1. When you think of a home-based business, do you have visions of yourself sitting at the breakfast table in your pajamas making money? If you do, then an internet home-based business may be for you. Working from home means no time-clock to punch, no boss over your shoulder, and the ability to control how much you earn. You can have all this and more if you choose to work from home.2. Do you want to have more time with your family? It’s hard to have enough time with your family if you are working 9 to 5. The majority of your waking time is spent away from home and vacations are hurried affairs that leave you more tired than before. If you work from home, you can be there for your family, spend more quality time with them, and plan leisurely vacations.3. Are you passionate about your work? When you awaken in the morning Are you excited about the challenges that your job offers? Or are you dreading the commute, your co-workers, and the overall work environment? Well, working from home, on your computer, will solve all of those problems. You can choose work that’s challenging to you and make your own schedule.4. Working from home can save you time and money. In today’s economy, commuting to work can be very costly. Gas prices are steadily rising and for many families the cost of gas is another bill to add to a growing stack. If you work a long distance from home, then your time with family, friends, and other activities that you enjoy is extremely limited. Everyone wants to be able to enjoy their lives, therefore, you need to strike a balance between your work and home-life. The time is now to consider the option of a home-based internet business.5. Do you have all the money that you need to enjoy life? Not just money to pay your bills and feed your families. I mean money to travel when desired and to engage in other leisure activities such as shopping, eating in fine restaurants, etc. How about if you want to be able to help others? Does your current income allow any of this? If not, then I suggest that you consider adding a home-based business to your sources of income. There are a variety of businesses to be found on the internet. You have to find a business that you can believe in and enjoy promoting. Its that simple. A home-based internet business is inexpensive to start. You can start at your own pace, and eventually be full -time with the business if that’s your heart’s desire. Don’t wait! The time for action is now!

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

This is why I always look for a new home based business opportunity:If I were to ask you to write down, on a piece of paper, a number that would rank as the most important, what would it be? Perhaps your age, a birthday, or the date of a special event might come to mind. For me, the number 9 would be the leader of the pack and it might be at the top of the list for many others as well. As you probably know, nine represents the number of those without work in the U.S. today. More specifically, it amounts to 9.1% unemployed in the current marketplace. That is a staggering number of people looking for a job, and each month about 400,000 more apply for unemployment benefits. Home foreclosures are near an all-time high, and the mood in the country is depressed and confrontational, to say the least.While all this apathy creates a sense of hopelessness and disappointment, it will also provide opportunities for those willing to engage the entrepreneurial spirit with a new home based business opportunity. Many that have been laid off are now realizing this is their chance to fulfill a long awaited dream of owning a business or generating an income in an unconventional way. Working from home has always been a preferred method. The idea that you do not have to commute, punch a time clock, or deal with a surly boss is pretty darn appealing. But, the one thing that your home business will demand is discipline…if you do not set a schedule and stick with it, your business will suffer immeasurably.You can get online and type in “home business” and you will literally come up with thousands of websites that have your eyes rolling up like a cheap shade. It would take you months, if not years, to wade through all the offers. So, I think one of the best ways to narrow the list down is to look for what is relevant in today’s marketplace. Even in a depressed market, people still carry on business activity. Those that can understand and meet the demand will be the ones that find the most success. What has killed more retail businesses than anything else is the overhead new storefronts are saddled with. A home based business eliminates much of the overhead providing you with a better bottom line.A new home based business opportunity with strong training and education will provide you with everything you need to start making money in a short period of time. You can have the best idea in the world, but without the proven tools to implement your plan…it will more often than not fail. Find someone who will help you take the guesswork out of the equation and replaced it with home based profits. It’s now your turn in the driver’s seat.