Good Advice or Bad Advice?

There’s a lot of advice floating around the web about proper Beezid bidding strategy.  This blog post is going to take a look at some of the ideas that pop up the most and give you my opinion of the advice, be it good, bad, or neutral.  Keep in mind that my take on this advice is mostly targeted to beginners as they are the ones most likely to take the advice found on the web and use it.

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#1 – When starting out, you should buy as many bids as possible

It is certainly true that you don’t want to run out of bids in the middle of an auction and that having a huge number of bids available frees you up to bid on virtually any item you want (or multiple items).  However, for beginners, I would recommend against this approach for several reasons.  First, if you are just starting out on Beezid, it doesn’t make sense to put a large sum of money down to buy bids without having some actual bidding experience and background.  Starting with a low number of bids forces you to be very careful in your bidding and will help you to learn correct bidding strategy, waiting until the best possible moment to bid.

Also, as a beginner you shouldn’t jump right in to the auctions for the most expensive items.  You should spend your time on the cheaper, less hotly contested, auctions where the retail value is no more than a couple of hundred dollars.  These auctions will require far fewer bids to win.  On average, you should expect to spend just under half a bid (0.40-0.45 or so) per $1.00 of retail price of an item.  This means that, on average, a $100 item will take about 40-45 bids to win, give or take a few bids.  Think about this before deciding to bid on more expensive items.

#2 – Avoid auctions that involve frequent winners

The main point of this advice is to stay from the “professional” bidders.  The idea is that, since they win very often, you aren’t likely to beat them.  In practice, I don’t think that advice makes much sense.  Some of the best bidders out there still bid on many auctions that they don’t win.  In fact, these bidders know better than most other people when to walk away from an auction that is no longer at an optimal point to win.  I think better advice is to avoid what are often called “persistent” bidders.  These bidders are those that are more than willing to spend more bids than the retail price would normally dictate, just to win the auction.  These bidders do win a lot so could be considered “professional” bidders as well but not all “professional” bidders are “persistent” bidders.

So, how do you stay away from these “persistent” bidders?  The best thing to do is to try and pay attention and keep track of who they are so you can spot them in the future.  But, even if you don’t have time to do this, it shouldn’t be too hard to spot someone like that in an auction.  If you’ve been watching an auction for an hour and someone keeps bidding on top of others or has had AutoBeezids going for quite some time, stay out of the auction.  Eventually, that person may decide to move on to another auction or otherwise stop bidding.  If they’re still bidding, then just keep waiting or move on yourself.

#3 – Set your AutoBeezid for when you are away from the computer

The advice that is usually given is that the AutoBeezid can bid for you so you can just set it and go do something else.  While this is certainly true, it’s not usually a great way to spend your bids.  Especially as a beginner (and even for more seasoned Beeziders), I would only set an AutoBeezid when you are actually watching the auction.  AutoBeezid is an extremely powerful tool for winning auctions but setting it for a time while you aren’t paying attention to the auction is an easy way to use up a lot of bids.

Often the price alone is not a good indication of the flow of the auction and setting an AutoBeezid early only looks at the price.  If there are many people bidding and the auction is very active, setting an AutoBeezid may not be a good idea.  The worst scenario when setting an AutoBeezid to a time when you are away is setting an AutoBeezid when one or more AutoBeezids are already going or set.  This can waste a lot of bids very quickly.  Watching the auction before setting an AutoBeezid can ensure that you are setting it at just the right time.

Obviously there are times when you must go eat, go to the bathroom or otherwise step away from the computer and using an AutoBeezid might give you enough time to get back into the auction before it closes.  However, in that case, you may be better off combining a higher AutoBeezid with some snipers to keep the auction alive.  This will likely cost you far fewer bids than setting an AutoBeezid alone and still keep the action going until you return.

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Well, that’s my latest take on some advice I found floating around the web.  Do you agree?  Disagree?  Want to know more?  Either way, let me know!  Until next time and happy bidding!