Newbie question: multiple snipers?

Well I like to think of it like this. eBay is getting over 50,000 new signups a day. That's like 10-15 million a year.

We dont even have close to 50,000 active snipers and we've been around like a year and a half.

There are of course many more manual snipers. But even still perhaps 5% of eBay buyers snipe. You're still at a great advantage and with all the new buyers coming and signing up at eBay every day that's not too likely to change.

The 60 Minutes II segment about eBay stated the following:
1) Is used by 50 million people worldwide who spend an estimated $41 million every day.
2) In September of 1998, 8% of the items on eBay were Beanie Babies.
2) It sells a motorcycle every 18 minutes.
3) It sells an SUV every 30 minutes.
4) As many as 150,000 people have literally given up their jobs to create their own businesses selling on eBay.
5) Every day, 12 million items are up for sale.

Here's the link to the segment:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/30/60II/main527542.shtml

With this kind of growth rate (50,000 new members a day!), something that has never been experienced before, isn't it a lot more likely, that the few times AS doesn't place a snipe, it's not due to AS but to eBay?


"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit". - George Carlin

The secret of bidding on eBay with or without Sniping isn't to enter the lowest amount you want to pay but the highest you're willing to pay for an item.
I've done pretty well with & without sniping by doing that. The advantage to sniping is that your one and only bid comes at the end of auction. You're not making multiple bids DRIVING UP the price for everyone including yourself. So make it a reasonable paying price for the item. I almost always pay less than my highest bid.
The only one who benifits from a bidding war is the seller. Don't feel bad for a seller. He should have priced his item to make his money in the first place. What you as a sniper are controlling is his profit margin. Which comes out of your pocket.
There are also MILLIONS of auctions running at anytime on ebay. The odds that someone else is using an automated snipe system against you is proportional to how many bids on a particular item. With AS you can control when your snipe goes in (8 seconds before close, etc) If you are concerned, experiment with the timing to maximize your bidding.

John Rowt

Integrity is being good even when no one is watching

Gee, that's some echo we have in here. Amen, brother! That's the same thing I've been preaching for quite a while: no matter when it's placed, the highest bid is the only winner in an auction.

Welcome aboard!

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." -- Mark Twain

I just had to respond because I, too, initially had that concern: what if everyone starts to snipe? But when you think about it, so what? If literally every Ebay bidder sniped, then no one could see each other's bids until seconds before an auction ends (leaving it impossible to respond with a new bid). When you think about it, that's no different than a "sealed bid" auction, where everyone submits their highest bid in a sealed envelope and then the highest bidder is revealed after the auction deadline. And that's EXACTLY what the true benefit of sniping is - to create a sealed bid scenario where no one can react to each other's bids - removing the emotionally charged situation where two or more passionate bidders cause the price to over-escalate.

I hear all the time from sellers how SO many high bidders don't honor their commitment to purchase. Why is that? Probably because they got emotionally caught up in a bidding war - and ended up having tremendous buyers remorse after the auction closed and they realized they bid too high due to the emotion of the bidding war.

If this is true, then isn't it likely that if everyone sniped, it would significantly reduce the number of buyers who back out or otherwise don't honor their winning bids? So isn't it then possible to argue that while sniping may slightly reduce the average high bid price, that could well be offset by the significantly reduction of delinquint winners who don't pay up??

Just my theory.

"If literally every Ebay bidder sniped" then in all likelihood eBay's computers would be overloaded on a continuing basis.

Interesting theory about acute buyer remorse stemming from overbidding during a bid war being responsible for a lot of NPB's. Any sellers out there care to comment?

Steve,

I suggest that sniping takes up less eBay resources! A sniper only puts out one bid (typically). As has been commented on in this forum, proxy bidders often put out multiple bids (bidding wars, nibblers, they-want-it-I-want-iters). Each bid has a hit on eBay's resources. That's not to say snipers don't increase their snipes, but when we do it we use AS's resources and not eBay's.

Grant it, if all the auctions closed at the same time, then having everyone snipe at the same time would cause an eBay melt down. But, eBay's auctions don't close at same time.

