Sniping can be considered to be a very popular yet illusive bidding technique used at eBay and other auctions. Some aficionados live and breathe by this technique and have even written and marketed numerous programs designed to Snipe. To be elementary, Sniping is essentially the art of waiting until the last minute to place a bid on an item.
eBay recommends that in order to ensure success in your bidding, you should bid early and bid the full amount you wish to pay. This may appear to be a good and safe method of bidding, but it may not be the most effective. Why not? Because veteran bidders indicate that bidding early tends to call attention to an item. Once the item has been discovered by other bidders they all jump in and drive up bids for that item. If there are numerous bidders who are bidding early and bidding high for an item, auction mania sets in and drives the price up even more!
That’s where the technique of sniping comes in. Rather than following eBay’s suggestion, snipers refrain from placing their bid until the end of the auction. Snipers feign total disinterest until the very last minute. This avoids drawing attention to the desired auction and helps keep the price down. Then, at the very last moment, snipers place their bid, bidding the full amount they are willing to pay for an item. eBay sends an Outbid Notice email to the previous high bidder, but by the time the message arrives, it’s too late and the auction has ended.
Of course, the technique of sniping is not an iron-clad guarantee that you will win an auction. There may be other snipers out there who are willing to pay more than you! However, sniping is a good way to both help ensure that you place a winning bid (Because it is likely no one else will react to your bid) and to keep the price of the item low during the auction.
If you bid on items that you want and you have the thirst to out-bid any bidder close to the end of an auction, you are a sniper who will literally steal items away from potential bidders. Although this practice is unethical, it will often guarantee victory for the snipers.
All these snipers do is bid $0.01 or $0.02 higher than the next highest bidder near the end of the auction and these snipers will eventually win the items they sniped! If you want to be a sniper, you will have to have:
(1) A very fast modem.
(2) Fast computer with lots of RAM.
(3) The time to sneak up on items and steal them away.
(4) To be aware of when the auction ends!
When the auction is ten minutes before ending, you will have to go that listing and press the reload or refresh button to see if there are any new bidders. You will have to wait until the auction is only a minute before ending and then you make your move by placing a bid that is $0.01 higher than the next highest bidder. For this type of accuracy, you will need good timing or good timing programs that will tell you what eBay’s clock is set at while you are busily pressing the reload button. Of course, you can always check the present eBay time by pressing on the time link in eBay’s page, but that will waste precious seconds and this may end up in your losing the item. These sniping programs are regularly listed in the FEATURED listings area so you may want to check them out if you want these accurate sniping programs.
What can be done to avoid Sniping
Not too much.
All of this is good for the auction bidders, but what about the sellers at auctions. Our goal is to market items and receive fair value for our items and hopefully get bidders into an occasional bidding war. Now that eBay has added the "Watch this item link" bidders are basically book marking these pages to see what the activity will be at a latter date. Advantage Seller, NO!
The only recourse is to place a reserved price on your non Dutch auction items or set an actual dollar value that you are willing to accept.
Although eBay discourages "The Reserve Auctions" the seasoned sellers realize there is an advantage to this choice of marketing. This is the main reason you see so many reserve auctions in many of the categories.
eBay now has the ability for the buyer to place what they will pay for an item.
Say the bid is at $6.00 but the buyer is willing to pay up to $12.00, the buyer
now can tell eBay that they are willing to fight for the bid up to $12.00 and the
program will automatically start bidding for you if any competition arises. This makes
it a little easier to win an auction when a sniper is busy.
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