Do you think you know? I thought I did. But then I discovered that penny auctions come in many different forms. We will look briefly at some of the different forms penny auctions take in this article and then zoom in for a closer look at the most basic and common penny auction.

I have discovered Reverse Auctions, Revel Auctions, Beginner Auctions, Falling Price Auctions, and Ticker Auctions. Then there are Peak Auctions, “Free” Auctions, and Premier Auctions…and still more. And then sometimes two or more of the above may be combined in a particular auction, or, a particular auction may include a unique feature like Scoop-It. It is easy to get confused. In fact I started to write these articles for myself in order to get a basic understanding of the “penny auction” arena. So there will be more articles to cover the other main types.

Now let’s look at the traditional, or basic, penny auction. First you need to get bids to participate. Most auction sites have ways you can get penny auction free bids, or they offer promotions and discounts that can be found on the auction site or in forums and bulletin boards. Do a search for your auction site name and ‘free’ or ‘discounted’ bids. You may come across the term ‘bidPack’. This is just the name given to a number of bids that are sold or auctioned as a package.

Now that you have your bids you are ready to enter an auction. Start with a Beginners' Penny Auction i you can find one. This is one only open for ‘New Bidders’ who have a record of less than 3 wins. This gives you an opportunity to experience bidding without going up against experienced bidders.

When you open the auction site you will usually find a number of auctions ongoing. Each auction appears in a square of your auction page. You can see the item being auctioned, the latest bid price and a countdown timer. As participants bid the price goes up a penny for each bid. Bids do not affect the timer count down until it gets below 20 seconds. Then the timer is reset to 20 seconds each time a bid is placed.

When the timer gets down to approximately 10 seconds it will be highlighted to catch your attention. Watch closely to see how many different bidders are participating. Your chances of wining are usually better if only several bidders are active. I usually don’t start bidding until the timer gets under 5 seconds. At 2 or 3 seconds you are risking the auction being won by someone else because your computer was running slow and/or your Internet speed is not very good. Make sure you do not have programs running in the background on your computer and make your bid no later than with 2 seconds remaining and you should do fine. After several bids you will be able to estimate the timing quite accurately. The winner is the last bidder when the timer hits "0:00"

Here is a good tip. By using some of your penny auction free bids to bid on some additional bidPacks you can continue playing with cheap or free bids.