| Definition of Terms | | | Debunking the Myths | | | Proposed Solutions | | | I Like Snipers! | | | Beating the Snipers | | | In conclusion... |
| Benefit | Why sniping is good |
|---|---|
| The lowballer actually hurts the seller. | I believe that all bids help the seller, since each one raises the current bid by at least one increment and in many cases by much more than that. However, lowballers often make this complaint about snipers, while the truth is that lowballers are really the ones who keep prices low by refusing to bid their max. While keeping prices low is not a crime, the lowballers are far more guilty of this than the snipers are. |
| Lowballers force low opening bids. |
I've seen this myself many times. For the same item, one with a high opening bid gets no bids
at all, while the exact same item with a lower opening bid often goes much higher than the
opening bid of the first. I believe that the reason for this is that lowballers are uncomfortable
with placing a high opening bid. They are more than willing to bid the same or more in an ongoing
auction.
For an example, let's follow the bidding of Larry the Lowballer (no relation to Leisure suit Larry), with apologies to the many people I know named Larry. :-) Larry wants a Playstation2. He searches for one, and finds one with an opening bid of $500.00 and no bids yet. Larry doesn't want to initiate a $500.00 bid all by himself, so he looks on. He finds another one that is currently up to $650.00, but had an opening bid of $10.00 and currently has 47 bids. He happily bids $660.00, since that's only pushing the amount up by $10.00. In this example, my belief is that Larry looks at the first item as him bidding the entire $500.00 all by himself in one shot. In the second auction, he looks at it like he's only bidding $10.00. Other people bid the rest of it, so it's not really his money. Of course it IS his money, if he wins, but the psychological ramifications from this are very profound. If a seller opens an item for far less than he is willing to accept, he runs a very big risk. However, Lowballers by their very nature force them to do so. |
| Snipers can actually raise the price a fair amount. | Suppose that you are selling an item and open with a bid of $10.00. I bid an early proxy of $60.00. Days later, just before the end, a sniper enters and decides that she will bid $75.00. In a span of perhaps five seconds, you just made an extra $50.00. Bad news if you're one of those that ends auctions early. :-) |
| Time to ponder the Univserse. | If you are a sniper, and know about an item that you want days in advance, then you have time to really examine the item. Do you really want it? How much do you want to pay for it? You can change your mind over and over again. You have time to e-mail the seller with any questions. You can read the description thoroughly and understand exactly what you are bidding on. With a lowballer style, you risk committing yourself without really knowing what's going on. |
| In and Out Burger (Please don't sue me) | If a bidder wants a certain item, she does a search. If she finds a large number of items, with various
ending times, she may not want to wait 6 days before winning. She wants it now, and is likely to bid on
the item with the quickest end time. By sniping, her transaction moves through the system faster, eases
the burden on eBay and make the whole thing go more efficiently.
This may seem to contradict the benefit above, but that's the beauty of it. Whether you are in a hurry or want to take your time, sniping is your friend. :-) |
| Under the radar. | By sniping, we protect ourselves from nibblers and shill bidders, those who would wear away
our safety margin and take the item away. It's not our fault if they can't or won't place
their True Max bid. We also protect ourselves from enemies who might follow us around just
to take away items or force a higher price. If we only bid in the last 10 seconds, it's
hard for them to search for us and then outbid us.
Odd as it may seem, we even snipe to protect us from ourselves! How is this possible? Suppose you find an item that you want, and decide that your True Max will be $150.00. You need to bid early because you have to go to work, so you give yourself just enough time to bid and then leave home. You bid, but do not take the lead. Your reaction? "Well, maybe $150.00 wasn't really my True Max... Yes, even snipers can sometimes fall victim to this feeling. If we bid with 9 seconds left and do not take the lead, we won't have enough time to outbid ourselves and perhaps spend more than we should. |
| One auction, one bid, one win. | Sniping is perfectly designed for eBay's bidding system, which is 24/7 worldwide. It's impossible to sit at your screen for 10 days, lowballing every time somebody else comes in. Also, it reduces the total number of bids chugging through the system, thereby easing the strain on eBay's servers. |