Empowr Training – How To Bid Quickly – Bidding Strategies

In this 16 minute video, Neal Walters shows how

Bidding on the same item counts toward closing the loop with a person, but doesn’t count toward meeting your goal of bidding.  Because of that, Neal suggests you rotate between categories, for example, one day bid on Computer Tablets, then Jewelry, then Sporting Goods, and so on.  He also recommends bidding on products you are familiar with.  Like in the old TV game show, “The Price is Right”, it helps when you know the products in a category well, and you know what the price (and shipping) should be for both new and used items.

When displaying products to bid on in the marketplace, make the following selections:

1. First pick a merchandise category
2. Click on the Sort: “Price: lowest first”
3. Click on the checkbox “Only show if ships to the United States” (or whatever your country is
4. Then in the bottom right corner, select the “Items per page” to the max of 200.

Neal warns against bidding on something with an outlandishly high shipping price; just skip over those and don’t bid on them.

He then shows an item, let’s call it a widget, that has a bid price of 6 cents, and “Free Shipping”.  Neal says there are four things that could happen if he bids on it:

1. He might have to buy it for 6 cents – no big deal, that won’t break the bank, will it
2. He can choose to sponsor it.  That means it will go back for auction under his account, and if he sells it for more than 6 cents, he gets 95% of the additional amount, and the original seller will get 5% of the additional amount.
3. He might get outbid by someone else
4. The seller might have a “Reserve Price” on the item above the current bid price of 6 cents.  For example, in the video, the “widget” is actually an amplifier.  More than likely, the seller will have put a reserve price of at least $10 or $20 on it, so he can make some money, and cover the cost of shipping (since he listed the item as “free shipping”).

At 4:41 in the video, Neal mentions that you should be bidding on products and services that you really want; and you can change or increase the bid if you really want to win the auction for that product. However, the Empowr ecosystem requires you to often make dozens or even hundreds of bids (at the higher power levels), and thus you really don’t want to “win” 100 auctions per day, right?

At 4:50 – Neal quotes the Wikipedia definition of the greater fool theory:

The greater fool theory states that the price of an object is determined not by its intrinsic value, but rather by irrational beliefs and expectations of market participants. A price can be justified by a rational buyer under the belief that another party is willing to pay an even higher price.

He also mentions the historical event called “Tulip Mania” or “Tulip Fever” that happened in the Holland in 1637.

You can also look at how many people bid, and how many days are left on the auction before it closes.  This helps you to know if the item is popular, and might help you “guestimate” if someone is likely to outbid you.

At 10:00 he re-iterates that you should bid on products you know.  I.e. you should have an idea of the supply and demand of that product in the world in general, and you should have a good idea of what the winning bid should be.  For example, if you are bidding for a guitar on Empowr, it would be helpful to know what guitars of similar quality sell for at Walmart or a local music store, and what an online site would charge you to ship a guitar to your home.

You can report a seller you lists a product in the improper category.

Neal shows his own statistics, that he must make about 330 bids per day to reach his “daily goal”.  That’s because he is at the Teal Level 2 Power Level.  A beginner, at the lower power levels, might only need to make 10-30 bids per day.

If you don’t know what Empowr is, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neLesq3TFD0&t=1s This video shows some bidding strategies with the Empowr social network. To meet your “daily goals”, you basically have to bid on dozens or even hundreds of marketplace items. This then raises the question of how to bid on all these items to make your goal, without the fear of winning them all and spending all your hard-earned money, or getting a stack of boxes delivered to your front step.