Where does Quibids get their items? This is a question that a lot of penny auction bidders ask when bidding on Quibids or any other penny auction website. The answer varies site by site. Where penny auction sites get their items is mostly determined by the auction site's sales volume.
Small Volume Sites:
When sites are small (just a few hundred orders a day or less) they will fulfill their products in-house. Most penny auction sites don't have the financial backing to buy products ahead of time and store them as overhead. Usually the site will purchase the auction's product online after the auction is finished. Small volume sites will buy their products at the same sites you do: Amazon, Buy.com, OverStock, Wal-Mart.com, and so on. They shop online to avoid shipping costs. Thus, most new penny auction sites really are losing money. If you buy a $45 video game on a penny auction site for $0.10 cents (lets say $5.00 in bids) and the penny auction site really is losing $39.90 for that sale. However, some sites really do buy their products ahead of time if they find a good deal. Some will shop the Black Friday sales for great discounted products to sell on their penny auction site. One thing that is common among most all penny auction sites is that all of their products really are new.
Large Volume Sites:
Large volume sites like Quibids, BidCactus, Swoopo and others usually will fulfill their products through drop shippers. These sites have thousands and thousands of orders a day. Even if they were to buy all of their products from Amazon it would take a staff of 25 or more working all day to fulfill their products. What is a drop shipper? Drop Shippers are basically the middle man suppliers. Drop Shippers are wholesalers who can offer products at a good price and will ship products to customers. Quibids has multiple drop shippers most likely depending on their products category. Quibids probably has a drop shipper for home goods, electronics, computers, toys and so on. They have to do this because it is hard to find a drop shipper that would have the variety of products that Quibids has to offer. Quibids and any other site using drop shippers usually will negotiate a fee for each product fulfilled by a drop shipper. Now where do these drop shippers get their products? Drop shippers usually will have an overhead of products. They will buy a whole bunch of one product at a wholesale price. However, still some drop shippers still shop the same way you or I do: Amazon, Buy.com, OverStock, Wal-Mart.com, and so on.
