Continuing my unscientific exploration of penny auction sites, I try new sites from reviews on APA (www.allpennyauctions.com), where the reviews are not all from shills, usually. The penny auction sites I tried were BidPunk (www.bidpunk.com), ibid2Save (www.ibid2save.com). Both auction sites have quite different layouts, prizes, bidders and return on investment potential.
Most people acquainted with penny auctions join different sites for the variety, the free bids, and the easy pickings when you are a rookie. This is obviously the way most of these second- and third-tier sites get new bidders. I bought a small bid pack from BidPunk and won a few auctions for $10 gift cards easily. There wasn't much competition and I'm sure the system was skewed for me to win at first. BidPunk has a roulette spin wheel similar to Zbiddy, where you can win free bids every day you log in. At first, I made back my money in two auctions. There are not many auctions on BidPunk and they are set far apart, so you can't hang around long.
After your initial couple of wins, you are then pitted against 5-10 regular crazy bidders who compete like mad for 3 or 4 auctions, so it's not particularly profitable. It appears BidPunk is appealing to a younger crowd, based on the prizes and small denominations of gift cards. Very few auctions are BIN auctions, and the bids are expensive (.60 - .75) even with promotions. Their delivery is a little on the slow side, but not terrible. Most of their prizes are either bid packs or e-gift cards delivered via email.
IBid2Save is a strange and terrible penny auction site. Perhaps once upon a time it was a decent venue, but currently it is far too difficult to win anything good for a reasonable amount of money (my formula of 166% profit is impossible to obtain), and the majority of their prizes are dollar store accessories or cheap jewelry that can be obtained for a fraction of the price at Amazon or at a flea market. If you are a bargain hunter and not an irrational bidding freak, you will realize that IBid2Save is a rip-off.
Initially, I bought a small bid pack and then won another bid pack where I spent $15 on "auction fees" that pretty much voided the great deal I thought I got. Ok, I thought, I can make this back. I noticed the only decent auctions ($200, $100, $20 gift cards and iPads or cameras), never sold for less than 70 - 80% of retail, after factoring in the "auction fees", shipping fees, and cost of your bids. Never mind the fact that those auctions run for 8 hours, since everyone and their uncle places an auto-bid for 300 - 500 bids. Although the average cost of bids was about .03 cents, since everyone got cheap bids, they threw them around like confetti and inflated the final cost of every valuable auction.
The only item I bothered to buy on IBid2Save was a watch that I researched on Amazon to see if the auction fee/shipping fee was less than the value of the watch. I probably saved about 40% on it, but it was hardly worth the effort. Most of the junk on IBid2Save can be bought for $1 - $10 although the site claims it is worth ten times that. Do your homework and you won't waste money.
UPDATE: I was given 350 free bids by IBid2Save (as was everyone else on their mailing list!) and found a few promo codes on their Facebook page and around the 'net. I managed to accumulate about 500 free bids and managed to win 3 $20 gift cards in a row. It was a Sunday afternoon and I suspect I just got lucky. I made back the investment and called it a day. Their shipping is very slow.
As far as Bidpunk, I wrote an unflattering review of the site on APA and they rewarded me with free bids. With those bids and a pack I got cheap on http://pennyauctioncoupon.com I won two auctions. I'm back to zero bids with them, but I feel I got my money's worth now.
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