I think proxy bidders "may" also use up more resources because they are continually monitoring their auctions, and in the frantic last seconds, could be doing maniac refreshes to see if they are going to get sniped by one of us.

There is the added argument, that "perhaps" many proxy bidders place their bids during peak/popular times. This would impact eBay if true. Snipes are placed when the auction is closing, which can be during slow/off times.

Also, proxy bidders "maybe" refreshing their "My eBay" pages more often than us snipers. Some snipers maybe putting out their bids, moving on, and waiting for an email from AS. Maybe. One has to consider that AS (I think this is true) goes into eBay and updates the current auction price for all their snipes, but I think this is also at off times.

Now, I haven't discussed those few poor souls still doing manual snipes, and if the following offends you, so be it, but: ARE YOU NUTS?

I'm very confident that my 1st argument is correct (less bids, less resources), but everything else is speculation on my part.


"Success is getting what you want, but happiness is wanting what you get." - Eddie Scissons from W. P. Kinselle's "Shoeless Joe".

PLUS the resources required by eBay to send out all those "Out Bid" notices to proxy bidders. Must be a couple million + each day.


"Yaba daba do." - Fred Flintstone

heheh....Ebay Meltdown! Now that's something I'd pay to see!!

Why does eBay love snipers? Simple. Most so called 'snipers' are rank amateurs who don't pick a max bid and stick to it. Instead they engage in last minute bid wars. Result...

last minute bid war = more $$$ for seller & eBay

Take a recent auction of mine as an example...

bidder 1...................... US $610.00 08-Feb-03 13:36:12 EST
bidder 2...................... US $600.00 08-Feb-03 13:35:32 EST
bidder 1...................... US $600.00 08-Feb-03 13:36:03 EST
bidder 1...................... US $500.00 08-Feb-03 13:35:58 EST
bidder 1...................... US $400.00 08-Feb-03 13:35:52 EST
bidder 1...................... US $350.00 08-Feb-03 13:35:48 EST
bidder 1...................... US $300.00 08-Feb-03 13:35:20 EST
bidder 1...................... US $140.00 07-Feb-03 13:45:10 EST


The reserve on the above item was $145 and the reserve represented a common eBay selling price for the item. I can assure you that both eBay and myself are very happy campers!

BTW... if you ever try to end one of your eBay auctions early you will encounter a message from eBay encouraging you to let it run to the end because they recognize that most of an items price runup happens in the very last part of the auction.

So, no... more sniping doesn't mean anything bad for eBay.

Also I agree with Rick on the Ebay resouces issue. If everyone sniped it the work load of the eBay servers would roughly corrilate with the auction ending which are spread out. What could tend to affect that however is eBay's new feature of being able to scedule auction ends. If everyone picked their auctions to end around 7:00pm EST then that might create and problem if everyone sniped right around then. It won't happen that way though.

Otherwise it's more likely that the AS servers would be strained before the eBay servers are. Of course AS would undoubtedly increase their server base to correlate with any growth of the automated sniping industry.

Picking up on the thought about a threat to Ebay's business model, there is one here. If AS worked slightly differently, it could cut down on Ebay revenue.

Scenario:
Current high bid: $2.00
AS user A bid: $15.00
AS user B bid: $16.00
AS user C bid: $17.00

If AS sends all those bids in, C will win for $16.50. But AS could look at these and say, "C is going to win anyway, so I'll only submit the C bid." Then C wins for $2.25.

As an Ebay user since 98 who bought stock when I saw the unbeatable business model, I usually take the company line. But I recently sold the stock, and I've spotted a few potential holes. This is one of them.

Your scenario, and variations on it, has been discussed many times in this Forum. The fact of the matter is that AS is in the business of submitting pre-programmed bids, pure and simple. It does not compare the bidding activities of its subscribers to see whether more than one of them are bidding on the same item, or comparing the max bid amounts and favoring one over another if that is the situation. AS has no interest in the outcome of any given auction beyond giving its subscriber(s) the opportunity to win that auction, since AS only profits from wins by its subscribers.