Tag: newbies

DealDash Dashboard – Explained

Your DealDash dashboard is a very important part of your DealDash experience. If you’re just getting started it may look a little complicated.

If you go to the main page of your dashboard you will see the most important things right away – the items that you have won that are awaiting payment, your scheduled BidBuddies, and your bookmarked auctions. It’s important to be sure to check in with your dashboard’s home screen so you don’t accidentally forget to pay for an auction and lose the right to purchase the auction that you won.

If you look at the picture above, or on your own DealDash dashboard we will go down the list of items and I will tell you what each one means.

  • Who’s on their limit? – You may win 9 auctions per week. If you’d like to see who has already won their 9 auctions for the week you can pay 1 bid and see the list of “Who’s on their limit”.
  • Public profile – This is the small section where you can choose your avatar and write a quick bio sentence or two about yourself. This avatar and your bio will flash on the screen when you bid so others can see it while you are the highest bidder.
  • Buy bids – Pretty self-explanatory, this is where you can purchase bids.
  • Buy It Now History – This is where you can see what items that you have “BINned” for retail price and received your bids back.
  • Transaction history – This is where you can see the bids that you have bought, received back from BINning, and gotten from participating in social media postings.
  • Bidding history – This is where you can see what you have been spending your bids on.
  • Won auctions – Also pretty self-explanatory, you can see what you have won in the past.
  • My orders – This is where you can see all of the items you have ordered, both from winning and BINning. There will also be tracking numbers with links to track your item when they are available. You will be able to see tracking numbers on most items except lower value gift cards, which are just sent by regular postal mail.
  • Account details – You can see your saved credit cards here.
  • Bookmarked auctions – You can see what auctions that you have bookmarked. You can bookmark an auction by either booking a BidBuddy for it, or clicking the little yellow star in the upper right hand corner.
  • Contact support – This is the last item on your dashboard list. If you click this you will be taken to a form where you submit a support ticket for anything from technical questions, refunds, or enquiring where your item that you ordered is currently located.

 

  So my dear DealDashers, that is your DealDash dashboard, demystified. Pay attention to what you’re doing, check out the auctions and see what you would really like to bid on, try some easier auctions to build up knowledge, and you’ll be winning awesome stuff before you know it! See you on DealDash everyone! Good luck and happy bidding.

Let’s Talk DealDash Strategy

On DealDash what works for you might not work for others. Let’s look at some different strategies for winning auctions

 

The Planner – The planner is someone who does a lot of research on different DealDash auctions. They might decide on an item, and then go through all of the different options on DealDash and patiently wait for their optimal auction to be put up for bid. Or the planner might find the auction that they want, and then throw in a few bids to just see how the auction goes, see who is bidding, and see what the item goes for in the end…And then wait until the next time the auction comes up for bid to actually get serious and use what they learned on the previous auction that they were merely observing. This is a very smart way to play.

The Determined Bidder – The determined bidder is going to win at all costs. They don’t care who is bidding or how many people are still in the auction. They load up their BidBuddies and occasionally come back to see if they have won or if they need to plug more bids into their BidBuddy. They will do this multiple times until they either win or run out of bids. This strategy wastes money and bids in my opinion. It’s much smarter to put bids into your BidBuddy and then check back on the auction occasionally to make sure that if you win the auction you don’t end up paying more in bids + final fee than it would be to just BIN (Buy It Now) the item when you reach your budget limit. When using the BIN option DealDash will when refund all of the bids you used on that item, and you can try again another day.

The Sporadic Bidder – The sporadic bidder is not a good strategy at all in my opinion. The sporadic bidder looks at the front page of auctions and puts in 5 bids here, 5 bids there, jumping around from auction to auction spending hundreds of bids and then wonders why they don’t win any auctions. Occasionally the sporadic bidder will win an auction, but it’s total luck and good timing. The sporadic bidder usually doesn’t stick around DealDash very long since they don’t tend to win many (or any) auctions.

  Of these three strategies the Planner is definitely the best choice. What strategy do you use? Go ahead and test out the strategies –  check out the auctions and see what you would really like to bid on. See you on DealDash everyone! Good luck and happy bidding.

Learn the Language of DealDash

When you first join DealDash it might seem like the bidders are speaking a different language in their bios. Here are some tips to learn the “language of DealDash.”

Bids – While it may seem self-explanatory, bids are the currency of DealDash. Each bid that you spend raises the price of the auction by .01, and whoever is the last bidder gets to buy the auction at the final auction value. If you see someone talking about “saving your bids” or “conserving your bids”, they are just trying to save money.

Jumper – DealDash has a “No Jumper” policy, which means that no one new is allowed to join the auction after the final auction value has reached $5. So a “jumper” is someone who tries to join the auction late in order to save bids. There is sometimes an exception to the No Jumper policy, occasionally DealDash runs a special where there are no jumpers allowed after $3.

