Christmas Wishes

Ho Ho Hold on Walgreens, today the retailer rolled-out (dusted off?) its Christmas merchandise - a good week and a half before Halloween and a month before Thanksgiving. While excessively early and funny in its own right, Walgreens's jumping of the gun got me thinking about the holiday season, and penny auctions.

This is baby's first Christmas, yes Swoopo was active in the US last Christmas, but there was no BidCactus, no RockyBid, no Bid Rodeo, no Poor Daddy's Penny Auction House, No Auction Squirrel, none of our favorites! The birth of the US penny auction industry really happened this year, meaning I expect to see some fairly interesting and innovative promotions this holiday season.

As a commenter on Penny Auction Insider pointed out some weeks ago, most people play penny auctions (he/we think) because they can't easily afford the retail price of the items they are bidding on and hope to get lucky. During the holiday season the budgets of even middle and upper class people are stretched or broken, with things purchased on credit and material dreams fulfilled. Penny auctions amplify this mentality, especially among the poor and we expect many people to spend their entire holiday budgets on bidpacks, in an attempt to parlay a little into a lot, and most of these people will lose everything in the process.

Note to penny auction sites: If you don't have a "Swoop it now" feature, you should probably start working on that ASAP. The holiday season is when people are really going to want that option.

And when/if you have exciting holiday promotions, I will happily discuss mock or praise them on this blog if you email me at pennyauctinguy1 [at] gmail DOT com. This is your opportunity to think outside the box (many of you for the first time) so do something creative and intelligent and I'll sing your praise. This is also a gentle reminder to stop spamming the comments section.