In the 1980s and 1990s many cities had ordinances that prevented people from operating a business from their home. They used zoning ordinances to prevent these things, and often they did them to assist local developers who had built office complexes. Also, many suburban areas didn’t want people working out of their home, delivery trucks coming up to the door, or customers showing up at a residence in using the curbside for parking.Today, most home-based businesses don’t have many visitors, much of their business is done online, and they have meetings at the customer’s location or a local coffee shop. Today, there are far more home-based businesses than there are regular businesses. In fact, the average business is a home-based business these days. This is obviously a trend that will continue, and should be expected.Fewer and fewer cities have such ordinances anymore. Although many suburban cities do require business licenses even if you work out of your home, and there are stiff penalties if you fail to do this. Likewise, many city business license departments will notify your neighbors to make sure it’s okay with them in advance. If one of them objects you may not be issued a business license.Therefore, it makes sense to check with City Hall before starting your home-based business, and discussing it with your local neighbors first so they do not object, if and when they do; a postcard will be sent by mail from the local city hall, giving your neighbors 10 to 15 days to reply, otherwise the business license will be issued.Most cities still have rules about home-based businesses, such as the number of deliveries you are allowed to get per week or the storage of chemicals on the property. But for the most part, most cities understand the new norm and how many people are working out of their home. Please consider all this.

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.

No matter what industry your home-based business is in, chances are that your week is structured in a very similar way to other home-based business owners. As such, it should be relatively easy to plan out your week. You just follow what other successful entrepreneurs have done before you.If you have struggled with time-management this article contains a template that you may want to implement within your own business. It shows you a template about how others who have been successful before you structure their own businesses.Monday is marketing day- The truly successful home-based business entrepreneurs make sure that they put aside time for marketing, public relations and networking. They block out time in their diary to promote their business and look for customers and alliance partners. This puts these business owners at a competitive advantage allowing them to grow their business.Tuesday and Wednesday are product development days- Your business cannot be stagnant. You cannot continuously offer only one product or service. You need to make sure that you are consistently working to further develop your product or service so that you can stay ahead of the pack. Business is competitive. Chances are that others will develop similar products and services to what you offer today so you need to continuously work on maintaining your edge- your differences over your competitors.Thursday and Friday are customer service says- Customer service is vitally important. Unfortunately sometimes you are going to have customers that have issues and you need to make sure that you help them deal with their problems. If you don’t help them adequately the Internet gives aggrieved customers a large mouthpiece where they can express their displeasure. This can do irreparable damage to your business.Saturday morning is the day to manage the books- You need to make sure that you spend an hour or so on a Saturday morning looking after the books (although this can be done at any stage over the weekend.) You need to check your profit and loss and make sure that your cash flow is definitely in the positive.Saturday afternoon and Sunday are days of rest and relaxation- You need to make sure that you leave aside time for family and friends. That way you will be a happier and healthier person.I have outlined a potential timetable for you above. I must mention that you need to make sure that you do not work too many hours on the days that you are working and you need to make sure that you fit in exercise on at least 5 days per week.