eBay Snipers
 

First off, let me say I have barely ever used eBay over the years. Maybe a dozen or two times. Selling off some old computer parts, and buying Behind the Music DVD's is about it.

That said, is there some reasons to have 5/10/20 'watchers' and not bid until the last possible second, or wait until auction expires and then contact the seller privately?

I would think that this would be frustrating to wait until the last possible second, or run the risk of losing something you want. But I honestly have not done enough of these online auction things to really understand the logic.

When I want something, I just buy it.
:helpme

the watchers should really be called dreamers

I've gotten a TON of great deals using AuctionSniper.com - Just scored a barely used dSLR for about half retail using this service. Auction ended at some 4am which is not the best time to end something like that and for some reason there was no reserve. In the end, it's really is about knowing what you're bidding on and how much you're willing to pay for it.

If you don't get them at your price, it's no big deal. Like you said, if you want something bad enough...just use a Buy It Now.

As a seller, I'd love to be able to know who used one to win something. Doubt ebay gives that info up.

When you're selling stuff, lots of watchers usually brings a higher price in the end.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :thumbsup

Ah ok. I was just curious as I see some items with a fair number of 'watchers' and no bids.

this...when i was selling my iphone it was at 125 dollars till the last 3 seconds, and it jumped up to 370, its the snipers that usually help u get more $$ in the end

If memory serves, it seems like someone bidding in the last seconds actually extends the auction 15 minutes, or an hour or something. I can't remember since I do not play the silly reindeer games.

But IF that is the case, it seems like the last second snipe would make it a worthless enterprise. I could be wrong though. As I said, I really have not used it enough to know, and when I see something I want. I just do the BIN and be done with it.

Nope. There's no lengthening of the auction on eBay.

Buy It Nows are generally retail or discounted retail prices. If the auction is a true auction you stand a chance to walk away with some really hard to beat deals if you're even the slightest bit patient.

Ah ok.

So the eBay sniper hits the auction last minute and gets it for whatever the 'deal' is, and then the auction closes before anyone else can jump in.

Auction sniping is an art. Being able to use the 1-click-bid function at the end of an auction, and by bidding say $100 or $200 over the asking price (of course depending on the value of the item) you will most likely get it and still pay less. Remember, people are cheapos and usually don't bid over the current bid very high. By entering a steep new bid at the very end, they never get a chance to outbid you in return. There are lots of tricks to it and I think it really serves it's purpose. I don't think Ebay auctions get extended by last minute bids, I know other auction sites have that system, but never seen it on Ebay.

i *watch* everything i intend to bid on so it's not accurate to say watchers = dreamers.
besides, how else do potential buyers keep track of what they intend to buy?

strategy wise, i don't like to tip my hand to reveal interest in an item, the fewer bids there are the fewer people think that an item is hot, and the better chance of getting an item at a lower price, therefore i snipe- putting in my bids at the <1 minute mark.

as a seller, i want as many bids on an item as possible, that's why i use a no reserve style sale.

Speaking strictly from a buyer's perspective, sniping and bidding at the very last minute is the best way to keep the price from getting bid up and up too early in the auction. When buying, I always bid at the last few minutes so that I do not tip my hand and bid the price up early, especially if the seller has not appropriately labeled or described the product or mis-spelled the product description, which may mean that other people who would possibly be interested may have overlooked the item.

As a seller, I believe in setting a decent minimum bid so that someone does not luck into my item and get it for peanuts. I currently have seven items up for auction right now on ebay including some old digital video cameras and still cameras, and accessories and luckily I have a bidder for almost all of them, including the higher priced items. I do have 10-13 watchers however for these items, so I suspect- and hope- that in the next 24 hours remaining that the items will be bid up substantially by others who like to snipe. My Canon XL-1 video camera and accessories already has a bid for $850 (my minimum) and my Sony VX-2100 and accessories has a bid for $510. Also selling Canon Digital Rebel, a Speedlight 540 EZ Flash and some other video and audio items. Current total bids for all seven items are nearly $1700, and with snipers, I hope to clear as much as $2000 or more!

speaking of watchers, does anyone know how a seller can see who is watching an item being sold? or is that not possible?

!

I love the Canon XL-1, it was ground breaking back in 2000, with it's stabilizer, it's size, price, mini-dv and everything. Spent many hours with that camera, shooting for among others ABC News. Great times, we covered the re-count election of Bush together, oh - good memories!

I've never seen it, but I'm not positive so don't take my word. As far as I know, you can only see who when they've placed a bid.

hi, ty. i think that is the only way. :thumbsup

Nope.

You can see that you have 'watchers' but you can't see WHO those people are.

It was quite a piece of gear for it's time. I took that camera to shoot porn movies all over North And South America from New Jersey to South Florida to Quebec to Ontario to California to Las Vegas, Cuba and Brazil and a lot of other places in between. And now it's serving me well one more time and hopefully going to net me close to a grand in residual money in the ebay auction.

I foremost loved that you could bring the XL-1 with you into the airplane cabin as a carry on. Larger cameras we always had to check-in, and many ended up with the lens or the lens-locking mechanism broken by tough cargo handling, even though they were marked as "fragile" and in protective plastic boxes. We almost always brought one or two XL-1s just to make sure that we could shoot the minute we walked off the plane. At one point of time the airline record of breaking cameras got so bad we started to ship them overnight with FedEx, very expensive but at least they arrived in working condition. Then American Airlines started to allow for curbside check-in of licensed broadcast TV-cameras and from there on we always flew AA.

But we're hi-jacking the thread, sorry, not intentional. Just good old memories coming back!

The biggest thing that sellers do on Ebay is start their bidding too damn high. I know for me, when I sell something that I know is gonna sell, I start it at .01, that way someone coming along will see it at a penny and make a smaller bid on it thinking they might get lucky, then someone else will come along and do the same thing and again and again. THEN after they're outbid, it's listed in their Ebay page where they'll be reminded of it, ha ha.

If you're trying to sell a $400 item and you start it at $349, nobody is gonna bid on it, but if you start it at a penny, it's gonna get a pile of bids and shoot up. I've learned that selling video game systems like the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 when they first came out.

To comment on the sniping programs, I use esnipe.com which is a beautiful service, which just like all the others out there. Hell, I can make a "bid group" of an item say I wanted an Iphone. I could pick a pile of auctions and put in a $250 bid and what it'll do is bid that $250 on each auction until it wins one, then it'll cancel out the rest of the bids. With tools like that, who wants to place normal bids on items, ha ha.

If you bid before the end of an auction all you are doing is driving the price up.

If I want something, I wait until the last minute and enter the bid that I am prepared to pay, and let ebay autobid up to it. If I win great, If I don't win I acept that it wasn't my day (or maybe was and I was saved from buying crap).

the only way you beat snipers...is to be a sniper.

I myself am an ebay sniper :ak47:


And proud of it! :1orglaugh

what's the best length to set a penny auction at these days? 7 days?

with your system the $349 item will be sold for 300-310 at most.

By doing that you may run the risk of expensive items getting snatched for peanuts I would think. I don't have a ton of experience selling items on ebay but I actually set my video camera & photo gear at pretty high prices ($500 & $850 minimums for the two most expensive items) and I got bids on day two out of seven, and one of those has already been bid up by $10. With 13-15 watchers I hope that the items get bid up higher in the last 20 or so hours remaining.

I don't think a low starting price is a good idea for a high value item, unless you sell a lot of them and effectively self insure (ie the 10% of the time that an item sells under cost is made up by the other 90% being profitable)

Remember there's always a chance, however small, that it will sell at 1 cent or whatever you used as the starting price. I've picked up some $0.99 bargains in the past, I was the only bid.

Been burned many times from snipers,I just buy it now if it's available or bid huge

I would wait the last 40 seconds and just put a sick high bid in if I wanted the item. This way people don't have the time to place higher bids. At one point it became more addictive biding on domains on Ebay then searching for them all day on registers. Finding good names was like hitting the lottery.

When I was selling an item I would list it at the lowest price possible, Ebay has always been about getting good deals or hard to find items.