Review & Guide to Swoopo.Com - an Auction Website

Swoopo? Upon typing into your browser http://www.swoopo.com you are sent to the home page of what would appear to be a generic auction website boasting a few highlighted items. You may see an auction for a Nintendo Wii listed for under $20 ending in less than 10 seconds! Is this website nuts? How would they net any profit? As you watch the count down timer approach zero, you see it pop back up to 15 seconds. You also realize the $20 bid is now $20.15. This vicious cycle of time re-sets and bidding will ensue until no bids are made and the counter hits zero.

How it Works - For a user to bid on Swoopo, they must first pre-purchase their bids. They come at a price of $0.75 a pop. On a given item auction, users may place one of their bids and the auction price of the item will increase by $0.15, or, in the case of a penny auction, increase by $0.01. Once an additional bid is tacked to an item, the timer on the item will increase up to a maximum of 20 seconds. However, once an item reaches the final seconds of an auction, the timer will max out at 10 or 15 seconds no matter how many bids are made in the final time frame (though, this does imply that an item could be in its 'last 10 seconds' for over 24 hours).

Swoopo Rakes it in - but does its Users? Swoopo is indeed, for its owners, a simple profit-machine which nearly always will generate revenue. So long as the winning bid on a given item is one-sixth its retail price, Swoopo will net a profit.

The calculation is simple: Say an item costs $1050 retail, and bidding will end at $175. Every time an item is bid on at Swoopo the price of the auction increases by $0.15. Dividing $175 by $0.15 means 1167 bids were made. Each of these bids cost a user $0.75. This means Swoopo will receive 1167 x $0.75 from bids ($875), and $175 from the user who won the auction.

This calculation, however, assumes Swoopo sells the item for 1/6 retail price. This is rarely the case as items typically will almost always surpass or come close to 50% retail. Swoopo has in the past even sold Cash as an auction item, where users would bid on a lump sum of money.

For a user, the benefits of Swoopo are questionable. Certainly, some users will get off lucky, only making a few bids at an item and snagging it at well under retail price. Unfortunately, the vast majority of bidders will end up losing an item, with some using upwards of a few hundred bids. Even in the case that a user wins an item a savings may not have been had. After totaling the cost of bids, the cost of the final auction price, and the cost of shipping the item, some bidders end up spending more on the item than if they walked into their local Best Buy or Game Stop and purchased it on the spot.

Though I have never "Swoopo'd " personally, I do personally know friends who have, and I would like to give a word of advice to readers: Friends don't let friends Swoopo. Though there are deals to be had, the only people I see really raking in the big bucks are the owners of Swoopo: Entertainment Shopping EG.