Have you heard about QuiBids’ April video contest?

Matt Carney    QuiBids News     april video contest, huge savings, QuiBids, quibids promotions, unboxing, video contest

April’s almost over and that means our monthly promotion is nearing its end. But don’t worry — you’ve still got plenty of time to enter for the chance to win a brand-new iPad, and achieve worldwide viral video stardom while you’re at it.

This month’s QuiBids promotion is a video unboxing contest, so don’t open your latest win on our site just yet! Save it for when you’ve got some device used for shooting video on hand, as well as a quiet, well-lit room, and a creative idea, so you can make the most of your QuiBids unboxing!

Don’t own a camera that shoots video? We recommend you look here. Or here, here, here, or, if you’re feeling extra fancy, here.

Once you’ve got your camera in hand, you’re ready to get your Steven Spielberg on! Here are four quick ideas to help improve your QuiBids unboxing video, which we’ll be judging on quality and creativity.

1. Spice up your video with a sprig of narrative.
Watching other people open up gifts is usually only fun on Christmas, isn’t it? So maybe the best thing you can do is start the thing off with some character development (introduce us to a bidder with a heart of gold!), or toss in a basic conflict or two (“Oh no! Our router just fell in the laundry machine! How am I supposed to win amazing prizes on QuiBids now?!”). It might also help to toss in a zombie or vampire or two, just to keep things interesting.

2. Got a unique talent or hobby? Put it to use.
YouTube is festering with videos of oddball, irrelevant talent or obsession that otherwise would’ve remained obscure to the general public. Similarly, there’s a reason OK Go is still a relevant band, and that’s because people just get compelled by this stuff.  Do it right, and you might just become a viral video star, too!

3. Write a song!
If this cowboy can write a sing-along about social media, surely somebody out there with an ear for melody and a penchant for rhyming can do the same for a QuiBids unboxing. And please, no dubstep remixes…

4. Cute is good.
Do you spend time aiding conservation efforts by rescuing orphaned baby otters? Then what are you waiting for? Put that cute little critter in your video! QuiBids employees aren’t above irrational but adorable appeals by infant animals.

What am I supposed to do when I’m done with my video?
It’s easy! Just upload it through the video application at our QuiBids Facebook page. It might also behoove you to scan our privacy policy while you’re at it, just to make sure that you’re cool with us sharing your work on the Internet.

QuiBids Canada April auction recap

Matt Carney    QuiBids News, Uncategorized     auction recap, best auctions, big wins, huge savings, quibids Canada

In an unofficial, just-conducted poll of the QuiBids PR office, it was recently determined that Having Fun and Saving Money are the two biggest reasons customers return to QuiBids day after day. You’d think that by now, nearly three years into our existence, we would’ve gotten used to the thrill of celebrating our shoppers’ victories with them, but it honestly never gets old. We could easily get lost scrolling through the throngs of finished auctions, marveling at the massive savings all the time, but then we realize that we’d be slowing up the process and our customers couldn’t shop anymore and we’d be out of business and you’d be out of savings!

So we keep at it, plugging away between vendors and the site to keep saving you money. It’s a fun job for us, and it’s made even more fun when we get to highlight the big wins each month. Here are eight from QuiBids Canada in the month of April — get ready to get jealous!

Item: Zojirushi Supreme 2lb Bread Machine
Price: $0.98
Winner spent: 38 Real Bids
Savings: $236.21
Is there anything quite so satisfying as the aroma of homemade bread in your kitchen? Well, mingle that scent with the knowledge that you saved more than $200 acquiring it, and it’ll smell even sweeter!

Item: Toshiba 24” 1080P LED TV w/DVD
Price: $0.71
Winner spent: 1 Real Bid, 6 Voucher Bids
Savings: $328.68
71 cents paid on a 24-inch television? That breaks down to just about four cents per square inch, which is nearly as cheap as land acquired in the great Oklahoma Land Run.

Item: T-Fal Electric Fondue Pot (+ 1X Gameplay)
Price: $0.28
Winner spent: 3 Real Bids
Savings: $57.91
I was thinking about making a really cheesy joke about this fondue set, but reserving myself is often a gouda exercise in self-control.

Item: Swann Sky Eye RC Helicopter (+ 20 Voucher Bids)
Price: $0.11
Winner spent: 4 Voucher Bids
Savings: $116.88
For the modest price of eleven cents and four free Voucher Bids, user Wyaneb can now survey the skies with his or her nifty new mini-chopper. We played with a few of these things in the QuiBids office last week and they’re about three or four barrels’ worth of fun.

Item: Canon EOS Rebel T3i Camera Kit 
Price: $1.55
Winner spent: 14 Real Bids
Savings: $451.04
Ask anybody in the large, worldwide community of professional and hobbyist photographers, and they’ll tell you it’s a rewarding but expensive habit. Saving this much on a beginner kit is a huge deal — user Nash17 can already get started on buying a unique camera lens to make his or her photos stand out from the rest.

