News & Updates


21
Jan 10

By Popular Opinion: New Win Limits in Effect

Effective immediately, the following win limits are in effect:

  • 2 Wins per Day
  • 7 Wins per Week
  • 20 Wins per Month

Win limits are in place so that as many people as possible can enjoy Bidazzled and have great opportunities to win fantastic prizes.

By request, we have made it possible for people to bid on multiple items and not be restricted by any existing limits.  However, once you win and hit a win limit you are prohibited from placing any further bids on any other auction items and any existing autobidders will not place bids.   So any bids placed before a win limit on an item may not be added to until your win limit drops below the threshold.

Thank you to all for your opinions and suggestions in helping Bidazzled one of the safest and fairest online auction sites on the web.

Please keep suggestions and ideas coming.

Thank you to those for advising us to test 7 per week over 9 per week and for the reason that it is easier to go to 9 than it is to go down to 7.


12
Dec 09

Winners of our 100,000 Bid Contest

Our 100,000th Bid Placement Winner (Winner of 100 Bonus Bids) is:

Cats5Lover, Wilmington, NC

Runner up with bid # 99,999 bids (Winner of 99 Bonus Bids) is:

Gary789, Somerset, KY

Each person lucky enough to place a bid at a 10,000 bid increment wins 50 Bonus Bids

Bid 110,000 = BidRaider, Alexander, Iowa

Bid 120,000 = MyTurnBaby, Jacksonville, Fl

Bid 130,000 = Murph-Bob, Bowling Green, OH

Bid 140,000 = ricanK9, Lancaster, CA

Bid 150,000 = Dawncey, Unicoi, TN


11
Dec 09

Dueling Autobidders Move to 1 Minute

By popular request, we have adjusted the amount of time added to an auction when two autobidders face off.  The new time is 60 seconds.

So when two autobidders face off, all bids will be used immediately until one party is either out of bids or their assigned bid limit is reached.

Let us know how you like it.


8
Dec 09

100,000 Bids Celebration! Winner will receive 100 Bids.

Today Bidazzled will record it’s 100,000 bid party

That’s cause for celebration around here (we are currently over 99,500).

While some sites do 100,000 bids a day, it took us almost six weeks.  Then again, some sites don’t ever get to 100,000 bids.  So to celebrate, the lucky person to place the 100,000 bid will receive 100 Bonus Bids!

The person who places Bid # 999,999 will receive 99 Bonus Bids.

Going Forward

50 Bids to each person who places each 10,000th bid.

So 50 bids to the bidder of 110,000, 120,000, etc.

Thank you all for your support of Bidazzled and The Ruch Foundation for small cell lung cancer.


3
Dec 09

Special – Extra Referral Bonus! No Win limit! More Bids Back!

12 Days of Christmas

Now Through December 13!  We have something special for you!

  • No Limit to the number of times you can Win!
  • Receive 25% of your bids back if you don’t win. (up to 50 bids per auction in the form of Bonus Bids) AND
    • Receive 100% credit of your paid bids towards purchasing the item.
  • 300% Increase in referral bonus.
    • Refer a friend with your unique URL code and receive 15 bids when they sign up. Just substitute your username: URL: www.bidazzled.com/?username example if your username was “bidmaster” you would send your friend the following:: www.bidazzled.com/?bidmaster.
  • Let us Buy it Back! At checkout of most auctions we offer you the following:
    • Pay for the item
    • Sell it back for:
      • Cash
      • For Cash and Bids, or
      • For Bids

Helpful Hints:

  1. Control the Autobidder – they win 70% chance of auctions
  2. Don’t bid too late. Server stops accepting bids at 1.5 seconds. Recommend you bid earlier to ensure it arrives in time.
  3. Don’t place more regular bids than the value of the item. – You can purchase the item from us while deducting the full value of your bid investment.
  4. Pay attention to who is bidding and enter when you think they are close to exiting.
  5. Start small, win lower priced items (less competition) and let us buy them back for bids.  This way you can increase your bid bankroll for less money.

Remember, Bidazzled exists to fund a charity. So while we are not that big…yet, we ship quickly, are USA only and you can relax knowing that your bidding against other people all in a secure environment all while benefiting a great cause.

Thanks and happy bidding.

The Bidazzled Team

Please note:

  • Bonus bids expire in 7 days – so use them while you have them
  • Place 200 regular bids on a $225 item and don’t win. You can purchase the item for $25 and you will receive 50 Bonus Bids.

