a General ebay question
 

Seeing as most of us buy/sell on ebay, what type of auctions do you prefer? I've seen so many types that I wondered what most of you prefer. Personally, I like the BIN or fixed price auctions if the item is priced fairly. I just don't seem to have much luck with the pure auction format as a buyer. The rise of bid snipers has made it hard to compete.


Tim

My favorite auction are the ones I win at a really low price :).

Neal

Why do snipers make it hard for you to compete? Just bid the highest you are willing to pay.

Sniping is half the fun!

Seriously, I prefer to find what I want with a BIN, so I can get it now. That doesn't happen very often.

When I list, I usually put in a BIN unless it is something I expect will attract a lot of bidders.

while I prefer BIN sniping isn't that much of a bother to me.
I just put in my max bid and if it wins, great. If not I obviously
didn't want the item that badly.
oh, and sometimes I use auction stealer when I feel that the item is getting
too much attention.

Marty

What is auction stealer?

Tim

http://www.auctionstealer.com/home.cfm

it's sniping software. you get 3 snipes a week for free, I think the bids go in at
10 sec to end of auction. You can pay for the premium service which gives you ability
to bid closer to end of auction.
Alot of time I'll place a lowball bid, and use sniping tool (I don't know why, I just do).
Marty

Thanks for the link.

Tim

esniper, not esniper.com. A free (open source) program. (That's right, I am all for free software, long live Debian!) You can set it up to bid how you want. I know a lot of people like the .com services, but I don't understand that when you can have the same thing on your own computer doing what you want, when you want.

And sniping is fun. You put in your highest bid. Watch the auction with a couple of seconds left and see if your highest was the highest. I get all tingly inside with anticipation.

I just use an atomic digital clock for the countdown. It is kind of a rush bidding at the last couple of seconds knowing you only get ONE shot.

Ebay is a funny thing. I think there are two basic premises/approaches to it and operating under one premise renders comments/strategies about the other approach virtually useless.

The first approach is getting something for cheaper than it is worth. The second is getting something at a fair value price.

The first approach gets into all sorts of strategies about sniping, etc. The second is bid what you think the thing is worth and forget about it.

Both are equally valid positions, but imply a whole different set of behaviors by the bidder. So the first thing to be clear about in buying on Ebay is under which of these philosophies one is operating. If you are looking for an item at your reasonable cost, Ebay is the model of simplicity - put your bid in and forget about it. If you are looking for an undermarket steal, Ebay is like everywhere else - you have to put in lots of time/thought/research/strategy to make a score.

.

That is absolutely true. Now, for your opinion on selling on ebay. I do both.