How to Win on Ebay: Snipe

grammar fascist writes "A study by South Korean physicists confirms what some of us have taken for granted for a long time: a single bid at end of auction nets the most wins. From the article: 'Plugging all those data into the model and testing the outcome in terms of how the auctions turned out, the team found that the probability of submitting a winning bid on an item indeed drops with each bid. "Our analysis explicitly shows that the winning strategy is to bid at the last moment as the first attempt rather than incremental bidding from the start." The study appears in the current Physical Review E journal.'"

Comments

Bid what you want to spend...

[Evro]

It sounds like one of the basic assumptions of this article is that the object of ebay is to win. That's an incorrect assumption: the object of eBay is to get what you want at the lowest price you're willing to spend. If you're only willing to spend $25 on an iPod, put in a bid of $25. eBay's proxy bidding will handle the pissant bidders trying to nickel and dime their way up. Eventually one of two things will happen: A) you'll be the high bidder and get the item you want for a price less than or equal to the amount you wanted to pay, or B) someone will outbid you and you won't get the item at the price you want, at which point you can either let it go or re-evaluate the amount you're willing to spend.

People get caught up in the "game" of bidding on eBay which is how you see digital cameras that retail for $299, and sell on Amazon for $240, sell on eBay for $320 -- that's an example I've seen with my own eyes. People are stupid and so sniping is effective.

Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.

[Johnboi Waltune]

Every buyer with any brains at all figures out sniping is the way to go. I have been a seller for over 5 years, and I make more money on my auctions when I have them end on a Sunday afternoon. More people are home, near their computers, and ready to snipe at that time. I don't ship internationally (too much fraud), so time zones aren't really an issue.

I often get no bids at all up until the last 30 minutes of an auction, when 10 or 20 can suddenly come in.