Sounds plausible but do you think it would last? I mean how many times would you be willing to lose while you waited to when to get the item you wanted? Now a days, I think, instant satisfaction is what the world is after. Whereas this might be fun I doubt it could sustain itself in the long haul but then again look how far Vegas has come from its humble beginnings.

I think this is a good idea!

I think most people would do it if it were free.<p>What about free entry and having the site supportedby sponsors? They "donate" the product for auction,and get a day of free advertising on your site, aswell as links to their other sites.

Hmmm. . . I thought online lotteries were illegal in the U.S.

Hyenuf,what makes you think this is a lottery. A lottery is concerned when the winner get "Moolah" Hard Cash. Here we are just using a system to get the winner decided amongst 1000 member to give them gift items...!!

There's something a bit similar: an online store called www.woot.com that puts up a single item for sale at a fixed price at midnight, for one day only. Here's an extract from a story about it in the Dallas Observer, at http://www.dallasobserver.com/2004-11-18/news/woot-there-it-is/

"Here's how it works: Woot buys items at drastically reduced or even discontinued prices--but buys just enough to stock them in its Dallas warehouse. At midnight, woot.com features a new item for sale. Now, it isn't just one item Woot's selling. It's "x" number of units of that item--say, 600-some units of one digital watch. And all of the units for the same, are-you-sure-I'm-not-stealing-this price.

"The beauty of the business model is this: Woot never tells the potential buyer how many units remain to be sold that day. Hence the crazed lot of about 10,000 from across the world, the number estimated by Woot that visit the site at midnight Dallas time, when the next day's item is posted ...."

That's a pretty genuine idea. The only problem I see there being is you would have to make the site advertised and used very quickly; and you would have to make the products items that would be widely covetted. Otherwise you would be losing a lot of money.

Well, also, it could result in a lot of discerned individuals that get tired of bidding and never winning.

I haven't used the site myself, but I explored it for ten minutes. It's not as though there's only one winner in their auctions. They put a large number of each days' item up for bid and so there are many winners. Also, they send out "you've been outbid" e-mails so bidders can raise their bids to keep from losing. (They may also have a hidden "maximum bid" that keeps bidders in the game by automatically raising their bid when necessary, up to the bidder's specified limit.)