Run your own Penny Auctions: Part 2
In this second of a series of posts about how to setup and run your own penny auction, we will be examining the potential for gaining free marketing and driving traffic to your website.
Social networking is the latest buzz in the Web 2.0 world nowadays and looks set to stay around for some time to come; it is a great idea to capitalize on this. Many Penny Auctions already do, so you’ll have to as well. If you have a lot of ‘friends’ on Facebook or Myspace, why not create a group telling them about the new website you have set up? Perhaps offer them cheaper bid prices if they are among the first X number of people to register with your website. This brings us onto another point to consider when setting up a Penny Auctions website. The critical profit mass. That is the number of people you need to be ready and waiting when you activate the site. After all, if there is only one person that knows about your offer and is waiting, they could potentially win all the prizes for hardly any bids purchased. If this cycle continued, you would probably run out of start up capital very quickly. The solution? Create a buzz.
Run your own Penny Auction: Creating a Buzz
Letting people know about your venture is vital before you launch. The main methods for doing this can be divided into two categories, online and offline marketing. We will be looking at the latter method in another post. When considering online marketing, you also need to choose between traditional ad driven marketing and the newer concept of ‘viral’ marketing. The former will often produce more solid, predictable results at a price. Whilst the latter, is basically free but will usually either fail or become very successful. (99% are probably of minimal affect). Stay tuned for the next Penny Auction post where we look at viral marketing in greater depth and study its implications when thinking about running your own Penny Auctions.