It’s close to midnight and madness is lurking in the dark: Instead of watching TV or sleeping, 10000 devoted wooters are getting ready to make a “woot”: At 12 am sharp (Central Time) woot.com will feature a new item for sale – until sold out or 11:59 pm the next day.

Experienced wooters know that depending on the attractiveness of the item, they have to be quick. The first to order will be rewarded with the honorary title: “first sucker” and the “speed to first woot” will also be on display. If that’s not enough of an incentive: articles sell for about 1/3 of their retail price – that’s what you call a bargain.

Woot.com started in 2004 and was founded by Matt Rutledge, a Dallas based consumer electronics wholesaler. The name is mix of “Wow” and “Loot” – thanks to Rutledge’s heritage as an avid Everquest gamer.

Woot is truly no frills: no customer service is offered. If you dislike an item – sell it on ebay, defective items: call the manufacturer, if you return it to woot nevertheless, the return freight is at you expense. But there is a huge community of wooters who voice their opinion in the forum. Customers are encouraged to praise or decry woot or the product they bought. This provides the site with a lot of credibility. And it’s also fun to read, some of the stuff posted is just plain weird.

One of my favorites is the woot’s  “bag o’ crap” : it contains “random crap” (hence the name) and costs $ 1.00 per item. Here you can find the statistics of the last “bag o’ crap” sale – it’s impressive!

Although woot states that they are shooting for profitability by 2043, they are  already making money: Turnover in 2005 amounted to $ 10million and growth is said to be exponential. Woot also makes money from attracting sponsors to its websites.

The successful concept has been expanded to other areas as well, sometimes with slight differences in the concept: In addition to woot.com, there is shirt.woot.com (doesn`t sell “leftovers” but original designs) and wine.woot.com (sells one wine per week). And the community of woot.com lovers is eagerly waiting for new offsprings.