This morning I got up at 3am to witness the end of an eBay auction I was extremely anxious to win. I lost. And with 15 minutes left to go in the auction, and getting sick of refreshing every few seconds and playing endless games of Freecell to pass the time, I decided to just look around the internet for tips on winning eBay auctions. I found a tip that very likely would have won me the auction, had I read it about 6 hours earlier… before I put in my first bid.

I read (and I can’t believe I had never heard of it before) about a technique called sniping. Basically you employ an online service to bid for you, just once, right when the auction has about 10 seconds to go. This way, you don’t let other bidders know they have competition, and you keep all the information about what other bidders are doing and make an educated guess about how much you think it will take to win.

It doesn’t guarantee you’ll win, of course, but it does stack the odds a lot more in your favour, and makes sure you don’t get into crazy bidding wars with some other equally desperate buyer. And if you win, you’ll probably win having paid a lot less than you would have, had you bid earlier, like I did.

What I did was put in something lower than my absolute maximum before I went to bed, with the idea that I would get up around half an hour before the auction ended to battle it out. As it was, I had a very restless sleep and ended up getting up an hour and a half before the end, getting anxious and not being able to resist; I put in my highest bid with about 40 minutes to spare. Of course I was trumped within minutes, forcing me to re-evaluate how badly I wanted the item, and how much I was really willing to pay.

Unfortunately by the time I found out about sniping and quickly signed up for a snipe bid, I had already gone over the price I originally told myself was my limit so I only had a very small amount of wriggle room above what the current bid was. Not to mention the fact that I had no idea what the other bidder had down as a highest bid.

Had I sniped from the start, I could have put my bid in with the sniper site and just kept an eye on the auction to see what other bidders were doing, changing my snipe bid if need be. I might not have won anyway, but at least I wouldn’t have come running out of the bushes with my high bid flag flying.

The only satisfaction I take away is 1) I made the other bidder pay a LOT more for the item than they would have if I hadn’t goaded them and 2) now I know how I will do it more effectively next time.

Incidentally, the service I used is called HammerSnipe, and it is free for three snipes per week, automatically bidding for you with ten seconds to spare on your auction. If you want more snipes per week and a bid at three seconds to go, you can pay for their premium service. Be aware that you have to give them your eBay login details, but if you’re concerned that they won’t be responsible with this information, you can always change your password after the auction closes.