How To Stop Ebay Auction Sniping

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Presented by Daniel Toriola

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How To Stop Ebay Auction Sniping.
By Kirsten Hawkins

Every day, hapless bidders get beaten to the punch by auction snipers who jump in at the last
minute. I know how annoying it can be, as I once had it happen to me three times in a row on the same
item! The thing is that the only people who can help the poor bidders are us, the sellers.

The Problem.

Bidders will bid on an item and then wait for days until it finishes, only to have someone else outbid
them at the last minute. In a traditional auction at a real auction house, this isn’t a problem at all, as the
auction keeps going until everyone has bid as much as they want to, and the auctioneer double-checks
with the classic phrase “going, going, gone”.

The problem on eBay is caused by the fixed length of time that eBay’s auctions last, and the fact that
they aren’t extended significantly if someone places a new bid in the last few seconds of the auction.
Imagine if a real auction house worked that way, letting people shout “50 cents more!” at the last
second and win an item. It would simply be unfair, and many buyers think it’s unfair on eBay too.

The Solutions.

Until eBay decide to fix the problem (and by now it’s looking unlikely that they ever will), you’re the only
one who can do anything for your buyers.

First off, you can encourage your buyers to use eBay’s proxy bidding system the way it was intended.
The idea of the system is that they enter the maximum they’re willing to pay for an item and eBay
places bids for them automatically up to that maximum. They’re not supposed to come back and bid an
extra dollar every time they get outbid.

If your bidders are bidding high enough, then no sniper will even come along and beat them – because
they will have set the maximum snipe level in their sniping software to less than the normal bidder’s
maximum. Changing the way people use eBay is hard, though.

One alternative is to keep an eye on who’s bidding on your auction, and cancel bids from known
snipers – but this requires you to be around right at the end of the auction to cancel their bids. You

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might also want to set your auction to end sometime when bidders will be around so that they can
outbid snipers themselves. This is good business sense anyway – most of the bidding always takes
place in the last few hours of an auction.

An easier way to thwart bid snipers is to offer ‘Second Chance’ sales to bidders who get outbid by a
sniper at the last minute. This is good for you, and for them – they still get to buy the item they wanted,
and you’ve just made two sales: one to the sniper and one to them.

Once you’ve sold your items, though, you might be upset to find that one of them gets returned for a
refund. Our next email will show you how to turn these returns into profits!

Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit
http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other
online auctions.

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Help for sellers at eBay Online Auctions. Expert strategies, secrets and tutorials to help you ELECTRIFY your profits on eBay.
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How To Become An eBay “Sniper”.
By Kirsten Hawkins

If you bid for a few things on eBay, the chances are that sooner or later you’ll end up getting your bid
beaten at the very last second by a ‘sniper’. This can be a frustrating experience, and while in theory
sniping is against the rules and you can report it to eBay, in practice they never do anything about it.

The bad news is that there’s only one way to beat the sniper – and that’s to become the sniper. The
good news, though, is that once you understand sniping you can use it to win auctions at a far lower
price than you would otherwise.

Manual Sniping.

Manual sniping isn’t that hard, if you have a lot of time to spare and a reasonably fast Internet
connection. Write down when each auction that are bidding on ends, and then make sure that you’re
sitting there in front of the page for that vital last minute. You can then outbid the current winning
bidder, or defend your own winning bid.

The only tip you really need to remember for manual sniping is to make sure that you set your
maximum bid quite high – otherwise you might be automatically outbid, and the auction will have
ended before you can bid again.

Also, it’s not worth your time to compete against someone who is using an automated sniping service –
if it’s any good, then they will always manage to outbid you. In the sniping arms race, you need to find
a sniper of your own.

Automatic Sniping.

If you type ‘ebay sniping’ into your favourite search engine, you’ll come up with plenty of online
services that will snipe on your behalf for a small fee. They usually let you have a free trial, so give it a
go.

If you don’t want to pay each time for an online service, then you might be better off getting a piece of
software like iSnipeIt (http://www.isnipeit.com) or SnipeRight (http://www.sniperight.com). You can pay
for these once and use them for as long as you want. Once you’ve installed the software on your
computer, you tell it which auctions you want sniped and the maximum amount you’re willing to pay.
The software will then place the bid with only a few seconds left. The only disadvantage is that you
need to be able to leave your computer on nearly all the time, or you might miss the end of some
auctions.

A Sniping Alternative.

If this all sounds a bit too much like playing dirty for you, then is another, more low-tech way to get
around sniping. You can just email the seller and say that you were sniped at the last minute but would
really like the item. If they have another to sell, the chances are they’ll agree to sell it to you for the
price the auction closed at.

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Of course, there’s more to eBay than just bidding – the site offers a whole set of tools to help you
manage your auctions. In the next email, we’ll take a look at these tools.

Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit
http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other
online auctions.

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Related eBooks:

How To Become An eBay “Sniper”.
The Power of Sniping in Bidding Wars
The Importance Of Ebay Auction Software
Jewelry Wholesale and eBay Auctions
Top Ebay Tips and Tricks When Bidding on an Item

Get more Free PDF eBooks at FreePDFeBooks.com