Many of you are familiar with the standard online auction.  The seller places a item up for auction, he may or may not set a minimum price, and there’s a certain amount of time that the buyer has to place bids.  The highest bid wins the item, and a majority of the time the winning bid is placed within the last few seconds of the auction.

I’ve purchased everything from a MP3 player to borders for bedrooms on sites like this—most of the time you cannot beat the price.

A new player has entered the arena, however.  They’re called Bidray, and though most of the online auction rules are still in play, there are some significant differences.

First, the amounts.

If you’ve ever been in other auctions you know that you pick a maximum amount and then the system will auto bid in increments to up to that maximum bid.  With Bidray that’s different.  Each bid is for 0.01.  Yep—each bid is a penny.  But the trick is that each bid also costs the bidder $1.00.

So, it’s not to your advantage to bid multiple times on an item because of how much it will cost you, but the price of the item on sale will be significantly less than you would get it anywhere else.  That’s why this site is called a “Penny Auction Site.”

Next, shipping.

Shipping is always free!

And then, the time limit.

Sniping is an art-form.  There are programs out there to automatically submit bids at the end of an auction.  There are people that camp out on threads and discuss tactics.  With Bidray, the time is kept in a totally different way.

After each bid, a clock is reset to give someone else a chance to bid again.  The time can be anywhere between 1 and 20 minutes after the last bid, depending on the item, so you don’t have to worry about losing the item at the last second.

Last, charity.

A large portion of the revenue generated from Bidray is sent to the charity of the buyer’s choice.  This is a neat way of giving back.

So, if auctions interest you, or you’d like to see what kinds of things and prices they have, go check out Bidray!