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Sniping ebay auctions 101:  Ebay auction sniper and snipe software explained. There are a few tricks to buying on Ebay, and today’s topic is on Sniping auctions. What in the world is an auction Snipe? Is it like hunting for Snipe? Is Wesley Snipes gonna slay vampires with a sword and win my auction for me? Well, i’ll tell you. It’s neither. An auction Snipe is a bid submitted to ebay in just the last few seconds of the item’s auction time. It can either be done manually, via software or via an online Sniping service.

The main advantages to performing Snipes on ebay auctions is so that you can try to bid on items for the smallest amount of money. When people bid on auctions on ebay using ebay’s auto bid feature, ebay automatically places a hidden proxy bid for you up to your maximum bid amount. If another bidder comes along and places a bid on an item, ebay will compare it to your maximum bid and the new bidder’s maximum bid, and bid up the price of the item to the new price of whoever has the higher maximum bid. For example, let’s say an item has a $1.00 opening bid amount. You think that’s a great price, and bid $5.00 as your maximum bid. Someone else comes along and bids $7.50 on the item. Ebay compares it to your max bid and raises the price to $6.00 ($1.00 over your max bid) and the other person becomes the new high bidder.

This works to the seller’s advantage, as two or more people can get into a bidding war by raising up their max bids in the auction. This is usually how auctions work, in that multiple people will bid against each other until the end of the auction raising the sales price. If two or more people really really want an item, bidding can go way up at any time during the auction. If you’ve ever gotten into a bidding war on an item, you know how this feels. It sucks when you get outbid, especially when you know the item isn’t worth what the new bidder is going to pay for it.

So, Sniping is a way of making the bidding process work for the BUYER, not the seller. If you have patience, you can wait on an item and try bidding on it in the last few seconds of the auction. When you bid on items using this strategy, time works in your favor, especially if not a lot of users are watching the end of the auction at their computer screens. Patience is all that’s required, and a quick click of the mouse. There are a few tools in which you can use to Snipe auctions, and here’s a comparison of which might work best for you:

Manual Snipes: Manual Snipes are the easiest type of Sniping. You have to log into your ebay account and watch the auction in real time, and submit your max bid in the last few seconds. Remember, submitting your max bid won’t necessarily be the final price, it’s just the maximum you yourself are willing to pay for that item. The best way to do a manual bid is to go to the auction and enter in the amount of your max bid anywhere from 10-30 seconds before the end of the auction. Ebay will put the auction time in countdown mode (four… three… two… one… liftoff!) during the last hour of the auction. Simply watch it, and 10-30 seconds before the end of the auction, enter your final bid and click enter. Don’t forget, sign in beforehand and remember there’s a confirmation screen to confirm the bid if you’re not using 1 click bidding. Give yourself a little extra time if you’re on dialup (closer to 30 seconds) and narrower time if you’ve practiced the Sniping maneuver on a good high speed connection.

Sniping software: There is some great free Sniping software which is available to you. The one that I use is called Jbidwatcher (click for link) and is open source freeware for multiple operating systems. Software lets you automate the process of Sniping and it allows you to set up multiple Snipes and Snipe scheduling for multiple items. It’s very useful to use these when you aren’t home or if you’re busy doing other things than watching your auctions. Snipe software frees you up to do other things and manage your Snipes on your own time. You simply configure your software with your watched auctions, set up your Snipes, tell the software when to submit the Snipes (in seconds) before the auctions end, and let it do all the work for you. The potential disadvantages to using PC based software are: A) your internet connection has to be working, B) Your computer has to be running and not in sleep mode (turn sleep mode off), and C) you have to enter your account login information into the software. For the last reason, go with an open source auction Sniping program. Open source programs allow everyone to review and potentially revise the program’s source code, so no funny business (ex: account information collection and distribution) sneaks into the program.

Online Sniping Services: There are several online Sniping websites which essentially work the same way as the PC based software. They monitor the actions for you and will attempt to Snipe them automatically just like the PC based Sniping programs. The main advantage is that they’re always running (virtually no down time) and you can set up your Snipes and forget them. The main disadvantage is, you have to enter in your ebay account information and there’s no open source security. You have to trust the Sniping service will keep your ebay login information confidential.