I heard about the unbelievable deals that people claimed they got from penny auctions. I was curious about how these auctions worked, so I signed up for a BBB Accredited Penny Auction site with a good reputation called BidCactus ( http://tinyurl.com/BestBargainAuctions ). Apparently, Penny auctions work by having people purchase a bid package. Usually you get anywhere from 100-500 bids in a bid package, and you use up these bids by bidding on an item you want. Everytime someone places a bid on an item, the price of the item goes up by one penny.

Taking a look through the items on BidCactus, I was surprised by how many of them were really expensive products (Sony TV's, New iPhone's, etc.) that were going for really cheap. What you do is place a Bid on the item you want and this increases the bid timer by 10 seconds. To win an item you have to be the last bidder when the timer hits 0.

So my strategy to win a penny auction for a new Apple Ipad 2 was to wait until the timer hit 20 seconds left, and then start placing my bids on it. I waited patiently while the timer counted down, and once it hit that 20 second mark, I started placing my bids. I placed about 15 bids before the timer finally hit zero and I won! I was beyond excited, because the price of the item was only $11. That means, after spending 15 bids and having to purchase the new iPhone 4S, I only had to spend a total of Under $25!

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