22
Nov 09

The “2 Second” Rule

Everyone one has seen it “Ended Auction” – maybe you won, maybe you didn’t and then the next thing you know – there is 15 seconds left on the auction.

So there is time for last moment bids to be registered on the server and for those bids to be transmitted back to your computers – the server will stop accepting bids with approximately 1.5 seconds left.

This does not mean that all bids placed before 2 seconds will reach the server in time and it does not mean that the occasional auction may come back to life.   To understand this, it is important to know how countdown timers work.  The countdown timer is a program running on your computer, your computer is also asking for bid updates almost 2x a second from our server.  However, if you go to any auction site and have 3 computers side by side – all will show a slight difference in time.  It is a very small difference but different nonetheless.  The greatest chance for a timing error is if you leave your computer on 1 item for a long period of time and nobody has bid on it till the final seconds.  In the absence of bids in the final 18 seconds that would update your timer – it is possible that the variation from actual time to the time on your screen could be several seconds.  Easiest Fix:  Refresh your Browser Screen.

Other variable may affect the performance and accuracy of your countdown timer.  Heavy load on your CPU (running lots of programs or multiple windows), your browser (Bidazzled works fastest on Firefox), local Internet, hardware and many more.  Please know that everything that can be done to ensure a rapid response from our server is done.  Tests show that 99% of bidders receive updates within 1 second of placing a bid.  If you encounter a lag or it is taking longer for a bid to be received – please refresh your screen.  If the problem is not resolved – stop bidding (we do not want you to waste bids).

Please let us know if you have any questions.


16
Nov 09

Win Limit of 5 per week Goes Into Effect

To ensure everyone has an opportunity to win items we have selected 5 as the maximum number of wins per week.  This goes into effect immediately.

Ideally we would like to start at 3; however our system would negate all prior wins if we were to increase it later on.  So 5 seemed reasonable as it represents just over 2% of the auction items we anticipate having listed.

Things to watch out for.

  1. Any bids placed on auctions beyond 5 wins are forfeited – so please be careful.  If you have won 3 times in a week, you are limited to being the high bidder on 2 additional auctions; however once you are not the high bidder you can place a bid on another auction.  Just understand that if you win that auction – the bids on the other auction that you did not win are forfeited.
  2. Bonus Bids last only7 days.  If you are successful at winning or telling a lot of people about Bidazzled and receive a lot of bonus bids – you may wish to pick your spots at Bidazzled as once 7 days passes – the bonus bids disappear.  It may be best to focus on a few key items.

Best of luck and feedback on the 5 item win limit is appreciated.


15
Nov 09

Bidazzled Extends Live Beta Testing

To ensure the smoothest experience for everyone (new and old customers), we are extending our Live Beta Testing.

With the upgrades to our encryption over the weekend, it was necessary to pause auctions as individuals were not able to purchase bids.  While we are sorry for any inconvenience to those wishing to bid and for those wishing pay for items they ordered – this is a good thing in the long run.  The security of our customers transactions is vital and with the load on our server being unknown in the coming months – it was best to put these processes in place now.

The good news is that this will mean more opportunities for great deals by Live Beta testers over the coming days.

Auctions are expected to resume at 3pm EST on Monday the 16th of November.   As always, please share your concerns and questions with us and we hope to provide you with timely feedback.  Please continue to send your emails to support@bidazzled.com

And yes, we still provide Bonus Bids if you are the first to point out errors or corrections that need to be made on the site.   These are handed out in increments of 5, 10, 15 and 20 bids.

Thank you again for your support and patience.


15
Nov 09

Does Bidazzled Use Bots?

This is an excellent question given the substantial proliferation of bots in online auction sites and the answer is a resounding no.  Bidazzled does not, never has and never will use bots to place bids.   While we much rather talk about all the wonderful things we have planned for Bidazzled, this topic needs addressing.

That question was raised on www.pennyauctionwatch.com today (thank you to “bella”) for bringing it to our attention that Bidazzled may potentially use bots.

