Tatarah much?
Over on TheeCakeScraps (via BoingBoing), this guy gives us the rundown on how much profit is likely turned by a single laptop auction on swoopo.com. Going through the mechanics of the site, I can’t help but draw parallels with local baby tatarah.com - only difference being that here “single highest bid” wins over “highest bid” - which is the case on Swoopo.
An auction for a laptop that says on the auction page, and I quote, “Worth up to $1,399.99″ The winning bidder, as stated on the site, placed 2020 bids. That is $2,020!! And the auction page proclaims “Savings: 0%” when it really should read negative! So Swoopo made like $600. BUT WAIT! The auction started at $0.00 and finished at $3,353.85. Now read that again. They were already up $600 from the winners bids alone. The winner sucker still had to pay $3,353.85 because that was the price of the auction. Okay, so Swoopo walks away with a cool $4,000 pure profit. (Like a bad TV commercial) BUT WITH THERE’S MORE! Remember that bids are placed in 15 cent increments. That means that if the auction finished for $3,353.85 you take that divided by $0.15 which equals $22,359 in bids!!!! That brings total profit to $22,359 (bids) + $3,353.85 (auction) -$1,399.99 (retail cost of laptop, probably not their cost) = $24,312.86
You feel lucky today?
Gary @ 06 Oct 2008 :: General, All the news that's fit to print, Good readin' :: No Comments »