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QuiBids: eBay+Casino?

1 points by bsanders ↗ HN
What do you think of the game mechanics & financial model behind QuiBids (quibids.com)?

Here's how it works: (1) you buy a pack of 'bids' for $0.60 each. (2) items are auctioned for a set time-limit* beginning with an initial price of only a few pennies (3) each bid raises the cost by $0.01 (4) the final bidder (when the time runs out) wins!

seems each bid also tacks on ~10 more seconds so an item will hover close to a sale-point as users maneuver to secure the final bid (hence the price keeps going up, the time stretches out, and QuiBids makes more $$$).

Yet scores of folks are already addicted...keen to (essentially) finance someone else's winnings solely because they're drawn by (and feel to a large extent they can influence) the result in their favor.<p>But each bid costs me $0.60, so I could potentially not win a thing!

Meanwhile, QuiBids can afford to give away an iPad for $100 and still score a healthy profit margin:<p>$100 = 10,000 bids = $6000 !! (since each bid spent pays QuiBids $0.60/bid)

This seems insane! It's like eBay, but they're profiting from every incremental bid. Making bids doesn't really* feel like spending money so it's like eBay-merged-with-a-casino.

Seems to me like the HOUSE ALWAYS WINS!

Thoughts?

3 comments

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zbruhnke
I have an idea I am working on that will let sellers get what they are wanting from their items ... this is not like ebay because a company is selling this and making the money, ebay craigslist etc. is about people selling their own items. I have my own reservations about sites like this (beezid and swoopoo are similar) but I suppose it is market driven and if they are in business clearly all people dont feel the same way i do
elliottcarlson
The thing about Dollar Auctions or All-Pay Auctions (neither are really anything new) is that they play on the gamblers mentality by making it a pseudo game. The actual winner, if actually well-invested in to the auction, may end up purchasing the item for $100, plus their portion of the 10k bids so in reality they could really be spending close to retail price on the actual product. That is of course assuming that the actual Dollar Auction is being run fairly and there even is a legitimate winner in the end.

There are various other sites just like this including Swoopo, which reported 28.3 million revenue in 2008.

IMHO it's not necessarily a scam, but certainly plays on the gullibility of the consumers and is indeed a ripoff.

For an interesting article, check out Joshua Stein's attempt at gaming Swoopo programmatically: http://jcs.org/notaweblog/2009/03/06/trying_to_game_swoopo_c...

zipdog
I think they are playing on sunk costs as much $0.60 not feeling like really spending money.

If you've already bid a couple of times on an item, it makes sense to bid a few more at the end.

I can see how it could get addicting, and in that sense play on very similar emotions, etc of a casino. But that's not enough to fall under casino legislation.