A “bot” is a program that places bids with the sole purpose of driving up the price of an auction.  Bots are so common. it is hard to know if a site is using them or not.  So how do we (or any site for that matter) convince people that a site does not use bots?  While we cannot speak for anyone else, here are our reasons:

  1. Bidazzled has been in development for over ten months and the website for over six months.  If we were seeking a to create a site that simply placed bots to drive up the price, we could have had a site up almost 10 months ago, plowed the $40K development costs on top of our existing marketing budget and have dominated the market.   While penny auction bidders may not be aware of this fact, the truth is: a person could have a penny auction site up that is riddled with bots within a day, and could do it for under $100.   We strive to offer much more.
  2. We strive to offer transparency, fairness and an ethical place that people can bid with comfort.  That was the driving force behind Bidazzled.   Bidazzled exists not to make people wealthy but to fund a charity (more on that to follow).
  3. We originally purchased three auction sites only to find out they they were incomplete and full of bots.  After being taken advantage of and misled by numerous developers  to the tune of around eight thousand dollars, we had two versions of Bidazzled commissioned.  The first is going through it’s Live Beta Testing and the other is still 45 days away from completion.
  4. If there is a comprehensive pre-made site in the marketplace that does not use bots, we missed it.   And we looked very very hard.   We conducted extensive searches and in the end made the decision to build a site from the ground up.  The absolute minimum development time (in our opinion) for a basic auction site should be at least 2 months and then another month or so for testing.  Our development time is pushing 7 months on the current site mostly because of it’s advanced features.  This simply means that we are serious about what we are doing and why we are doing it.  If it were about using bots to make money – we would not have invested this heavily in the infrastructure.
  5. The reference made in the Penny Auction Watch regarding a sniper program is just that – an attempt to build a sniper program.   As an auction enthusiast, who wouldn’t want to have a sniper program that you could program to bid for you.   The intent was to build a sniper program (similar in many ways to the dozens of sniper programs that exist for ebay) that allow a bidder to place a bid at a desired time on a variety of auction sites.     These programs exist now and are available openly on the web.   On scriptlance, we were looking for a program that could be built to bid on multiple sites.   Unfortunately, the complexity of having more than one site was too great to operate efficiently and the developer refund the $1,000 escrow  payment on July 17.  We are happy to share proof of that transaction along with correspondence with the programmer to a neutral party.
  6. Timing.  The request for the “sniper program” was made before development work began on Bidazzled.  If the purpose was to create a bot program, it would make little sense to build it before you build the auction site.  As stated earlier, purchasing a site with bots is very simple and inexpensive ; it is illogical to purchase a bot program before you have a site.
  7. Traffic.  Bidazzled is very new, has done very little marketing and currently has more unique visitor traffic than most of the current penny auction sites.  This is a challenging claim to make as you have to be careful at the data involved.   We are only available in America and since we are in beta testing – we have an average of auctions 3-4 days a week and only for part of a day as we test systems.  Even with those few auctions, our unique visitors are high as – word spreads quickly and  last week our numbers were higher than many sites that have been around for quite some time.    So if traffic is high – relative to little to no advertising and only a few sporadic auction sessions – bots would be deflating these numbers.
  8. Ethics.  In late 2008, I lost one of my closest and dearest friends to Lung Cancer.   Watched as  he bravely fought a disease that knows no defeat, and held him as he passed.   Jimmy Ruch’s one continued desire, was to create a Foundation to help people with Small Cell Lung Cancer.   His wish was to  stop the disease from doing to others – what it was doing to him.   So some of his friends and I put some money aside and started to build Bidazzled with the goal of creating a program that would fund his charity – The Jimmy Ruch Fund.  Note, this is a  501C3 charity (as in an actual IRS recognized charity – not some made up name in the veil of a charity).   We are well funded and those that invested own their our respective businesses.   Bidazzled is based on ethics, a good cause, fairness and has been developed for the long haul – not a “pass in the night” organization.
  9. We are happy to let an impartial organization look through our site code at any time for any hint of a bot.
  10. Soon, our first winners start to receive their winnings, we are encouraging and rewarding them to send in a photo and a testimonial of them with their prize.

Hopefully we can put that issue to rest that Bidazzled has not, does not and will never utilize bidding bots.  We are most happy to do whatever we can to put anyone’s concerns at ease on this matter.


14
Nov 09

Paused Auctions – Security is #1

A quick note to keep all updated and explain why we have items on pause.

To ensure a secure environment for all our members we are pausing auctions while some payment processing work is done.  We hope to have this completed as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.  The expectation is for these changes to be made and tested for Sunday afternoon but it may be Monday.  If it does spill over till Monday – we will delay the national launch by a day to give all our early bird Live Beta testers one full day of auctions with minimal competition.

Bidazzled was built to be highly secure from the ground up and utilizes a very high level of encryption and protects every transaction.  These modifications are to prepare Bidazzled for continued security with higher load on the server (in anticipation of greater membership).

Your patience is greatly appreciated.