talk about when it comes to Penny Auctions. After a while it sort of becomes repetitive... Example: new user joins the forum and asks a questions like "why did this guy keep bidding against me and spend x3 retail of the auction price?"....... the answer to this questions has been discussed too many times, that people stop answering and new users get tuned out.

One thing I will say is that when you had your recent Beezid free contest, a lot of users seemed to come out from within the shadows again. So everyone is here, but they just don't post.... Not sure how to solve that, but that's my 2 cents! If I ever think of something clever I'll be sure to let you know.

My two cents: I got bulked into some "mob" I was never in. In forum life AND in real life... I am friends with everyone. As soon as that "guy" came around moderating, It didn't seem like a home. Now it's boring.

PS. And before Bill's name gets brought up...I haven't spoken to him in awhile (no falling out in any way FYI), so don't blame him. Just sayin.

Yes I understand.He is no longer a moderator. I am sorry that happened.

site owners need to be more in contact with each other this week alone talked to 3 owner and told them what to look for and they all busted 5 names out of the same area for cheating before they ship wins they should ask for a copy of a i and a bill and compare notes on the cheats names om very vocal about auction sites if there good i have no problem promoting there site and if there a scum bag site i will say it

Bidders looking for deals, PA owners looking for users to join their auctions. How can you provide that with your website is how you can make this site more alive I guess. To strike for the balance between bidders and site owners, hmmm...it'll be difficult. Unless you got involve deeper on either bidders or owners side but then it'll be conflict of interest. However, I think you can work with one side to help the other I believe.

Sorry...I don't really know for sure what I'm talking about. Penny auction is running out of topics!

site owners need to be more in contact with each other this week alone talked to 3 owner and told them what to look for and they all busted 5 names out of the same area for cheating before they ship wins they should ask for a copy of a i and a bill and compare notes on the cheats names om very vocal about auction sites if there good i have no problem promoting there site and if there a scum bag site i will say it

You're saying that the bidders were cheating? How so?

Bidders looking for deals, PA owners looking for users to join their auctions. How can you provide that with your website is how you can make this site more alive I guess. To strike for the balance between bidders and site owners, hmmm...it'll be difficult. Unless you got involve deeper on either bidders or owners side but then it'll be conflict of interest. However, I think you can work with one side to help the other I believe.

Sorry...I don't really know for sure what I'm talking about. Penny auction is running out of topics!

Yes - you're right. A lot has been said here over the years and not alot of really new/exciting sites right now, at least not that I see...

With all the social media and connections out there, it pretty much moved all the conversations away from the drama of these forums and into drama of personal facebook or site pages. Moderation is being done by site owners on their news feeds. At one point, these forums used to be relevant in sharing knowledge, experiences and where good deals. Unfortunately the core "community" of these forums have run most new players out of the industry with overt collusion, un-earned 'respect' by some, threats, and sometimes accusations of cheating by site owners because they didn't get a "cheap" win.

Don't get me wrong, there have been a lot of bad sites over the years, and many new sites are clearly not legitimate based on traffic numbers, advertising numbers, number of high value auctions, and the running up of these community bidders who they are well aware will spend to retail and over. The sites that use these tactics are easy to spot in most cases, while some you need to do more research on. Over the years, PAW has spent a good amount of time vetting out these sites based on research. Although many of these were justified exposure, there may have been too much focus on the bad, and not enough on the good sites.

One other thing I think forums, TBL, PAH, PAScore and the like failed to do for the community is to advertise the industry outside of the industry. Site have a responsibility to drive their own traffic, but how much would it help if advertising for PAW and PA's in general were done to educate the masses about penny auctions highlighting the true risks involved in playing, while highlighting the positive outcomes of those auctions that get 70-90% off. Maybe some PSA type spots would go a long way to drive new traffic to the industry and infuse all sites with new members they may not otherwise reach independently. Now I know that over the course of 4 years, PAW has amassed close to 12K members, but how many are one and done visitor, or duplicate accounts. So basically, PA sites that advertise on here or the other sites mentioned are only really targeting people who play and know what the industry is all about. Once that 600+ core community members sign up on a site, there really isn't much more to gain by advertising her or any other site PA related.

Will this bring back excitement to the industry or forum? Who knows? Maybe not. But it may bring new people who haven't found PA's into the industry with an honest and open vision of what is really to be expected.

My two cents: I got bulked into some "mob" I was never in. In forum life AND in real life... I am friends with everyone. As soon as that "guy" came around moderating, It didn't seem like a home. Now it's boring.

Well said, BF! Hope all is well with you!