Item: OXO 7-Piece Barware Set (+20 Bids)
Price: $0.08
Winner spent: 2 Voucher Bids
Savings: $64.91
You know in action movies where the bad guy breaks into somebody’s house, and that somebody grabs a knife out of the kitchen set to defend herself? Well, at least she’ll have the satisfaction of knowing she got a high-quality weapon for next to nothing!

Item: Monster Beats by Dre Solo HD Headphones
Price: $0.31
Winner spent: 6 Real Bids
Savings: $223.58
Dr. Dre recently appeared on a track with up-and-coming west coast hip-hop innovator Kendrick Lamar, and it’s awesome. We recommend that user bokchoy4u unbox his or her Beats By Dre headphones and immediately head to the Internet to listen to it.

Item: Samsung 3D Blu-ray Player
Price: $0.36
Winner spent: 14 Real Bids
Savings: $304.23
This person, dman1963, will get to watch 3D films in his living room without breaking a $20 bill. This must be what living in the future feels like.

That’s not all folks! Did you have a big April win that our recap missed? Link us to it in the comments, or email me at matt[dot]carney[at]quibids[dot]com and I’ll add it to the bottom of the post!

QuiBids ranks in top 250 for US websites

Matt Carney    QuiBids News    

Look Ma, we started a website! And people noticed! So many in fact, that we’re all over the Alexa rankings for U.S. retailers, sneaking into the top 250 for US sites! It makes us feel kinda like ol’ Sally Field, honored just to be liked.

While, we’re not an all-powerful gargantuan like Facebook (especially in terms of universal like-age), we’re chugging right along pretty well for a Midwestern startup on its way to its third birthday. (Head over to the About Us page at our website for a little bit more about how we got started, if you’re curious about that.) It’s been an upbeat, sustainable pace that we’ve maintained since our inception, and Alexa, the world’s foremost web information company, has definitely noticed! Last week we finally snuck into the Amazon-owned service’s Top-25-trafficked U.S. shopping sites!

We appear to be hovering along that bubble, since we got supplanted in the 25 spot by H&M this week, which, at 1,039 in global traffic rankings, is just a hair ahead of our 1,176. Nonetheless, we’re currently ranking as the 242nd most-trafficked website in the United States, which is pretty darn exciting for a modest startup lumped into the same broad category as the big boys at Google, Huffington Post, Digg, CBS Sports, Reddit, and so on. Especially when we find ourselves fighting off broadcasted misconceptions from under-informed users on the regular.

Anyhoo, celebrate with us by hitting up one of our soon-to-end auctions and casting a couple of bids! Or by checking in with our company blog to check out the latest updates to the site, which we’re constantly innovating and improving! You’ll want to be in touch with us there over the next couple of weeks and months, as we’ve got a bunch of big improvements that are in their final stages of development!

Enhance your QuiBids experience with social media by liking us on Facebook and following us on Twitter, where we regularly update with tips, strategy, free promotions, and opportunities to win free bids!

QuiBids Canada Featured Auction: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3 Camera with lens

Matt Carney    QuiBids News     camera, Canada, electronics, featured auctions, lens, QuiBids auctions

Everybody’s a photographer these days, huh? At QuiBids we sure think we are, what with updating our fancy Instagram and Flickr accounts on the regular. The fact that we auction off new cameras like they’re salt in the ocean sure helps our cause too.

That brings us to this week’s featured auction in Canada: the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3 Camera, complete with a lens!  Three of the last bunch of these babies have gone for less than a dollar, so your odds of snagging this one for dirt-cheap are pretty optimal.

This auction’s going to heat up on Saturday, so go make good on your Gameplays, scrape together whatever Voucher Bids you can find, and check out some of the Lumix’s specifications below, in the meantime. Oh, and dream sweet dreams of sharp images and running around in a field vest looking like a full-fledged photographer.

Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-G3
This camera offers the benefits of a DSLR interchangeable lens system camera with a point-and-shoot cameras compactness, light weight and simplicity. This reduction in size and weight is possible thanks to advancements in mirror-free viewfinder technology and large DSLR format sensors. This class of Compact System Cameras (CSC) offers a weight and compactness not seen in traditional DSLRs, for greater portability and creative control.

Features:

• 16-megapixel effective recording
• Four Thirds-type Live MOS image sensor (17.3 x 13.0 mm)
• High-def movie mode with stereo sound (up to 1080i resolution)
• 3″ tilt and swivel (460,000 dot) LCD with touchscreen control for intuitive operation
• High-resolution (1,440,000 dot) electronic viewfinder with diopter adjustment
• Full-time live view mode for LCD screen and viewfinder lets you instantly see the effects of exposure and white balance settings
• Built-in dust reduction system to keep image sensor clean
• 23-area autofocus with user-selectable focus point for accurate, high-speed focusing
• Face detection autofocus with face recognition
• Built-in pop-up flash
• Warranty: 1 year

What’s In The Box:

• 14-42mm image stabilizing Panasonic lens
• Rechargeable lithium ion battery
• Battery charger
• Shoulder strap
• USB and audio/video cable
• Software CD-ROM

Delivery cost $16.99 CAD

Return Policy: Within 30 days in the original packaging