Last Minute Auction - An Hour or Less, A Buck or Less
Mike Powell and Juergen Horn came up with an simple idea: gather all auctions on eBay with one dollar or less and with just one hour left to see what kind of bargains they can pick up. When their search resulted in over 30,000 auctions, they decided to capitalize on it. LastMinute Auction was the result and this ReviewMe review is the buzz to kick start it to a mainstream site.
What Is LastMinute Auction?
LastMinuteAuction.com gives consumers a neat new way to hunt for bargains on eBay. The service is completely free to use. The site searches for eBay auctions that ends in one hour and for items that are prices under $1. The items are displayed as a list on the front page. By clicking on the product link, you’ll be directed to the item’s auction on eBay.
The front page shows all the latest auction from every category. You can target your search among 30 categories, from antiques all the way to video games. The site also offers a feature to manage favorite categories and geotargeting for Germany, Britain, Italy, Australia and Spain.
In addition to displaying the current bids, the list shows how many minutes until the auction expires, how many bids have been made and how much shipping and handling cost (more than the bids in almost all cases).
Doesn’t eBay Already Offer This Sort of Search?
You would think so, but in fact they don’t. If you want to search eBay for all auctions that are one dollar or less, you can’t specify time remaining and vice versa. Additionally, you can only browse through one category at a time and even then you’ll have to contend with a large amount of “Featured Items” which are usually way more expensive than a dollar.
A Fantastic Example of an Affiliate Site
LastMinute Auction is a fantastic example of an affiliate site done right. It has all the right ingredients: self-updating content, useful information and perceived value for the end user. The site pretty much runs itself. All its information are supply from eBay. The information is always changing because each auction has only one one hour left. This encourages bargain hunters to check the site often.
The site makes most of its income from the eBay affiliate program. When bargain hunters click on any of the auction links and makes a winning bid or Buy It Now (BIN), LastMinute Auction gets a share of the revenue generated. Supplemental income is made by two banner ads.
eBay addicts will find LastMinute Auction a great resource to check every hour. John Chow dot Com readers wanting to make money online will be adding LastMinute Auction to the “Damn! Why didn’t I think of this?” category.
- Posted in Reviews, The Net
- 56 comments what's your take?
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yeah there’s quite a few e-bay search/listing services out there. could be quite a competitive market.
Reply to this commentWhat a crappy looking website though.
Reply to this commentHopefully they will some geographic search functionality. Most of these less than $1 items have prohibitive shipping costs.
Reply to this commentThat is a great service for us seasoned eBay sellers. eBay doesn’t have the search options they offer.
Reply to this commentThis is really brilliant idea. “Why on earth didn’t I think about it first?” In fact, there are many many breakthrough ideas like that around eBay’s auction site.
In fact, I thought about that already and am making a lot of money with eBay.
I know eBay like my pocket if we talk about selling information products. Zero shipping cost, viral potential and automated income. That’s one of my biggest earners beside paypal.
If you wanna see my progression, I’ve just started a successful blog called Blogadollar.com
John, congrats for your blog. I’d like to get mine at this point of success.
Another great resource though.
Reply to this commentI gotta agree that its not a pretty site. Unless they make it look a whole lot more professional, it won’t be hugely successful. Afterall, ebay is all about handing over money for goods, and nobody likes dealing with seemly-dodgey sites if their money is involved, even if its indirectly. Especially when companies like PayPal send out hordes of emails to their users, informing them about fraud sites that mimic the appearance of popular sites
Reply to this commentI just checked your site…
Reply to this commentIts a good idea but I would still prefer to use ebay directly. I am sure lots of people would too while there may be some that would use their website.
Reply to this commentDefinitely an awesome affiliate site. Well done to the owners.
Reply to this commentYeah, I totally thought of that last year… but figured that usually $1 items had $40.00 shipping. Looks good though!
Reply to this commentYeah I think the shipping expense may be a bit of a problem.
It’ll be interesting to see how many people are willing to cop the shipping cost because they’ve snagged a “bargain”?
Reply to this commentLet’s spam 0.99 auctions! with 100 shipping
I’d like a site with better parametric search like “under 2 bucks” & “under 1 buck shipping”
Reply to this commentI think Last Minute Auction is having problems with their server.
It’s a great idea. It will be interesting to see how many sellers actually sell for a buck.
Reply to this commentShort review John, but I guess there’s not much to be said about this site. Looks like an interesting idea, but the problem, as Terra mentioned, is that many of these penny and 99 cent auctions come with ridiculous shipping rates.
Ink cartridge for a penny = good
Ink cartridge for a penny + $40s/h = not so good
And you’re going to see A LOT more of the latter.
Reply to this commentExcellent point
Reply to this commentToo bad they didn’t think enough of their own idea to put it on a web host that could support a little traffic, eh?
Reply to this commentYeah totally agree - what’s the point of ordering a John Chow review if you’ve not got a server which can cope with the influx of traffic that gets generated.