Hey PAW!

I think the industry is in bad shape and that begins to trickle down to the users and their motivation to continue. I have a hard time finding any good sites to bid on any longer...most of the good ones are gone and I have no way to judge the credibility of new ones.

I guess one thing that would help would be to have a thread on which sites still exist, which ones are legit and which ones seem not to be...

Only sites that interested me were high-end products and commodities (gold, silver, and platinum) but there aren't any legit ones left. I've found a few that had items go cheap but they quickly shut down. Was about 20 of them nobody knew about. [and no "I" was not the cause of it] Sadly they were all shut down before I had the chance to bid on anything. I had my eyes on two upcoming ones, but they've been upcoming for pretty much a year now so...

Yeah, the real difficulty in operating a penny auction site is not becoming more apparent to the casual business person. With all the upstarts now pretty much in the deadpool, that leaves room for only a select few.

We're launching this week and are introducing some new concepts. Such as local pickups as well as the ability to essentially build a social coupon based on your referrals. The more your refer, the more your coupon will increase in discount value. It's a new concept and one that I expect to grow slowly but surely.

You can learn more about it at the link below. But yes, I do agree the industry has taken a black eye and is pretty much on its deathbed. Even Quibids' traffic has dropped precipitously. That's the main reason why we partnered up with several well known merchants to be able to offer local pick-ups for auction wins. Just trying to offer something different and inject some legitimacy into the business model before the reputation regarding penny auctions simply become irreparable.

iDiscount - Universal Internet Coupon

This forum really had the incalculable potential to help the industry explode! And become a viable sub-category of e-commerce which I like to term c-commerce for "competitive shopping." Unfortunately, the excessive focus on the negatives only served to dissuade consumers from ever having faith in the business model. So its eventual demise is fast approaching.

PAW was in the enviable position to cater to both consumers as well as penny auction owners. However, the fulfillment of that potential was never realized. Speaking from my own experience as a current penny auction owner at EvoTronix.com, our marketing efforts were hardly appreciated. We paid for our own forum space here on PAW, but was hardly ever able to actually post to it. Several other issues such as not having prime ad space such as the header, be made available for penny auction owners to place our banner ads.

In my opinion, focusing more on the positives when reporting on a nascent business model, would have served to benefit all of us. Instead, the negative issues always, always took precedent and remained at the forefront. As a result, most consumers are now simply finding it difficult to stay interested enough to even spend the bids they have remaining in their account, much less continue to invest in the sites to help them grow.

This is great feedback, Evotronix also, I am going to put that into action, let's talk I'll send you an email and I am very sorry about the posting issues.

This is great feedback, Evotronix also, I am going to put that into action, let's talk I'll send you an email and I am very sorry about the posting issues.

No problem, Amanda. It's time we all start working towards resuscitating the industry and get consumers excited about entertainment shopping again as they once were. It hasn't gone mainstream as yet, but that's the goal we're shooting for. I'll look out for your email. Thanks.

No problem, Amanda. It's time we all start working towards resuscitating the industry and get consumers excited about entertainment shopping again as they once were. It hasn't gone mainstream as yet, but that's the goal we're shooting for. I'll look out for your email. Thanks.

Definitely still here for that reason. Let's brainstorm ideas!

In response to some of the postings above - right now things are not that great in the Penny Auction world. I started playing on Penny Auctions a little over two years ago and only a few websites from back then still remain. We all know the issues on both sides /Bidders & Owners/ but nothing is being done to combat them. There are way to many specifics to list...

Honestly there needs to be some type of board similar to the Gaming Control Boards with Casinos that validate not only coding and scripting from cheating but also winners... It could also combat cheating amongst bidders & the "friendly collusion".

If websites are not constantly driving in new traffic then it will fall victim like its many predecessors and get gobbled up by "familiar bidders"

I do miss the old excitement, the thrills of victory, the tears in my beer of defeat. I'm from a couple of years ago too, but I've been hit hard by the recession, lost my home to forclosure, still unemployed, not looking for sympathy, but just saying I am sure others have stopped too because of this economy. The only bidding I can do is if a new site offers free bids. I used to do pretty good at penny auctions, but I've lost that feel for who's who and which sites are decent. Almost all of the sites from 2 years ago are just gone...... I am still around, read the forums only once every few months when I used to be here daily! To really succeed at penny auctions it does take time to learn each sites rules, top dogs, quirks, .... I just don't have the desire any more to spend that much time on it. Too busy picking out the decent job leads from the scam on Craigslist. Such is life. But hey! if PAW has any more giveaways, let me know! Those were always fun.