The dismal economic times have been clear in every aspect of life lately. A Sesame Street Special stated that in today’s economy, two out of three middle class families are at high risk of losing their financial security. Moreover, increases in job loss and income cuts have made families struggle with basic costs like housing, medical care, transportation, food, clothing, and child care. Too often, parents have to make difficult decisions that affect their child’s well-being.All the negative events in the recent years are not in the control of the average family but what most over look is that this is the best time to take control and create the desired financial freedom, through the on-line home based business industry. Now more than ever, the internet is the means to helping families have the time together that they want and deserve.Though businesses are closing down in the United States, the internet continues to expand quickly. As families face the current economic down turn, people are using the computer and the internet to create financial relief and security. Each and every day, all types of people (parents, doctors, teachers, etc.), from all over the world, are deciding to launch an internet-based business. Consider the following 3 Simple Reasons:1) Flexible for Busy Parents-Making money online with a home based business is flexible. Busy parents can work on their business around current commitments; like a full-time or part-time job, etc. Starting an internet business, isn’t an enormous undertaking, it could be part-time business, a weekend business or do on your spare time business. Depending on your personal needs or income goals, you decide how fast or slow you build your business.2) More Web Resources & No Need To Be Tech SavvyThere are many low-cost and free resources now available to new on-line entrepreneurs. Best of all, for busy parents, most of the training or webinars are online, which is accessible in the comfort of home, while the children are playing or tucked in bed at night. The information is often recorded and accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.Also, you don’t need any prior business experience or advanced computer skills. If you can use e-mail and surf the web, then you have the skills to get started. A laptop or a computer and an internet access is all that you need. There are simple step by step systems to follow, which minimizes newbie mistakes and creates a higher success rate. This is crucial for parents who have no time for guess-work or errors.3) Diversify income streamsA mistake that many families make is to only rely on one source of income, like a full-time job. A sudden job layoff could jeopardize a family’s financial security. However, those that make money online help get around these unexpected occurrences because they have created multiple income streams. To put it simply, there are many ways an on-line business can help bring in capital to a family household. It can only get better from here. In the coming years, the internet will offer more resources, more places to connect with colleagues, and most importantly, more ways to create monthly income.Timing is everything! Now is the time to start earning multiple streams of income with an internet home based business. In addition, there are simple, accessible, trainings and support systems for new on-line business owners to use around a limited time schedule. Lastly, starting an on-line home based business certainly has its benefits and can change the path of a family’s financial future.

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

I was browsing Google and some social sites the other day, looking for information on online home-based business, and happened across some negative articles about online business and MLMs. I have been thinking about them ever since, and I decided to write an article or maybe two on this subject. I don’t want to write about the negative aspects of in-home business, but much more on the positive, because there is so much more positive. I want to honestly look at how to succeed in a home based online business.As I stated earlier, I feel this article is more about success in the work from home industry rather than failure. People who succeed, succeed because of specific actions and choices. People who fail, also fail for specific actions and choices. People who seem to continually succeed have habits that they follow everyday, on a consistent basis. Likewise, people who seem to always fail have habits that they follow too.In this article let’s take a look at the habits of successful people as well as the habits of those who seem to fail. There is an old saying that many people like to quote. The sad thing is they quote and do not understand its true meaning. The quote goes something like this and I am sure that you have heard it too. “The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.” This is a very true statement and it really is a good thing. To succeed in business or in life you need to understand why this is a good thing. The reason that the rich keep getting richer, is because they keep doing the things that got them rich in the first place! The same is true of the poor! They keep doing the things that got them poor in the first place!The number one lesson of success is that your must have a willingness within you to change. It really is very simple; just change what you are doing to make money. There is an old saying; if you keep doing what you’ve always done you will always get what you already have. If doing what you have always done could have gotten you rich, you would already be rich. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. So be willing to change.The number two lesson of success is that you must take action! Making a decision to do something is the first step towards success. It amazes me how so many people will talk and talk about doing something different with their lives but never take the first step. Nothing will change in your life until you take action! Remember; if thinking the way you do could get you riches, you would already be rich! It all starts with your thoughts.The third lesson of success is to be consistent! Once you make the decision to change, and once you take that first step, keep going, be consistent! Most people never take the first step because they are afraid of failure. All success is built on failure. We learn from our mistakes and failures. The key is successful people never give up! If you learn anything, then learn this, never give up! Learn from your failures and keeping moving forward.The fourth lesson of success is to find a mentor and a proven system. In the online home based industry you can find both. When you truly find a mentor and a proven system, everything will be in place for you. Common business sense says to follow a proven system that has been proven to work. Why would you want to re-invent the wheel? The smart thing in life is to learn from someone else’s mistakes.Success in an online home based business is a reality. And it is happening for many people who have made the decision to change their lives and who get up each day and work towards that goal. Find a system that is proven and be consistent with it each and every day. That’s what we did and it is working for us. I know it will work for you too if you just follow these steps and you too can have a successful online home based business!