Reply to this commentMy number one gripe at the moment is bad hosting. It doesn’t take a huge amount of traffic to take down some of these 99.9% uptime guaranteed hosts.
Reply to this commentHow Not To Make Money
Dang! Why didn’t I think of that?
Reply to this commentInteresting site,
Who else thinks the design and layout could do with some work though?
Reply to this commentI agree Colin, the content is all shoved to the left to make room for the ads. And it does look a little bit Dreamweaver 101.
Reply to this commentNot too bad…
As a money making idea, they’d have to be pulling a lot of quantity, no? Is their cut a percentage or flat fee?
Reply to this commentI was thinking the same thing. Ebay pays a fee… about half of the income they generate from the sale. So likely, less than a dollar per auction (assuming a small listing fee and near 0 ending value percentage because of the sub $1 item.)
Reply to this commentIt would be nice if they were to add an RSS feed which could also be monetized.
If they need help with that have them contact me
Reply to this commenttypical one of those ideas that makes you wonder: ” why didn’t I think of this??!”
Reply to this commentI wish I would have thought of that.
Reply to this commentOn a side note what is up with the smile face at the bottom of the page next to your copyright. I tried to click it it does nothing. It’s actually kind of creepy. I don’t know why I notice weird things like that.
It’s a stats tracker.
Reply to this commentWhy don’t you use Google Analytics?
Reply to this commentI am sure he does but like myself, he probably uses more than one site tracker because analytics isn’t complete. There are things other trackers can do that analytics can not
Reply to this commentThe person that commented on the rss feed should have kept that to yourself and marketed it.
Reply to this commentI don’t mind the design but on my wide screen it is leaving a big gap on the right hand side. But otherwise, it it had been centred on the page, I don’t really mind it. Good idea btw. Like others here, wish I had come up with the idea!
Reply to this commentGrrr…awesome idea, and they cater for the international market too (though a printer for $1, less than 50p, must be worth having, n’est pas?)
Reply to this commentI actually thought of something similar, not long ago.
Its about finding cheap bargains on domains.
http://bargainhunter.linklaunder.com/
The system is still in alpha, but it works, and I have bought some cheap PR6, lots of PR5 and one single PR7 domain.
Reply to this commentis that data real?
Reply to this commenti mean, is that data verified?
I think it’s usefull!
Reply to this commentIt’s hard to say whether this will do better as a website service or if they should have made it a shareware program..they do note on their “FAQ” about the shipping issues that can happen with $1 items…as for site design, it’s basic, but then again sites like Google and Ebay aren’t exactly cutting edge in terms of their look..simplicity can work for search style sites…
Reply to this commentIts been up for a while. I think it will take off though
Reply to this commentI’ve known about this site for what seems to be nearly 2 years now and use it now and again. I agree, it is a great use of an affiliate and I’m sure they make bank from it. Month in and out eBay’s affiliate program is one of my biggest earners.
Reply to this commentGenius! I wish I thought of that
Reply to this commentyeah is a good idea relies on a large amount of traffic to make some good money as I could imagine the commisions would be very low.
Reply to this commentI’m sure they make their money (for the most part) on new ebay user sign-ups who see something they want for cheap and sign-up for the first time to get it. The payout on new sign-ups who do a BIN or win an auction is like $25! That could add up QUICK.
Reply to this commentAgain, another really smart idea!
Reply to this commentIt is good idea but it won’t make good money because we know it is hard to get new signup with ebay and comission from $1 or less item? Priceless.
and site is not ready for JohnChow Review..
Reply to this commentThe design may not be great, but I really like the idea behind it…
Reply to this commentSmart idea
Reply to this commentSimple idea. Great idea.
Reply to this commentyes…absolutely simple and great idea…
Reply to this commentThis looks interesting I’ll definitely give it a try!
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Reply to this commentThe first 30 to subscribe to my blog and to leave a comment on the last post will enter a draft to pick 6 links that will stay in my blogroll for 6 months!
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Reply to this commentThe first 30 to subscribe to my blog and to leave a comment on the last post will enter a draft to pick 6 links that will stay in my blogroll for 6 months!
DON’T LOSE THIS OPORTUNITY!
Also, in the following weeks our shop will be online!
Reply to this commentGud Luck Jorge…
Reply to this commentInteresting, do they filter out the auctions with min bids.
Reply to this commentI don’t know why e-Bay don’t actually do this themselves as it’s a great idea - especially if you could put in multiple cost parameters - $1, $5, etc.
Perhaps they’re happy to sit back and see how successful sites like these are before they create their own version?
Last Minute Auction is a great idea but the design makes it look very amateurish which could potentially put people off from using it.
Reply to this commentI think this site is very useful and interesting to look at!
Reply to this comment1. Surprising that eBay don’t have this function.
2. That said, this is perfect for people who want to look at bargains in general and an EXCELLENT example of using the eBay affiliate program.
Awesome idea.
Reply to this comment