After much thought, consideration, and feedback from our users, we've decided to raise our bid prices to 40¢ each. This wasn't an easy decision to make, as part of our differentiation has been based on our insanely low bid prices, and our customers have come to love us for that. But while you like the low prices, you tend not to like auctions going on for hours. So, we've decided on a compromise: 40¢ bids, which still lead the industry as cheap bid prices, but which will also speed up our auctions. Here are additional reasons why we made the change:
1. We want to offer nail biter auctions (ie, no auto bids allowed). We can't offer nail biter auctions with 10¢ bid prices -- at 10¢ per bid, and 4 bids per minute, it would take 2 hours for BidBlink to break even on a $50 gift card.
2. In general, we've gotten feedback from our customers that our auctions are too slow paced.
3. We're somewhat happy with our products, but we want to add a range of some higher priced items as well. More $100 gift cards, and starting to mix in some $200 gift cards. We definitely want to keep the 25 and even 10 dollar gift cards in there for beginners and others who don't want to risk as much money. It's hard to offer $200 products with 10¢ bids because in order to recoup the cost of the item, the auction would have to go on for a really long time.
As you can see, all three points are related. At 10¢ per bid, auctions just take too long. So by changing to 40¢ bids, these things will happen:
1. Auctions end quicker. Bids cost 4x each, but there will be 4x fewer bids placed. You will still be bidding the same amount of money per product, but you'll be able to do it over a shorter period of time, making the auctions more exciting.
2. Your ability to get great deals on gift cards remains the same. The price per bid is 4x on each bid, but you'll need to place 4 times fewer bids to win. In other words, the value of bids you'll place remains the same. We're very confident the average savings % will stay the same!
3. We'll finally be able to offer nail biter auctions (on some, not all, auctions). We've been asked for this feature for a long time and think it really opens up the playing field for everyone to have a more fair shot to win. Of course, we'll still offer standard auctions with auto bid enabled as well.
4. We'd remove the 5x war feature in favor of a "1x war".
5. We'd also implement flat 40¢ bid pricing across the board for all bid pack sizes, instead of the 10-15¢ bid pricing model we have today.
6. We'd still of course offer Buy it Now, with a 40¢ discount per bid placed. This, combined with flat bid pricing, is a nice feature for those of you who don't like to purchase the biggest bid pack.
All in all, the great deals you're current getting will stay the same, but will be faster-paced and more exciting, there will be nail biters, and we'll throw in some bigger auctions as well.
If you already had an account and bids with us, we have automatically converted your bids over to the new bids valued at 40¢.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us!
