want to start bid sniping, need some advice please.

Subscribe to want to start bid sniping, need some advice please. 4 post(s), 3 voice(s)

Avatar SwiftX3 2 post(s)

Hey guys, recently, and by recently I mean just yesterday my graphics card died.

I’m currently trying to get a nice deal on ebay. how should I use JBidwatcher for this purpose?

I put the bid timer on the the last 2 seconds to snipe, I think. also I live in SanDiego, USA. would the default settings be ok to use? I have never done this before so any advice would be just awesome.

Thank you for your time.

Avatar SwiftX3 2 post(s)

also, I was reading that although you bid the max bid, you only pay the 2nd bid amount? I’m a bit confused about that, and maybe I just though I saw that and it wasn’t true.

Avatar Sumflow 41 post(s)

As long as you have the maximum accepted bid, it does not matter when you place your bid. To win your bid has to be higher than the current auction price by a full increment, and it must beat the first losers highest bid by one cent, and it must be first.

2 seconds is to close if you really want it. The eBay site explains automatic bidding as we do here in some other posts. Your Jbidwatcher will bid your maximum amount, when you tell it to. eBay will place your bid the minimum increment amount above the current bid. If anyone else is higher, they will move your bid just above that until the first loser hits the maximum. The winner will win just above that price, or at that price in case of a tie if they are first. You can find more details about winning in these pages.

eBay always uses a proxy bidding system, in which you specify your maximum bid amount and eBay will continue to bid on your behalf to keep you the high bidder until the bidding reaches your maximum amount. If you are to close to the end you might not have time to have your bid accepted by eBay. You are sniping just so that no one has time to react to your bid, after they see it. You are not trying to be the last bidder, in a tie the last bidder loses. Read my other posts on what amount to bid. Dodgy Geezer is right the sweet spot is between 5 and 10 seconds. You can easily fine tune after a few shots.


Avatar Dodgy Geezer 106 post(s)

I would tend to recommend somewhere between 10 seconds and 5 seconds. During an auction people will be manually bidding, then looking at the competition and raising their bids. As we get to the end of an auction a point will come when there is no longer enough time to look at the price and raise a bid. You want to put your bid in at the earliest possible time after that.

Ignore the other bids – make up your mind what the max price you are prepared to pay for that item is, and use JBidwatcher to put that in at the point where nobody can look at that figure and raise it. In my experience, someone who is working hard at manually refreshing the screen takes about 7-8 seconds to see themselves being outbid, go to a biding screen and type in a new bid. Most people are a lot slower than that…