Today's Look At SFI - Welcome to Astro Auctions
After nearly three years in development, we are delighted today to introduce our new auction platform, ASTRO™!
Astro is based on the popular silent auction model, but we’ve gone much, much further. Indeed, in Astro, we’ve completely reimagined the online auction and built an amazing, totally new kind of auction that we think you’re going to LOVE participating in and marketing to the world.
Join SFI become Part of this AMAZING new Platform.
The quickest way to understand Astro is to compare it to Pricebenders penny auctions. Unlike our penny auctions…
1. You place your bid first, and just one time. Simply place the highest bid you can for as many TCredits that you think will win (i.e. be the highest bid).
2. With the exception of one TCredit required for a processing fee, you can get all your bids back if you don’t win. Yes, when you enter your bid, you’ll choose how many TCredits you want to receive back if you don’t win. In other words, Astro Auctions are essentially risk-free!
3. There’s much more to win with Astro than just the item being auctioned! For each auction you enter (with as little as a single bid), you’ll be entered to win two different jackpots (“Rocket Box” and “Supernova.”). You also get a free entry in our new “Pick-The-Bid” contest. Like the Pricebenders “Pick-The-Price,” your objective is to predict what the winning bid will be. Be the closest and you’ll automatically win 500 Rewardicals! And that’s still not all! For each TCredit you “tip your pilot” (the TCredits you choose not to receive back if you don’t win the auction), you’ll automatically earn at least 10 Rewardicals that you can redeem for VersaPoints, PSAs, CSAs, and more, at the Rewardical.com Exchange. And if all that wasn’t enough, you’re guaranteed to win at least two additional “Constellation Prizes!”
4. Whenever you win an Astro Auction, there’s nothing to pay for, no checkout to go through, etc. You already took care of everything when you placed your bid! So when you win, we simply deliver it to you automatically! For digital items like TCredits and CSAs, they’ll be dropped into your account
instantly. For physical items, they’ll get queued to ship to you ASAP.
5. There are no “bogeymen” in space! That is, unlike Pricebenders penny auctions, you don’t have to worry about being “sniped,” “intimidated,” or “clobbered” by those with the ability to buy as many TCredits as they need to win whenever they want. Rather, everyone simply places their bid before the auction begins. And no one can increase their bid once the auction starts. And even if you don’t wind up being the high bidder, you can get all your TCredits that you bid back (minus the one for the processing fee).
6. Winning Pricebenders penny auctions often required being actively engaged with the auction for hours at a time, watching every bid like a hawk, and bidding at exactly the right times to protect your time and TCredits investment. With Astro, you simply go to the auctions index, place bids for the auctions you wish to participate in, and then return later to view the revealing of the winners. Note: We’ll shoot you an email to let you know when it’s time. Just click the link included in the email, then sit back and enjoy the flight!
7. Astro Auctions has been designed from the ground up to be fully mobile-friendly. With nearly 2 BILLION smartphone users now worldwide, we just exploded the potential customer base for auctions (and all the commissions and overrides that go with it)! And wait ’til you hear about our powerful new Astro Auction gateway we’ve got coming!
8. Because of the nature of penny auctions, it wasn’t feasible for us to offer a wide variety of items to bid on. With the way Astro has been built, however, we mostly don’t have his issue anymore. On the contrary, not only can we offer a wider variety of items, but we also hope to bring in third-party sellers in the future to offer their goods and services, too!
9. Pricebenders penny auctions utilized a small bit of “gamification,” but were, by and large, just standard auctions. With Astro, however, we’re debuting with a free, built-in game (Pick-The-Bid), two other big Rewardicals jackpots for each auction, plus the opportunity to win a plethora of delightful other prizes (our goal is to have over 100 different prizes for each auction)! Pricebenders penny auctions also only had ONE badge. There are going to be numerous fun and collectable Astro badges and badge collections! And there are many more fun touches to come. In short, Astro Auctions are designed to feel like a game with LOTS of fun and excitement for bidders.
Above are some of the most exciting features of Astro, but there’s we’ve got many more goodies in the pipeline. Here is just SOME of what we are working on:
A. A new kind of “junior” auction that can actually verify that only true “juniors” partake.
You see, unlike Pricebenders penny auctions where bidders can buy more and more TCredits during an auction (or circumvent win limits by opening other accounts under different names), we can now verify how many TCredits each participant has at the time of their bid. And since you can only bid once, we can keep out those with large stockpiles of TCredits.
Example: An auction for a silver bullion bar that can only be entered by those with 25 or less TCredits on hand. This will, at the same time, typically assure a great, money-saving price for the winner.
B. Country and/or regional auctions
Like the previous example for “junior” bidders, we will also be exploring Astro Auctions that will be limited to individual countries and/or regions.
C. ECA advertising/sponsorships
We have hundreds of ECAs who are hungry for ways to gain exposure to our hundreds of thousands of Zing Network members for their products and services. Astro Auctions provide the platform for this too! That is, we are developing an auction sponsorship program. Qualified ECAs will be able to sponsor individual auctions and be prominently featured during the 2-minute IN FLIGHT stage and more. Stay tuned for details.
D. A new way to build your team and boost commissions
Astro Auctions are a powerful new online auction hybrid, deserving of similar innovation in its marketing. To that end, we will be coming out with an amazing new affiliate gateway that will allow you to recruit PRMs by offering them FREE participation in an Astro Auction of their choice! Keep in mind that with just their single free bid (via a TCredit that you’ll provide transparently), they’ll have the opportunity to win the item being auctioned, plus the opportunity to win the Rocket Box jackpot, the Supernova jackpot, and Pick The Bid, too! They’re also guaranteed to win at least 10 Rewardicals and at least two additional Constellation Prizes! What a deal, right?! Yes, with Astro Auctions, we’ve got a true game-changer that can flip the switch to an explosion of growth, new revenues, and commissions for every affiliate. Stay tuned.
E. Expanding the product galaxy
Pricebenders penny auctions—for it’s almost-8-year history—has been exclusively TC Direct products. But with Astro Auctions, we now have the ability to incorporate third-party sellers of all kinds. In other words, there’s virtually no limit now to the type of product and service that could be found at Astro!
AN ASTRO AUCTION IN ACTION…
Here’s how to join and win an Astro Auction:
1. Go to the Auction Index.
2. Choose an auction you wish to bid on. Click the BID button.
3. Enter your bid in TCredits.
4. Choose how many of your TCredits you wish to receive Constellation Prizes on (minimum 1). For each TCredit you earmark for said prizes, you’ll automatically receive a minimum of 10 Rewardicals (redeemable for VersaPoints, PSAs, CSAs, PRMs, silver bullion, Bitcoin, gift cards, and more), plus other Constellation Prizes.
5. Enter your free Pick-The-Bid prediction. Be the closest prediction to the auction’s winning bid and you’ll win 500 Rewardicals!
6. When fueling and boarding are completed and the auction is ready to launch, you will receive an email alert.
7. The auction you bid on will now be displayed on the Auction Index with “READY” status. Click the “LAUNCH” button.
8. During the next two minutes, the auction will be “IN FLIGHT” and the top 20 bidders will be revealed one by one in “countdown” fashion. Also during this stage, you’ll find out how many Rewardicals and what other Constellation Prizes you’ve won.
9. At the end of the two minute flight, your auction’s starship will have landed successfully and ALL winners…for the auction itself, for Rocket Box, Supernova, Pick-The-Bid, and Quantum, will be announced, recorded, and prizes queued for immediate delivery.
For complete details, tiebreaker rules, and much more, please refer to the Astro Auction OFFICIAL RULES page.
