Watch out Ebay

Lately, there has been a relative influx of websites which seem to be the ultimate in deals and act as though they are going to threaten ebay's dominance in the online auction site industry. A good example of such a webesite is:

http://bigdeal.com/

Go ahead...click on it...it won't bite you. Now look around. Pretty good deal huh? Seems too good to be true, though, right?

The reason I'm posting this site is that I wanted to express my love for this idea. I promise these deals are real. For example: at the time of writing, someone had just won a brand new Xbox 360 Elite for $88.38...which retail for $300.

The way this site makes it's money is through the bids. Bid, typically, increase by $.01 per bid and have a cost. If bought individually, they are about $1 per bid. While you can buy bids in bulk, at a reduced cost (like 200 for $150)...it's easier to just assume $1 per bid. So on BigDeal's end, they were just paid $8,838 in bids plus the $88.38 the final winner paid for the box, brining them to a grand total of $8,900+ for a $300 toy. As far as I'm concerned, this is an absolutely brilliant business move. Sure it's just legalized gambling, but people can certainly get outstanding deals, as the person who won the Xbox saved, probably $200 (assuming they bid about 20 times)

Posted via email from Jimmy's posterous