Bid Sniping

In an auction the high bid always wins. Additionally, bid sniping services were created to both help people manage bid amounts without placing a bid exposing it to everyone until the last last last possible moment and this helps to prevent bidding wars.

 

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I agree with Krispy's answer Lucy. You can never lose to a snipe program, a snipe program will not know your total bid, it will only bid as high as the snipe is set for, just like a manual bid. Many of us use sniping programs because we can cancel a snipe at any time, unlike a bid.

 

I do not agree that sniping is the only way to go because the bottom line is to determine what the coin will go for and how much you are willing to pay. If you place the bid at the beginning, middle, or end, it is always the high bid that wins. What you need to do is to place your high bid in one time. I have managed to outbid snipers by placing the bid in on the last day sometimes hours before the end of the auction. With the amount of the bid being hidden until someone bids more than you, where is the difference between a bid made an hour before or two seconds before the auction ends?

 

Wow...just wanted to know what program people liked best and I get arguments on "to snipe or not to snipe", what IS a snipe, if sniping is of a benefit, but no answers to my original question.

Except a few PM's, thanks for those and I have what I wanted now.
:yes:

 

The difference is by bidding early you allow time to let other bidder's emotions get involved.

You place $100 early.
Person X bids $70 early. (His original maximum.)
He's disappointed so he tries again, $75
He tries again $80
He tries again $85
Now he's really annoyed and he keeps bidding until he beats you.

If you had bid at the last few seconds he wouldn't have time to do so. And even if you end up winning he has run up the final price. Your ideas about bidding work if everyone had a limit and stuck to it. But we're people and emotions get involved. And giving other bidders more time let's them rethink their maximum bid.

I don't understand why anyone would bid early on eBay. You just allow time to let someone chip away at your maximum.

 

Sniping vs Software

The term "sniping" was used long before there was software to automate it. Many years ago, "sniping" on eBay was done ONLY by people. The notion that sniping is a term strictly applied to software is factually incorrect, and shows an ignorance of the origins of the term. This is not a matter of opinion. "Sniping" means bidding at the very end - automated or not.

Personally, I have successfully sniped manually, and I have also had success using ezsniper.com.

 

For the people who use a bidding service, it's good that there are some who think their "manual snipe" is the only way to go. Like krispy and some others have said, the manual bidder just can't compete with the bidding service the majority of the time.

I used Bidnapper for many years (it doesn't matter who knows it now!) I won about 85% of the auctions in which I participated, and I wasn't overbidding. Someone mentioned that they paid $10 for 55 snipes using one of the bidding services. I was placing 50+ bids every week, and it only cost $43 per year for unlimited use. You do the math!

Using a bidding service has many advantages:

> I'd like to see one of the "manual snipers" enter their last-second bids for a dozen or more auctions ending within a minute or two of one another.

> It also keeps you from getting involved in a "feeding frenzy". Just set the amount you want to bid and forget it.

> For those of you who believe that setting your max bid early is best, as was previously stated, you can't compete against the bidding service when their incrementally higher bid is placed with 1-3 seconds left. Even if you are hovering over the "Submit" button with a higher counterbid, it is too late.

> Another drawback for the early bid is that if you decide to retract your bid, you can only do so by requesting the retraction from the seller. He may or may not agree with you, but be sure, there will be repercussions! If you maintain this practice, you will gain a bad reputation with many sellers. This is never the case when you use a bidding service. You can delete your bid, and the seller won't even know you were interested.

Nope! For the person who participates in dozens of auctions on a weekly, monthly or annual basis, the bidding service is the only way to go. It can pay for itself 10x-100x over in the savings you gain by sniping when no other person knows you're there.

Chris

 

If you want to disclaim something then you also need to show us the facts that disprove what you claim to know.

We are not talking about just one word, "sniping" as you quoted but a concept in the word pair, "bid sniping" and how it is applied to auction bidding, particularly online bidding. Of course the word sniping is much older and it means to shoot from a hidden place. In bid sniping you can only hope your bid snipe is greater than another bid sniper's bid or that a manual bidder hasn't placed a higher manual bid that can still out bid an automated bid snipe. That is all it is, a higher bid that beats a bid snipe. No "manual" bidder can beat the clock when a higher bid snipe is placed because there simply is not enough time left to place your next bid, get confirmation your increment was high enough and be asked to confirm your next bid. It all takes longer than one second to complete that task manually.

Before there was software to bid snipe, there were relentless and expensive bidding wars in online auctions. A lot of people overpaid for things and the others lost a lot of things that shouldn't have been run up in price so high. It was all manual bidding. No one "sniped" anything. Some people claim they don't use sniping software, but that only means they are regular manual bidders.

In the past bidders had to be present and actively (manually) placing bids in live auctions. It was the same on eBay before bid snipe software. A bidder could only place a bid as each increment increased until the time was up. With the advent of bid snipe software, humans can no longer place bids fast enough in the miniscule interval of time between the last second and zero time in the way software now enables bidding, hence you have "bid sniping".

