Reverse Auctions are a way of allowing players to buy items for a few pence, as opposed to the asking price. The aim is to make the lowest unique bid - the person who does that in the allocated time wins the reverse auction and gets the prize for the bid price.
Auctions tend to have bid limits (the number of bids made in each auction) and time limits. Players can usually bid more than once, but it costs a fixed amount to enter each time. Entry is either via online payment or SMS credit depending on the game.
You can take part in reverse auctions online at Bidjam, e-Lotbidder, MegaRaffle and Paddy Power. Prizes include cars, holidays and plasma TVs. Do people win? Latest reverse auction prizes won at Paddy Power include a Sony DVD Camcorder for 88p, a Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman Phone for 81p and a Creative Zen Vision 30GB MP3 Player for 99p. Ayoola O Ayeni from London won a Porsche Boxster from Million21 for £65.46!
Remember if you bid early there's a greater chance that your bid will be repeated by another player, so it won't be unique. Bid late and there's a chance you'll be making non-unique bids and therefore costing you more to play. According to Million21 the most popular bids are round numbers (20p, 100p) followed by numbers ending in 5 (e.g 25p, 75p). The best advice is to look at other results and see where the winners pitch their bids at.
