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UPDATE: I just want to clarify my comment about the venue. I think Bido.com is absolutely great and serves a need. .Mobi's are tricky in that it may not be as clear what approach to use when trying to monetize and optimize the domain. This said, a one hour auction may not give a perusing domain investor enough time to make a decision to participate. Other auction websites provide a description piece and several days to research the domain thoroughly before participating (not that it takes several days to make a decision to buy). Also, bids on a listing are healthy and encourage additional bidding. The number of bids on a listing is like a popularity index. The longer the auction, the more likely additional bids may trickle in. Anyway, in my opinion, Bido.com is better suited for the mainstream extensions. This is just my opinion.
First and foremost, of course, thanks for the kind words about Bido.
I would like to point out one small clarification regarding the preview window that Bido auctions have.
While the clock counts down for one hour on the day of the auction, the days that lead up to the auction (actually from the moment the seller lists the auction on Bido) we call the "Preview Time". This is the time that Experts are welcome to leave their commentaries as well as any interested party may place a pre-bid.
These pre-bids that early bidders leave are all automatically placed by the system the moment the clock starts the one hour countdown that day of auction. So when an auction starts, if there were pre-bids, they will all appear in the auction's Bid History. This feature enables people who cannot attend the day of the auction for whatever reason a chance still to win the domain and get their bid heard. To take pre-bidding a step farther, Bido actually gives anyone who wins an auction a 2% credit of the final sale price if it was a pre-bid that won the auction. This is called our Cashback Bonus program. Bido pays for this, not the seller. The idea is to encourage bidding early by prospective parties. So even if you can make it the day of the auction, its beneficial to place your maximum as a pre-bid because if that very pre-bid wins, you save some money. The cool thing about this is that you can add your potential savings onto your maximum bid amount and increase your bid, in turn giving you a better chance of winning.
The other thing that I want to mention is that during pre-bidding, if you place a pre-bid and there is another in the system that already exists for more than your bid amount, you will get a notice and a chance to increase your bid amount at that time when you place it. The way we designed this benefits the pre-bidder as well as the seller. Because, of course, as you mentioned - "bids on a listing are healthy and encourage additional bidding". So we let pre-bidders know. Any bidder will know the status of their bid up till the moment the auction ends, and even during this preview window. We do offer what you pointed out.
I hope the info helps, and appreciate the opportunity to talk about how bidding on Bido works.