Many years ago as you put it, that is, nearer to the beginnings of eBay, when bidding was done MANUALLY (you said yourself, "ONLY by people", hence bidding, not bid sniping), in those early days, bidding wars occurred regularly between people particularly when internet connections were far more unreliable and slower (think dial-up vs. T3 at the time) people routinely bid frantically in the last minutes against unseen other humans present at their own computers elsewhere, and waited for pages to reload to see if they could bid again and not loose before the time was up. Bid snipe software helped to eliminate the annoyance slow internet connections and the expense of bidding wars or missing a final chance to bid. It also created several benefits of convenience. Bid snipe software in effect created a time frame in the final second that didn't exist before. It was a space where live humans manually bidding could not operate, and this increased those bidders who choose to use bid sniping service, have better odds at winning. The same principal of needing a high bid remained, but it helped to eliminate anyone trying to outbid in the last moments manually or who tried to place the lowest bid early on by bidding far in advance.

Anyone who thinks they have successfully bid sniped manually simply do not understand what they have done in this scenario. They have merely beat a bid sniper with a higher manual bid due to a higher increment than the bid sniping attempt set their high bid amount at. While it may appear you have beaten them in the final second of an auction, in reality, your earlier than the final second bid was simply manually placed at a much higher increment to win the auction. That's not sniping anything, that's a winning bid. If you have beat a bid sniper, you have only done so manually, not via a snipe because you cannot cannot cannot insert a new bid and confirm that last new bid faster than a new bid from a bid sniper can be placed.

 

Actually Duke I did answer your question in my first reply. I am not having an argument with several posters here about whether or not to use bid snipe software but trying to help them understand the difference between a bid snipe and a manual bid placed higher than the increment of the incoming bid snipe by automated service. High bid still wins. Bid snipes only exist in the space of time manually bidding humans can place new bids. Regardless of my lengthy comments, my vague answer in the beginning about keeping which tools I use secret tells no one whether I use bid sniping services or not However, to blatantly declare you don't or won't use any and all tools at your disposal is pretty silly. You have to know when to use the right tool for the right job to get it done correctly. Same applies to bidding in an auction. If there's a lot of competition or you are on a budget, not using bid snipe software is greatly going to limit your ability to win the particular item. If you win, it was either lack of bidders, particularly bid sniping bidders or your earlier bid remained increments higher than the final second's bid sniping bids placed.

 

Duke, I've used http://www.auctionsniper.com/Default.aspx?signout=true for about 6 or 7 years now. Only pay when you win, has an add on that all you have to do is right click on the auction page and the form is prefilled out with the exception of your bid. easy secure and free to try first 3 or 5 snipes.

 

I work with a guy who has his own online snipe service (think he programmed a majority of it within a few days). Says he makes some decent additional income from it. He offered me a free unlimited account once, I should take him up on the offer.

 

By golly, you've convinced me - everyone but you is wrong.

 

i will tell you what i use. since i dont really bid on coins and currency anymore. www.goofbay.com its a free service website. so you never have to pay a dime. it will work with any ebay around the world. all you have to do is register. i have been using them for years and my success rate is quite high. when i found a coin or note i wanted i would bid really high(of course not more than i wanted to pay) they give you the option to set how many seconds before the end of the auction you want them to bid. i am using it right now on a pair of sneakers i want. i wont be home to bid nor will be able to use my phone. so for me its a win/win. plus as i mentioned its FREE!!!!!! they also have a search for mispelled auction names, keyword search not in the title, search for username feedback, seller history, best offers, most popular items. they do it all. oh and did i mention its FREE!!!!!:thumb:

 

So these bid sniping programs do something different than placing a bid in the last seconds? Do they all operate in the same way? What would be the difference between programs besides price?

 

nope they do the same exact thing. problem is when you do it yourself you are at the mercy of many different issues. such as computer lag, slow internet, internet going down completely, power outages. these services take all those worries out of the equation. as far as different services its a personal preference. most charge some type of money or you have to pay for the program. the one i posted is once again totally FREE!!!!

 

All of these you listed could affect whatever service you have as well, since they all require the same thing your computer needs at home. So it's likely not going to happen (as most services are on co-located servers in a data center with a more reliable ISP and perhaps backup power) but the main difference between these services and someone doing it manually by watching an auction is simply, computers are faster than humans, that's what it really boils down to.

 

Goofbay is both useful for bidding and researching histories and sellers, and their feedback but it's a lot of fun too because you have features that allow you to search for misspelled words finding deals that may not turn up in other peoples keyword searches, so items may be seen and bid on by fewer people. The thing about the different snipe services, and their competitive edge, would be the features they offer users and how competitive they are priced for the quality of the service you are using. Really though, most fees from these services are nominal compared to what you are bidding on.

 

Yep! That is what I have been trying to point out the 'manual' defenders... some people just don't like to be told that machines are better (faster) than they are. The only other way they are winning by manual bid is that their manually placed bids are higher than all other bids, be they manual or automated 'bid sniped' bids in the final second of an auction.

 

i agree computers are just faster than us silly humans

 

:dead-horse: