The five bidding strategies of eBay

What are the different bidding strategies on eBay?

Top : eBay : General : Bidding Strategies

In my time on eBay, I have identified five different basic bidding stratagies that people use to win items. eBay uer terrythetroll defines three bidding strategies. His webpage can be found at

http://www.geocities.com/stevesheriw/bid.htm

Our main difference is that I split one of his stratgies into three different ones. These three are basically the same, but I feel that there is a semantic difference between each of them that deserves to be identified as a different strategy.

Terry has done a good job of discussing the advantages and disadvantages of these (the three that I split have much the same), so I'll just define them here. First, I begin with the two broad philosophies from which the five strategies are derived.

The Lowballing Philosophy

Lowballing is the act of bidding a very low amount on each auction, often just enough to barely take the lead. This is the way that many live, or Going Going Gone, auctions work, and people often bring this theory with them onto eBay. The fundamental principle of lowballing is don't bid until somebody else does.

The Proxy Bidding Philosophy

Proxy Bidding is the act of entering one bid in the course of the auction. The amount is called your True Max Bid. This amount is so high that you know for certain that you would never, ever bid more for this item no matter what. eBay takes over for you after you bid and uses only enough of your proxy to lead and eventually win the auction. The fundamental principle of Proxy Bidding is bid once, bid your max and don't let your bid affect or be affected by anybody else.

This leads us to the five strategies. Here they are, in what I believe to be ascending order of effectiveness. That is, the least effective strategy is at the top, while the most effective is at the bottom. Lowballing manifests itself in the first three stratagies on top. Proxy Bidding manifests itself in the final two strategies on the bottom.

Lowballing	Lowballing is at its most fundamental form in the strategy of pure lowballing. Lowballers prefer to bid the lowest that they can and still take the lead. They will often bid the minimum over and over again, or just over it, until they take the lead or until they realize that they cannot bid more. Lowballers hope to avoid paying a high price for the item.
Nibbling, aka snipping and chipping	Nibbling is almost exactly like pure lowballing with one important difference. A pure lowballer will often exercise some judgement before bidding. A nibbler, however, often gets caught up in the emotional excitement of the bidding process itself. No longer is it about the item itself, but about simply taking the lead. For many nibblers, the bidding no longer represents real money, but instead is just a meaningless number that is to be increased without consequences. In the heat of battle, all caution is thrown to the wind and the only thing that matters is to enter a higher number than the other guy. When seeking to take the lead for an item, a nibbler will bid in the same way as a lowballer, but they exercise no judgement. They do not take the time to decide if they've bid too much. They will bid in little bits, but will bid continuously, and absolutely will not stop bidding up, no matter the cost, until one of three things happen. The nibbler takes the lead. The clock runs out and the nibbler loses. Eventually, the bid becomes so high that even the nibbler realizes "Oh, my God. I can't believe I bid that much", and stops. Often, this realization comes after taking the lead or winning the auction. Many retractions and NPBs have their origins with this style of bidding.
Halfballing For the record, even though I coined this term, I really hate it, so if anybody has a better name, please let me know!	Halfballing is very similar to pure lowballing with one main difference. Instead of bidding the lowest possible, or perhaps in small amounts of $5.00 or $10.00, a halfballer bids in large chunks. They will look at the item, make a guess where the lead bidder's proxy is, then bid an amount comfortably over that. The halfballer is confident that this bid will give them the lead "for now". If outbid, they will bid another big chunk over the estimated proxy of the leader. Halfballing is almost a bridge between basic lowballing and proxy bidding. The bids approach a True Max, but not quite. They're not bidding just enough to take the lead, but enough that they hope it will give them the lead for the rest of the auction. However, their bids are not necessarily the highest they will go. I myself used to be a halfballer before I figured out proxy bidding and sniping on my own.
Proxy Bidding	Pure Proxy Bidding is the method most recommended by eBay, although they tolerate the other 4. Proxy Bidding is simply the act of bidding your Max Bid one time and one time only. The key to Proxy Bidding is determing your True Max Bid. This is an amount so high that you will know for certain that you would never, ever bid more for the item no matter what. I myself often proxy bid if I can't be at a computer when an auction ends.
Sniping	Sniping is so well-defined on my page and elsewhere that I won't bother going into much detail. :-) Suffice it to say that sniping is exactly like proxy bidding, except that you enter your True Max Bid so close to the end of the auction that nobody else can react to your bid or enter another bid based on your own.

So, which is the best one?

Well, I obviously think sniping is the best. :-) However, some people are simply not comfortable with it. each style has its advantages and disadvantages, and there is no one strategy that can guarantee a win every time, except for possibly bidding an impossibly high amount on every auction, but even then, if you run up against somebody else doing the same thing, you're in trouble.

Despite my huge web page on sniping, I basically have a live and let live policy. I'll give advice about bidding, but in the end I'm perfectly happy to let people bid any way they want, and hope that they are content to allow me the same privilege. While I believe that some strategies are better than others, no strategy is really wrong.

Please note that my happy-go-lucky attitude stops cold at shill bidding, bid shielding, auction stalking, enemy bidding and nuclear bidding. These tactics are against eBay's rules, and thus are not listed here as valid bidding strategies.