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What's Your Bidding Style
Are you impulsive or deliberate? If you're deliberate, eBay's Proxy bidding can make it relatively
painless. You've decided on the item to bid on and decided the very maximum you are willing to spend. Bid that amount and then
forget about it. Of course, that is easier said than done, but it's one way not to get swept up into
the passion of bidding at the last moment.
Incremental Bidding
This is when you bid enough to be high bidder, but not your maximum, bidding again when someone tops your bid.
In this instance it's important to stay close to the computer in the last hours of bidding to continue bidding if you're outbid.
This is also the time when sniping can come into play. If you're not willing to put your maximum bid up early, someone could come in
and bid their maximum in the last few seconds and not giving enough time to respond.
Sniping
Is when a bidder comes in at the very end of the auction, the last few seconds,
and puts a winning bid in.
There are services that will actually do this for you or
do it yourself with quick fingers and a fast connection. Of course, sniping doesn't always work,
the sniper has only one shot to get the item and the sniper's
bid has to be high enough to be the winning one.
Why would someone snipe?
The bidder might not want anyone else to know they're interested in an item or
might not want to call attention to a particularly interesting auction that no one else
is bidding on. By sniping, no one knows you're interested in an item until it's too late. And yes, some
people track what others in their field are buying.
Yes, I'll admit it, I do my share of sniping too.
It takes a tiny bit of practice, but it's not hard to do. A fast connection to the Internet
is a must. There is absolutely no guarantee with the method below and I am not responsible for
any glitches, problems, etc. -- proceed at your own risk!
Here's how I do it:
Log on to eBay.
Go to the auction page and reduce the window until it fits about half the screen.
Open another duplicate window and have the two screens side by side, but not overlapping.
Use one window for refreshing, to keep track of those last few seconds.
Use the other window for the bid, doing all the below steps, stopping before the final click on Submit.
When the time is right, click Submit on the "bidding window". |
Buy it Now
Many items with have the Buy it Now feature, which is exactly what it
says. The auction will close as soon as someone meets the sellers price.
Bidding
Everything checks out, you're
logged in and ready to bid:
Click the Place Bid Button
Put your bid in, then click Continue.
Review your bid and then click the Submit button. |
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Everything checks out, but
you're not logged in yet:
click the Place Bid Button
Put your bid in, then click Continue.
At this point, the eBay Sign-In screen will pop-up.
Log In -- then click Submit, which will
register the bid. |
Hitting Submit in either scenario will finalize the bid and you'll find out if
bid was accepted or were outbid (by a proxy bid).
People often complain about being outbid by only fifty cents or a dollar, regretting that they did not bid a little more to win it. Yes, they might have won it with a little more, but not necessarily. The high bidder could have bid much more, but with proxy bidding his bid will only go up to the amount needed to win the item, not his maximum.
Example:
Current High Bid is Joe for $20. Unknown to you, Joe has already put in a proxy bid in for $37.
You bid $32.50 -- The bid jumps to $33.50 with Joe still as high bidder.
You are outbid! Of course you have no idea what Joe's maximum is, so you could either keep bidding, or just put in your maximum and take it or leave it. |
~barbara crews
Resource Links on Bidding:
Bidding Basics - eBay
Buying an Item - eBay
Time Conscious Bidding (aka Sniping)
Retracting a Bid - eBay
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