Three mechanisms. Seed-phase free claim for beta. Monthly sealed-bid auction for suburbs. Dutch spot market for leads in un-owned suburbs. Here's the plain-English breakdown.
You only meet one at a time. Which one depends on when you sign up and what you're bidding on.
Three plumbers bid on Mount Eden for the month ahead. Each bid is sealed — nobody sees the others. Here's what happens when the auction clears.
A sealed-bid second-price auction is also called a Vickrey auction — William Vickrey won the Nobel Prize in Economics for proving something useful about it.
In a normal auction, you game the bid. You try to guess what others will pay and shade your bid down to avoid overpaying. The more you under-bid, the more often you lose suburbs you actually wanted.
In a Vickrey auction, the best thing you can do is bid exactly what the suburb is worth to you. Bid less and you lose suburbs you'd have been happy to win. Bid more and you might overpay. Bid honestly and you win exactly the suburbs worth winning, at the price the market actually needed to clear them.
Still unsure? The FAQ page has the full list — these are the ones specific to how the price is set.
No. Bids are sealed until the auction clears. After clearing, you'll see the winning clearing price and how many leads came through last month — but never the full bid ladder. This keeps the format honest and stops bid-stacking games.
You win at $50 — the minimum bid. There's no second bid to beat, so you pay the floor.
Ties are broken by bid time — earliest wins. Both plumbers see the same clearing price, and the loser can rebid at a higher ceiling next month.
One calendar month. On the 1st of the next month, the suburb re-auctions. You can rebid, raise your ceiling, or drop the suburb entirely — your call each cycle.
No. Your bid is your ceiling — the most you'd ever pay. Most plumbers bid the same number every month until their margin on the suburb changes. It's set-and-forget with an override option.
Leads in that suburb flow to the winner. If the winner declines a lead or is too slow to respond, it falls through to the Dutch spot market — so you can still pick up overflow pay-per-lead from your wallet.
Five suburbs, free for the rest of Month 1. The first auction opens next month — you'll get 30 days to plan your bid.
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