Today is the start of my mystery auction study. The study is very simple, but at the same time fairly complex. I am trying to get a lot of different information out of this study. I really have no idea how it will turn out. The most important thing that I am going to need to conduct this study is to get a significant amount of buyers to my auctions. The goal is to turn what is currently known as eBay’s Mystery Auctions to my own little competition that I developed from this category of auctions on eBay. Of course I will make a little bit of money as well, but I am already doing that now; it is not my main objective for this study.
I have already developed my auctions, and that took a lot of time and experimenting in itself. There are a lot of obsticals to overcome in order to acheive my goals. I will need a lot of help, and I am going to ask for the help of everyone participating in this study. Wether you are buying from me or just watching over what is going on. The main objective is to have mystery auctions that everyone loves and knows are legitimate. I have a lot of smaller objectives to go along with it but this is my main focus.
Objectives
- Turn these “mystery auctions” into a strategic competition for my customers.
- Offer Scam Proof auctions that everyone will feel comfortable with.
- use this study to see how people respond to the way my auctions are designed.
- Show all the stats, and record everything right here on this blog.
- Come up with a new name other than “mystery auction”.
- Get 100 new buyers that have never heard of a “mystery auction” before.
- Get 100 new buyers that have heard of a “mystery auction” but never bought from one before.
- Get 100 new buyers that have bought from other mystery auctions before.
- Keep 60% of buyers comming back to my Mystery Auctions.
- I will post any new objectives as I go. Im sure there is more I haven’t thought about yet.
So why am I doing this?
There are a number of reasons why I am conducting this study. The number one reason is to form a new type of stretigic competition that will grow into somthing big. I believe that what I have desined is so good that if I can just get the word out, everyone will enjoy participating in my mystery auctions. The main problem is that there are not a lot of smart people in this world. I have had mystery auctions before on another eBay ID, but they were not like these ones. They still sold very well. In the description of my auctions I must say twenty different times what the auction is all about. I cannot tell you how many people buy an envelope for five dollars and think they paid for a $600.00 game system. My point is that there are just so many people out there that are either lazy are just plain dumb.
Then there are people that are smart, and actually read the description. Even still a lot of people don’t understand what is going on. Then there is the next level of people that realize my auctions actually have a strategy to them. You can take these auctions one of three ways. You can take them as somthing totally different then they are, you can take them as a raffle that is just all luck, or if you can get a complete understanding of it you can see that there is a strategy to the auction.
How is there a strategy?
As of right now when this is being wrote I have 5 different auctions running. They range from $5.oo a peice all the way to $75.00. Every auction has a different strategy that allows buyers to have control over what kind of prizes they can win. The actual item that the buyer would get is either an e-book or an envelope. The e-book mystery auctions are much stronger auctions and I will probably end up converting all of the auctions into that format. So what would happen when a buyer purchases from one of my auctions is that they would receive an email from me saying exactly what they have won along with an attachment containing an e-book. The e-book is just a short guide that will tell all of the buyers exactly what prizes are in the auction along with all the details of exactly how you can receive those prizes. The main thing that the e-book contains is the strategy. The strategy is that I give all of the buyers hints to exactly where all of the prizes are located and how to get them. The more e-books or envelopes that a buyer buys the better the hints will get. After a ceartain amount of e-books are bought the buyer will know exactly where every single prize is at. This enables the buyer to possibly get thousands of dollars worth of prizes for a fraction of that. The amount of e-books that must be bought before receiving the exact location of where the prizes are at are not unreasonable either. For the $5.00 mystery auction the buyer must buy a total of 20 e-books. That is $100.00, but they will find out exactly where every single Sony PsP is at, and then they can get all of them for $5.00 a peice.
This may be confusing, or it may be simple to understand. That is half of the strategy. Those that completely understand that this auction can actually make them a lot more money then I will make from it will be very successful. Most don’t understand that. About 90% of all the money that I get for these auctions goes back into the prizes that people are winning. There are a lot of people that just want to buy an e-book or an envelope here and there and try to get lucky. There is nothing wrong with that, ecspecially considering the fact that the odds of them winning are very good. So for some people this may just be a gamble to try and get lucky and win somthing big by spending $5.00. For others this is a strategic competition to get every single prize that I am giving away.
My hope is that this will catch on and everyone will buy enough envelopes to know exactly where everything is at. That will turn a “mystery auction” into a strategic competition. There are several strategies to getting the prizes. Once you know where all the gifts are at, there is no luck involved. If I could, I would tell everyone where the prizes were at right upfront. Obviously that wouldn’t work because then I would only sell the e-books that had prizes, and we would never get anywhere. So in this study I will be documenting everything on this blog. I will keep track of all the e-books sold each day, along with who has won what. I will document what prizes will be given away in each auction. Anyone who sees this blog and wants to participate in my auctions actually has a huge advantage. You will know exactly everything that is going on and who is winning what and what prizes are left and so on.
Like I said before, I am going to need the help of anyone interested. That is the main reason I am using a blog to document this study. Not only will it be interesting for people to see, but it will also be helpful for me. There is so much that I already know about these auctions and forget that others do not. Please feel free to ask any questions, and give any oppinions you would like about this study, and my auctions.
