There’s a site similar to Swoopo (except legal): www.pricedrip.com - Check it out. I don’t know if it’s a scam or not but it SEEMS on the up and up.
Yep, Swoopo competition is mushrooming. I just found another one www.bidrodeo.com. It looks like they are launching soon.
This is like running a casino. People that play know the odds are against them. They still play. It’s about the fun/excitment, the possibility that YOU could beat the odds.
trading the stock market has negative expectancy as well, if you count in trading costs (against just owning the index like the SP 500 or the MSCI world, with almost no trading costs) Is running the NYSE immoral?
Hey guys,
I see there is a ton of confusion on here regarding Swoopo. Perhaps you can benefit from my blog over at http://blog.swoopostrategyguide.com or even check out the ebook that defines some strategies to help win swoopo auctions at http://www.beatswoopo.com . Wish you the best of luck. 
Cheers,
Dave
Good article, nice one.
This kind of sites was found to be a lottery in Sweden and was banned, but the owners just moved to UK and runs it from there nowdays.
Most of them got hacked and people noticed that the owners had tons of fake accounts making bids so there was no winners on it except the owners that took in the cash.
So, these kinds of sites are really more or less just scams!
Tom Green
People are certainly calling it a scam, but in a different sense of the word. This is the same way someone might call your state lottery a scam. Your buddy might say, Don’t play the lottery, you will never win. It’s a scam. Now everyone knows that a lottery is not scam. The rules are laid out clearly. The chances of winning are extremely slim.
John Blissed
http://websites-for-sale.e-unlimited.net
testing to see if i may comment without having a website.
wouldn’t it be nice if i culd purchase a lot of about 100 HP 18 laptops- if HP would give me a good deal on them. (right now, i can buy one for about $900-1000). but if i could offer up my 100 laptops in an auction where you bid in a penny system similar to swoopo’s, but where the there is a fixed ending, similar to ebay. i would want to gain a nice return, but also be able to offer a quality product to others at a really good price.
why can’t that just be done? let’s say i want to make enough profit to: cover the expenses of running this, plus income so that this could replace my 9 to 5 job. we would all gain - not become millionaires, but have a decent lifestyle and be able to purchase things affordably.
there is a fundamental flaw in our makeup, that’s why…
Woow this service looks pretty cool to me. Mike from http://www.squidoo.com/joebarrypanicawayreview
Great article. Great explanation (It’s a strange combination of eBay, woot, and slot machine).
I don’t think it will be made illegal for some time. Although illegal and somewhat immoral (probably as much as running an online casino), I’ll give them credit for their creative business model.
I think most people are missing the point about Swoopo employees bidding. If Swoopo would do anything “illegal”, like inhouse bidding to keep the item, it would come out (eventually) and it would cost them sales. Swoopo needs those sales even those that are “too good to be true”. Example: a Nokia 5800 sold for $198.45 in a penny auction. Total cost for Swoopo: Nokia 5800 (with shipping and handling), from Nokia around $400. Total income for Swoopo $198.45 + 19,845 X $0.75 = $15,082.20!!! With items selling for around half retail price there is always going to be people interested in bidding!
With the Penny Auctions the final sales price is pretty much irrelevant to Swoopo. Take an items that has a $75.= total cost price for Swoopo. To recoup their cost all they need is 100 bids @ $0.75 each, for a total sales price of $1.= (one hundred price increments of one penny each). As long as they advertise and enough people are around so that the bidding cost per participant stay low, I’m sure anything that sells for $75 in a store will get $20 at auction, meaning 2,000 X $0.75 - $75 = $1,425 profit for Swoopo. Great business model!!
To anyone comparing this to a lottery, in any lottery here in the US there are a finite number of possibilities and it is possible play all of them provided you have and are willing to pay enough money. Also, in a lottery, because of the finite number of possibilities, you know what your odds are. With swoopo, unless you know the number of people that are crazy enough to keep bidding even after the price for the item itself has gone over the retail cost of the item, there is no way to know what your odds are. This actually could make swoopo worse than a lottery. A US lottery is like playing roulette; swoopo is more like playing poker in that you never know how many times someone else will be willing to raise except there is no way to call.
Hi.
I have been examining some of the penny auctions sites for the last couple of weeks. And came across quite a different one called biddingmart. They are not launched yet, but what they are offering is quite different then others.
- When you register now, you will get 10 free bid (they call it pre-launch) offer.
- They are UK based (not like swoopo)
- When you win, you get all the bids you used to win that auction back to your account!!! So actually you only pay for the actual auction price.
- They also state 90% of their products are collectable from London same day the auction is finalised. So, you don’t even need to wait for delivery.
Has anyone heard about these people?
Just search biddingmart on google.
I came up with an idea frighteningly similar to this 11 years ago and didn’t do a thing about it because everyone I consulted said it was unquestionably illegal.
I feel like an idiot. =(
I saw swoopo and thought it would be nice to emulate. I decided to bid on a phone to get to know the system. All they say is true, I sat at the computer for 6 hours that day and paid 20 over what the item cost to buy in the store.
After having been through the purchase process on the site I think it is a brilliant business idea. As they say, business is business.
Its not nearly as bad as the worlds largest trusted countries using economic hitmen to control small african and south american countries with huge loans that they can never repay, all the while raping them of mineral deposits and peace…
FORGET IT! FORGET IT! FORGET IT! Please nobody else be a dummy and waste your time or money on Swoopo. If you don’t have time(if you have any type of a life) to sit in front of your computer ALL DAY and watch a stupid clock tick down just so it can increase again when a bid is made, then FORGET IT! Wish I would have thought of the idea and could have been rackin in the mulla, but it is impractical and a complete waste of time if you have a life.
Hmm. It’s pretty interesting. Did you win or loose any money?
Andrea from http://www.netvibes.com/averytemplates
I played http://www.swipo.com and http://www.youbiid.com and http://www.bidoo.us all of them y played like $30 - $40 haven’t won anything…
My son spent $15 in the last one bidoo, and he won a PS3. But it toke like 30 days to deliver the product to our house… They gave us a lot of excuses like it’s Christmas… it’s out of stock… and lot of stuff… so my conclusion:
Hard to win – But it’s possible – long waiting for your product
I bought into this at the 50 bid level. Should have looked into it more first.
Simple proof this is a scam (as suggested earlier in this thread)
Pull up the US site in one window http://www.swoopo.com
THen pull up th3e UK site in another http://www.swoopo.co.uk
Start comparing items and bidders. They are exact, down to the times of the auctions, bidders names, etc. Sad thing is the fools do not do the currency conversion on a lot of the prices, especially the winning bid amounts. they just change the currency symbol!!