My Experience:
I bought 30 Bids on Swoopo for $20 USD. Then, I proceeded to attempt to win a brand new Aluminum MacBook. I saw a MacBook Auction ending at about 1:00 AM Pacific Time, so I stayed up until that time preparing to bid.
My strategy was to bid at the last second, making sure nobody else was going to bid before I bid. Thus, I could conserve my bids.
However, that didn't really work. I always bid at the last second, but everybody else did too, so then I got smarter and didn't bid for many rounds.
Even so, I kept on losing, because everybody kept on "out-bidding" me.
Eventually, I gave up on that Auction and I went to sleep.
The next Morning, I discovered that the Auction h\still had not ended yet. Instead, the price had went up to around 14.00.
It is important to note now that this Auction was a "Penny Auction", meaning the whenever somebody placed a bid, the price would go up by 1 cent. Therefore, there had been around 1400 bids already, meaning Swoopo had made 3/4 of 1400, which is 1050.
I gave up on that Auction, and only had 8 bids left.
I found another Auction for another MacBook, which was exactly the same.
I ended up spending the rest of my bids on that Auction.
I still kept on watching, and saw the 2nd Auction ending at $2.37.
The first Auction had already attracted many bidders, and still had not ended- eventually, it ended at the price of around $40.
Since then, I have never used Swoopo.
To me, Swoopo seems to be like Gambling, because you are betting on the fat that nobody ill outbid you in the time framd.
As far as I know, I have never heard of anybody winning on Swoopo, leading me to think the site could be a big scam, with Computers inside Swoopo driving the bid up. It could even be only the Computers wining, and nobody has ever won an item on Swoopo, but they still pay for the bids they placed.
I have read few positive impressions of this "pay to bid" site, mostly because people are accustomed to the eBay method of doing things. With discipline, proper understanding and patience, I imagine that there are good deals to be had.
True, but it would take some time to gain these skills. Even then, there is no guarantee you will win.