"I was SICK of losing eBay Auctions
at the last minute..."
Until I learned the Secrets of the eBay Bidding Masters!
How many times has this happened to you? You place a bid on eBay for that previous generation iPod, or shockingly underpriced collector plate, or the sweater you weren't sure about at Macy's three months ago but can now get only slightly used for a quarter of its retail markup. You check back from time to time, and then... you're outbid!
A knot forms in your stomach and you log back in to raise your bid by a few bucks.
The next day, you've been outbid yet another time.
You pause a moment, heart racing, and try to think clearly about how much this thing is worth to you. You finally decide to go $10 past your budget this time, but at least the bid is safe.
Everything's fine... until you click the Refresh button at the end of the auction.
"Oh, No, Not Again!"
And someone else won! But this time it was only seconds before the end of the auction, giving you no way to retaliate. You lost the auction just 10 seconds before it ended! Who could jump in that fast? If you have a stopwatch, a guaranteed reliable net connection, and the willingness to stay up until 1:06am when the auction closes--you.
Who else? A bot named Rovatron, that's who. And only the bidding masters know how to meet Rovatron. I can show you how to get Rovatron to do your bidding for a week--at no charge. Secret #1 of the eBay Bidding Masters: Bid as late as possible to get the best possible deal.
"Wait Wait Wait! I Didn't Want to Bid on That One!"
Or how about this little nightmare. You get hypnotized browsing the vast and addicting marketplace that is eBay. You settle on the perfect gift: a mint condition redline 70s Plymouth Barracuda Hot Wheels car. He played with one as a carefree boy and still thinks of it fondly. You bid impulsively, and as you're scrolling through the auctions you find one for quite a bit cheaper. So you go to retract your bid--and find a blizzard of red tape.
"I wish I could have retracted that bid!"
Because eBay views a bid as a binding contract. Retracting bids on eBay is serious business, and it should be. Because people could bid an item up higher and higher, then retract the bid once they found its reserver value. (That's called bid probing. Or an unscrupulous seller might set up a an alternate buyer ID or friend to compete with you, driving the bid up. That's called shill bidding. Shill bidding and bid probing are both illegal on eBay, but some bad guys get through. There is a way to get protection from these highway robbers of the Web. It's called eSnipe. That's where Rovatron lives. eSnipe saves your bid for you, so you remember it and can revisit it anytime, but it doesn't connect with eBay until the final seconds of the auction. If you want to cancel it, or even revise your bid down (neither one an option on eBay without a sniping service), you can--anytime until 5 minutes before auction close. Secret #2 of the eBay Bidding Masters: Use a sniping service like eSnipe and you can retract your bid anytime until 5 minutes before the end of the auction.
Don't Get Hit by Shill Bidders
So it turns out that the no retraction rule makes a lot of sense. It's there to protect you. Does that mean you can never get out of a bid? Turn the question around. What if you waited until just a few seconds before the end of the auction? Then you'd never have to worry about fighting with shill bidders, or worry that you'd find another, better deal five minutes after you placed your bid on eBay. Secret #3 of the eBay Bidding Masters: If you bid late, they can't fake you out!
Of course sometimes it's inconvenient for you to wait until the end of the auction. You've got work, or it closes early, or it's in the middle of the night, or you just want to have a life. Don't worry. I know a robot who'll do the job cheap. In fact, Rovatron doesn't even charge unless you win the auction. Even if you bid a ridiculously low price.
When Crazy Low Offers Make Sense
And get this: once you start sniping, ridiculously low goes from pipe dream to routine auction strategy.
Ever go to a garage sale at 5pm or an auto dealer on the 29th? