eBay sniping for the angry snipee
Rhymes with "Kung Fu Fighting... sort of...
They call it eBay sniping. It's one of the worst things that can happen to you if you're an eBay user, in which case eBay sniping is the most powerful tool in the box. You've got your heart set on that special item. You put your bid in early, and watch that item like a gardener watching a delicate orchid. You're kind, attentive, you visit often--and some other bidder breaks your heart by outbidding you by a tiny amount.
You rethink your budget, and decide: I'll go for it. I want this thing. A lot. And I'm not going to let some moron beat me to it. You up your budget a bit, then BAM! Someone else steps in and outbids you. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally you're ahead and it's only a matter of waiting out the auction. But when the auction finally closes.... you realize in horror that you are not the winner. Someone placed a bid in the closing moments of the auction. You've been sniped. eBay sniping has become the state of the art bidding method. Suddenly it's one of the best things that can happen, especially when you realize there are services like eSnipe that can do eBay sniping for you automatically at minimal cost.
Your Bid for Inattention
The ideal way to bid on eBay is not to bid—until it's too late for anyone else to bid after you. To play it down, and ninja that winning bid right under the closing bell. Announcing your presence with an early bid is like asking to be outbid as soon as possible. eBay snipers know better. To be present is to be silent.
eBay sniping remixed
eBay sniping is when someone steps in right before an online auction ends and places a bid at the very last moment. It sometimes appears almost magical, because you might be the current winner of the auction and not even know what happened until you refresh your browser window. Who's doing the most eBay sniping, why do they do it, and should you be eBay sniping yourself? Is there any advantage to bidding the last few minutes or seconds of an eBay auction?
Buy on eBay? Be a Sniper?
Is eBay sniping even ethical? The AuctionWinner guy, who helped pioneer eBay sniping as a service, points it out this way. If you just happened to be browsing through the purse section to get your wife or girlfriend exactly the Coach bag she wanted at just the right price, would you stop yourself from bidding if the auction happened to close in under a minute? No? Then you believe in eBay sniping too. He recommends eSnipe: they've been around since 1999, longer than any other eBay sniping service.