Stomper – A Stomper is someone who bids immediately after another person without waiting for the time clock to go down to 1, 2, or 3 seconds. The reason that bidders don’t like Stompers is because when you bid on DealDash you earn “clock time” for every second that you are the highest bidder, and eventually you can turn that clock time into free bids provided by DealDash.

DealDash App – App is short for “application”, and the DealDash App is available on both iTunes for Apple products and the Google Play store for Android devices. The DealDash app helps you monitor your auctions while you are on the go so you don’t have to worry about missing out on any of the action. You can also pay for your auctions on the DealDash App, buy more bids, favorite auctions to look at later, set alerts, and of course bid on items!

BidBuddy – Your best friend in the DealDash world. The BidBuddy is a free service that DealDash provides that will tirelessly bid on auctions for you with as many bids as you load him up with. The BidBuddy takes turns with other BidBuddies that people have set to bid, and bid with about 3 seconds left to go on the clock, so people don’t think that you are “stomping” their bids. You can set your BidBuddy in preparation for the auction to begin so you don’t even have to have your computer on when the auction starts. Of course, if you have the DealDash App you might want to manually wait for the auction to begin so you can scope out your competition before you set your BidBuddy.

So newbie DealDashers, those are just a few helpful hints for your first few times playing on DealDash. Remember to pay attention to the rules, check out the auctions and see what you would really like to bid on, and try some easier auctions to start! See you on DealDash everyone! Good luck and happy bidding.

How Can We Be Better Bidders?

Even if you’re great at something you can always be better. Let’s examine how we bid.

How we can improve bidding with the end result being that next big win at DealDash? Sometimes all you need to do to improve is to take a closer look at your habits.

If you’ve noticed your wins are becoming more few and far between, perhaps it’s time to tighten up your bidding game. Let’s get back to basics.

  • Pay close attention to your competitors. If you’re just throwing bids in any old auction without paying attention to who your competition is you might be throwing away your bids.
  • Speaking of throwing your bids in any old auction, don’t do that! Make sure that you are thinking about the auction before you put any bids in. Do a little research on the item to make sure that this is the item you truly want. In a lot of cases DealDash has similar items up for auction within days of each other.
  • Buy your bids at the best price. You can spend more bids on each auction without hitting the BIN (Buy It Now) price if you buy the bids cheaper to begin with. Try to wait for a great sale on bids and then buy as many as your budget allows.
  • Make sure that you’re using your BidBuddy so that you’re not spending more bids than you need to.
  • If you don’t WIN make sure you BIN!

If you still find yourself not getting many wins maybe it’s time to totally change up your game! If you normally bid at night, bid in the morning. If you normally bid on kitchen stuff bid on toys! Change things around and maybe your luck will change as well.

 

  It takes time and experience to develop bidding skills and strategies. If you take my advice to heart, chances are good that soon you’ll be winning the big prizes and wonder why you were ever having trouble with winning at all. Good luck and happy bidding everyone!

Part 2 of Thinking About Mistakes We Make as Bidders

Today we will continue talking about some common mistakes that bidders make, and how to avoid making them.

On Monday we talked about how bidders make mistakes by not buying bigger bid packs when they are on sale, and also by not setting reasonable and achievable goals for themselves. Today we will continue to examine how we are bidding and  how we can improve bidding with the end result being that next big win at DealDash.

Not thinking ahead – Is a common mistake in DealDash bidding as well as in other aspects of life. Thinking ahead goes hand-in-hand with buying bigger bid packs when they are on sale, but thinking ahead is much more than just that. Thinking ahead means planning and making strategic decisions about when to spend your bids and what to spend them on.

Thinking ahead in DealDash terms means that you carefully decide what auction that you will be bidding on, and then do the math to figure out exactly how many bids that you can spend on that auction to get up to the BIN (Buy It Now) price without going over, and then inputting that amount of bids into your BidBuddy.

The BidBuddy is the best tool to use when you are trying to think ahead – the BidBuddy will effortlessly and tirelessly bid for you, up to the amount of bids that you inputted, and you don’t even have to be at your computer.

Spreading your bids too thin – Another mistake that is frequently seen at DealDash is spreading your bids too thin. Instead of picking one or two auctions and showing them the attention and focus that they deserve a common mistake at DealDash is placing a bid here, there, and everywhere on lots of different auctions and then being disappointed when there is nothing to show for it at the end.

The easiest way to fix this mistake is of course by taking more care and spending more time doing a little research to decide what you truly want to bid on. If you are only halfway interested in a certain auction, why bother throwing a few bids on it? Use those bids on an auction that you are truly interested enough to “go all the way” and Buy It Now (BIN) if you don’t happen to win.

Don’t despair if yourself doing all of the bidding mistakes that I have mentioned in the blogs this week –  it takes time and experience to develop bidding skills and strategies. If you take my advice to heart, chances are good that soon you’ll be winning the big prizes and wonder why you were ever having trouble with bidding mistakes at all. Good luck and happy bidding everyone!