Whats a good Lead Time

I think either is fine, but 5 is a little safer. It gives us a better shot of making the bid in time if eBay is slow for instance.

Only another snipe could beat you with a 5 second bid. And a 3 second bid would not help there.

Think about all the stuff that would have to be done by a manual sniper. First they'd have to see that you outbid them. That means they would need to be looking at the auction continually refreshing it to see the price and who is the high bidder. Then they'd have to type in a new bid and click submit. And wait for eBay to load the confirmation page. Then enter their password. Then submit it again.

I dont believe it's possible for a person to manually enter a bid and submit it in 5 seconds.

Thanks Sara for the info. Friends of mine who prefer the rush of manual bidding in the last few seconds have told me of their ways of getting in at the last few seconds. They have a bunch of ebay windows open with different amounts already typed in to bid plus one window that they keep refreshed so all they have to do is hit enter to place the bid in the appropriate window. Of course they are already signed in. One friend even counts down in his head 5,4,3,2,1 and bids. Risky I know but he's beaten snipes this way many times. These practices eliminates many of the steps you listed. But I guess all in all, the most important thing is listing your max price. You won't often have to spend your max amount if you bid high enough with lots of room between the current bid. By the time the other bidders realize how high you've gone its too late. I'm just blabbing, this isn't anything others don't already know. Just that snipes aren't 100% fool proof at 5 sec.

Do you think the scenarios I've listed that 3 secs might be a better option or is there no real difference between 3 and 5

Thanks
Shannon

3 second snipes should work fine. We miss only about 1 in 2000 auctions and that's including all the 1,2,3 second snipes we do. 3 seconds is fast so they better have a fast finger and DSL to get a bid in like that.

Try some 3 second snipes on less important things first and make sure you are happy.

Thank you

Of course in some ways a longer gap is better. If you are (unknowingly of course) competing with another sniper and your snipe is the same value as theirs, the earlier snipe will win.

I agree with Sara B. that 99.99% of the time a person bidding manually will be unable to counter-snipe a bid placed in the last 5 seconds. Indeed, I use 8 seconds for my snipes. I've only been outbid by another sniper once, and that was because I bid my maximum at 8 seconds and the other sniper bid more than that at 5 seconds. It wouldn't have mattered if I bid at 8 minutes left and the other guy bid at 5 minutes left. I bid as much as I wanted to spend and the other guy had deeper pockets. There'll be another time -- there always is on eBay.

ya on cheaper priced items where there are multiples and by doing an ended auction search I know where the end price will be I place my snipes at like 20 seconds. I want the other snipers to have bid at least 1 bid increment more than me if they're going to win.

I remember before ebay had the proxy bidding automated (yes im old)... when any one of our friends, who all work at an internet company, wanted something on ebay, we would have all the other coworkers rally up;

one man for the timer, refresh and announce.

one man for the price, refresh and announce.

and one man strictly on bidding... no refresh.. just a bunch of windows open with different bids ready to launch.

Of course this has all changed with ebay's proxy bidding in place for the long haul, but you can bet that people will continually scheme ways to snipe and will not just sit on their cpu, refreshing without at least having their bid ready to go in the next browser...

ANYWAY, i think 4 secs is safe yet competitive,

my only question is do you guys (auctionsniper) put some kind of lead time on your function call to place the bid, considering server connection times, and processing times?

Thanks for the ear...

JohnyStyles
just another engineer...

quote:

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my only question is do you guys (auctionsniper) put some kind of lead time on your function call to place the bid, considering server connection times, and processing times?

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Yes we do. We monitor bid placement times on snipes prior to the ones about to go off and adjust accordingly.

So if eBay is running slow and taking 10 seconds to accept a bid we put your snipe in at 14 seconds rather than 4. That way by the time eBay gets around to accepting it it should be right at 4 seconds if they continued running 10 seconds slow.

Thank you

Hi All,

I usually place my bids with a lead time of 12 to 20 seconds. I consider that, as far as human beings are concerned, nobody even with a decent internet connection can hit refresh, realized he/she has been outbid, think of another max bid price, replace it, all this is less that 12 secs. Just try it by yourself !

Most important is the Max Bid : I usually put it 20% above the max price I'm actually ready to pay (unless of a retail price or any other specific circumstances). That way, most of the time when I win I'm way below that max, and if I'm outsniped, well that's way above my max anyway so no regrets such as "with a few more $$ I could have had it"...

My 2 cents worth Any comments welcome of course.

You can manually snipe quicker, by having windows open ready with the bid entered just waiting for the final "submit".

As to sniping at 20% over the max you're actually prepared to pay, that means you may have to pay more than you're prepared to pay. If you snipe at that level, you must be prepared to pay it!

My initial sentence was probably badly formulated By "bidding above the max price I'm actually ready to pay" I mean : once I determined a max price, I often force myself to bid (either manually or snipe) a bit higher. Of course if I win in the 20%s I'll pay the item, with the comment "at least I have it" That's just because from experience I've lost items with only a few cents !

Thanks

I set mine at 5 seconds and I have yet to loose a snipe.

This auction I won today: The competing bidder tried to snipe me in the last 5 seconds but lost.