Couple of Suggestions for Penny Auction Owners:

I hope you guys will enjoy reading it and will gain some useful information from experiences I gained in this Industry since last 2 years.

I have seen many Online Penny Auction sites getting down after running for a while. There are couples of things that can drive traffic or sale or income to your Penny Auction website.

1. SEO:   (Very Important)

Get some directory submissions, Social Bookmarking, Blog posting, Quality Backlink Building and Forum posting (SEO) for your website and try to target the keywords (anchor text) like Penny Auction, , “Your website keyword” promo codes, penny auction promo codes, reverse auction, etc.. It is a cheap and effective method as compare to other methods given below. If you really do a good SEO job then rather than spending on huge Google Adwords you can go for cheap SEO. Try out some small SEO company and a person and not some big company charging more $$$. Also, you will get users (traffic) from search engines.

2. Try to get some accreditation from a government body or anything that people know about it. For example: BBB (Better Business Bureau) for USA and Canada. This will boost the trust of users.

3. A new user who will land up on your site wants some security. In this online world, users tend to think that a site with “HTTPS” is secure. So, if you can get your whole website as HTTPS then it will be good and you can show it to the member that their information are safe.

4. MOST IMPORTANT: Though, it will incur some huge expenses, but try this out if possible. Try to do a massive advertisement in UK where you are based. For example, through News Papers, Television, or if there is any function or huge crowd then you can put up your banners or do some advertisements so that people can see it. Like in Spain, they get huge crowd when there is a Bull Fight function. And, if someone put their banner then many people can see it.  In India, publicity is done by putting up huge banners across the road (highways) or on Railway station or Bus Depot or in exhibitions where many people gathered and can see it.

5. Though this will not sound good but check the feasibility of it. I understand that running an Online Penny Auction Business involve huge investments but to sustain in the business we need cash inflows which we can only get if customers purchase your bid package. My concern is why are we only dependent on one income through the Penny Auction website? Why can’t we try other methods? You can post the banners somewhere at the very bottom of the page. So, the main website contents will not get disturbed. Here are few of them;

a) Have a small Google Adsense banner at the bottom of your website but make sure you add filters so that none of your Penny Auction Competitor’s ad displayed on your site. In this way you can earn some $$$.

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21593

b) You can also have some small affiliates banner. For this, you have to do some research on your visitors. From which keywords they are coming from search engine. For example, a user searched for how can I ship my Ipad 16 gb and they came on your site. Basically they are not looking for it but to ship what they have. So, if you have shipping company’s affiliate on your site and if they click on it and ship their item then you can earn for it.

6) You can also have a separate Affiliates page promoting various affiliate products.

7) Last but not the least:

Christmas is near and many are on shopping spree. Many people don’t like Penny Auction sites and they believe they are scam and it is a GAMBLE. So, why to miss such users??? As we are running a Penny Auction Site and we know that we can get items at wholesale rate then why can’t we have a separate page for users who don’t want to bid and want to directly purchase the item.

We can have “BUY IT NOW” option for them and they can directly purchase the item. Who knows if we become one of the best selling website in future and users recommend us and it will be our main business. Also, the main benefit is, in single effort, you are promoting two websites.

8 ) Promote your other brands or your own other products from this website. For example, you are running a Movers and Packers service and you can promote it from your penny auction site. May be you’ll get some good customers. After all it pays.

9) Try to accept all types of payments especially PayPal and credit card payments. But make sure to protect yourself from chargeback.

Additional Information:

1. You can have a separate mailing list category wise wherein a user will receive an email if there is any item listed in that category.
2. Many users are amazed that how an Online Penny Auction site earns. If possible explain it in short because if not then a novice user will think that the whole site is a scam offering items for just merely a CENT.
3. Many Online Penny Auction users demand a utility wherein they can check how much the winner has spent on an auction to win it. Because they want to make strategies before placing bids blindly. What you can do is, you can have a page wherein a user can see the winners of the same items and number of bids they used to win it and cost incurred. You can show the user then to win a $1000 item a user has spent 100 bids costing him $50 + winning auction price + shipping charges. This gives a clear picture to the Penny Auction users and creates trust.
4. Almost every user waits for a promotion to come before they purchase a bid package. This is the current ongoing mindset of a penny auction site user. So, always roll out a promotion and make sure you’ll not incur loss by giving heavy discounts because once you roll out a heavy promotion then a user will wait for another heavy promotion and will ignore the small promotions. So, it’s better to mention in the heavy promotion that this is a once in a life time or once in a year or month offer etc…

If you guys have any points that you want it to be added here then I’ll be glad to do so. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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