Swoopo: The Pay-Per-Bid Auction Site Is Dead

Interesting. I would have figured their margins were massive, given the fact that they could collect far more from selling 'bids' than the price of the product.

Then again, unethical companies tend to be run by unethical people. I wouldn't be surprised if nefarious accounting practices or greedy executives ultimately drained the company of all its money.

I really don't get how they failed. The business model was sound (financially if not ethically). What went wrong?

I used to work for a copy-cat that does really well so far. However, their main problem is that the majority of the turnover comes from a hand full of power users.

Most users behave like described here. Pay 10 bucks once, lose them all and never look back again. Attracting customers in the long run is hard for this business model.

Discussed yesterday here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2373262

surprisingly I saw 2 of their competitors advertise on TV last week...so maybe the business model isn't dead just yet