MadBid Autobid

Autobidding is short for automatic bidding. If you want to win auctions on MadBid.com it is almost mandatory to make use of the autobid feature. Here’s how it’s done.
How to autobid on MadBid

To access the feature click on ‘auto-bid’ on the grey bar at the bottom of your screen. Then click on the View Your Auto-Bids link. From here choose an auction you want to set an autobid on, how many bids you want to place on it, and when within the remaining time you want the bids to be made. You want my advice? Select ‘bid in the last 10 s’ rather than ‘bid at random’. Why? Because you want people to know that you are autobidding. If you are autobidding at random, people will assume you are bidding manually, which is no good.

Once you’ve set your autobid, every time the timer falls below 10 seconds, but before it reaches 0 s, a bid will be placed automatically on your behalf. Cool, huh?
How to tell when others are autobidding

You will want to be able to detect when your fellow bidders are autobidding. Thankfully, it’s easy. Every time the timer is between 10s and 0s they will bid. They will always bid in that space of time. It won’t always be at the same second within that 10 second window. It won’t always be when the timer hits 7 s, for example. It will vary within it. But it will be consistently in the last 10 s, and won’t always be at the last second (which is when a lot of people like to bid manually).
Why autobid

There are lots of reasons to autobid:

It allows you to bid while you are away from your computer. I don’t recommend putting on a massive autobid and going out for the night, as you won’t have any idea who you might be bidding against, but we’ve all done it!
The autobid scares people. There is no way of knowing how big an autobid is. You might only have set a 5 bid autobid, but the other people watching the auction won’t know that. For all they know, you might have set an autobid for 1,000 bids, and if they think that they won’t dare bid against you. Which is a good thing.
It saves you from pressing the bid button a million times a day…hurrah!
Your bids are guaranteed to be placed. If you are manual bidding at the last second, say when the timer is at 1 s, or 2 s or 3 s, you may find that sometimes your bid doesn’t go through. This is because there is a delay in you pressing the button and the instruction to bid reaching the server. If your bid doesn’t get through in time, and no one else bids, then the auction will end. Put an autobid on and your bids will always get there in time. Yay!

Mastered the autobid? Next on your to-learn list: Buying It Now. Got the hang of them both? Well done, you’re well on your way to MadBid fame and glory!

Here’s a short video where I go through on-screen how to set autobids on MadBid. Watch and learn…