The players

Penny auction or its hybrid models have been there for a while but credit crunch has made them an interesting proposition. So far I have seen these models in Germany, UK, Finland, Sweden, US, Korea, Israel, Spain and Austria but I am sure we will see many more of these cropping around all over the world.

Two things that are happening – few legit models and few get rich quick models. In this blog I will not mention any models which I believe are not legitimate.

I don't consider now or in future any site doing ghost bidding, reserve price, running sites across many countries but hiding from their customer the fact or any site that is not transparent.

The Incumbent – www.Swoopo.de also previously known as Telebid took this idea and brought it to the customers in Germany. It was founded in Germany in 2005, Swoopo launched their UK website in December 2007, followed by Spain in May 2008 and the US and Austria in September 2008.

Interesting point about Swoopo is that it runs across the globe same products and hence it’s quite difficult to win products on this platform unless one has a very good strategy and lots of patience. Though Swoopo provides a large variety of products it limits itself to most electronics consumer goods and a portfolio of products which heavily caters to the needs of online gamers.

The Follower – www.MadBid.com started this site in the UK serving only the UK citizens. They copied Swoopo but have tried to differentiate by offering a wide variety of products and high value of products. They are quite small when compared to Swoopo and they only cater to the British people hence its easier to win. It is still to be seen if they grow big enough and how they will be able to manage the growth.

What I like about this site is that they are very transparent and open. I haven’t seen any other site with customer service phone number. Also they are trying to innovate all the time, be it website or products. I love the Ducati that will be under hammer in April.

The Imposter - www.fiksuhuuto.com – It’s a Finnish site and claims to be number one but I think it is not by far (refer Alexa ranking). It has very few visitors. Though it runs auctions in a few countries they don’t seem to be transparent. They do not reveal themselves to the Customers. But its Finland’s biggest and is run on a model also copied from Swoopo.

I am sure there will be many sites to follow as this space is quite big, but there will have to manage between too few customers and too many and how avoid the temptation of self bidding.