SimplyBid is First Penny Auction to Offer iPhone App

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Set to launch on Saturday, June 12th,  UK based penny auction SimplyBid.net is the first penny auction, that we have seen, to offer a penny auction iPhone app in the Apple Store. The app is now available for users to download & use to bid on SimplyBid from both the iPhone & iPod Touch.

The founders tell us that they hope that SimplyBid will “be a success story and a positive example of a good penny auction site.  We have spent many hours designing and developing this product and hope not only that it is fun to use, but we in-turn make a profit and people win some bargains.”

We interviewed Matt & Andy, the brains behind SimplyBid.net to learn more.

What got you interested in the entertainment shopping industry, namely penny auctions?

My colleague and I are both from different businesses, but also both from software/architecture design and development areas, and were looking for a project which would be interesting to take on and challenging to achieve. We initially decided to just produce a penny auction platform for sale, but have now decided to launch it as our own.

What makes SimplyBid.net unique?

This is a good question and looking at the competition what was there left to do differently?

We thought long and hard on this one and decided to add the ability to bid via an iPhone App.  This from what we can see is a first as we are the only ones on the Apple App Store.  So presently we have an app for FREE that anyone with an iTouch, iPhone or iPad can download and use in conjunction with their main membership on our site.   You will find it by either searching for ‘simplyBid’ or ‘penny auction’ on the app store.   Obviously our aim here is to allow people to be involved when out and about and not near a computer.  We are also developing apps for the other main platforms too, but the iPhone seemed the obvious place to start considering the user base.

APP URL: http://itunes.apple.com/app/simplybid/id370447339?mt=8

What kind of items do you have lined up?  Will your auctions run on a schedule?

Our aim is to offer a variety of products and we will be finding our feet a bit with this one and seeing what is popular and what isn’t…  It will be a learning curve for us and to begin with we will start with smaller items like games consoles, cameras, blu-ray players etc…  We would like to progress right up to very expensive items like cars, but as we all appreciate that will require a very large customer base to make it a viable option.

Our auctions will have a scheduled start time and on some auctions we will have a ‘Freeze Price’ so that the final price paid by the winner doesn’t spiral to dizzy heights.

What are the timer increments between bids/does this vary by auction?

The timer increments after a bid is made slowly moves from 30-10 sec’s depending on the amount of bids we have received thus far on the auction.  Most auctions will increase by 1 penny after each bid but we can setup an auction to have any increment we feel necessary.  Once the auction is scheduled it will progress to the end in the set format and not change at all.

What do your bids cost?

In the USA our bids are 75 cents and in the UK 45 pence.  When purchasing your first ‘bid pack’ you will receive 20% extra bids and also for every person you refer to us that purchases a bid pack and only their first bid pack, you will receive a further 3 bids.  This will obviously rely on the new customer entering the referrer email used to register with us, so we can automatically assign the bids.

What are your shipping costs?

We are using Amazon to supply our goods and will only pass on whatever the shipping costs are, which will be determined after the auction has finished and final payment is made.

Are there any win limits, limits/household?

At present we have no limits except age, which is 18 or over.

Is there a story behind the name/theme?

When we designed our penny auction web site and engine, we wanted a clean uncluttered interface all on the one page so that customers can see everything that is going on without going in and out of detail pages to see history of bids etc.  To that end our cards are much more functional than normal and allow history to be shown on all running auctions at the same time on the screen with fast updates, thus allowing customers to be involved in more than one auction easily.  Therefore it is simple in look and very complex in design, so we thought simplyBid would be a nice clean name to go with our clean design.

Thanks Matt & Andy!

Please review & discuss SimplyBid.net in our penny auction forum!

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