Swoopo: Selling items for more and less than they're worth, at the same time(economist.com)
economist.com
Swoopo: Selling items for more and less than they're worth, at the same time
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/11/play_to_lose
7 comments
In Indonesia, a 3rd world country not known for its internet, there are 13 similar sites already.
The speaker for http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/091202.html said that an interesting fraction of computer crime originated in Indonesia. It's not the US, Russia, China, the Baltics, or Korea, but ....
... Indonesia, Turkey, Vietnam, and Romania. At $work, that's where easily 90% of our fraud comes from.
why are they tracking the # of page views and not the # of uniques?
There types of sites are very popular in Finland, there have been like 10 services coming after the first one. And it's very good business, even for a such little market as Finland.
It's pretty easy to create bots for these type of sites. Couple of my friends created bot and got something like 30k from the process. Of course the sites try to limit the usage of bots.
It's pretty easy to create bots for these type of sites. Couple of my friends created bot and got something like 30k from the process. Of course the sites try to limit the usage of bots.
I remember seeing a penny auction for an iMac sell for 236 dollars. At .60 a bid, that's $14,160 in revenue, or 12k profit. Absolute insanity. That being said, I think they've hit a critical mass. What will probably end up happening is that those that buy bids realize that they're buying overpriced lotto tickets, and bore of the game. But there will always be more fools to the fire.
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eBay + gambling = Swoopo like services :)
I registered an account to see what else is visible in the bid window. The interesting part for me was their "Tiered packages" that takes advantage of customers by playing off their assumptions that buying more bids at one time would be cheaper. If you do the math, no matter how much you buy at one time bids are always $.60 each.
This is the old "dollar store" model of business. Tempt customers in with insane bargains, and they'll thing everything is a bargain even if it isn't.
It's not like that. It's just a store where if you get lucky, you get it for a dollar, but it could take months to get lucky. A dollar store is not a gamble, other than gambling the item you bought is worth slightly more than in another store.
http://www.pennyauctiontraffic.com/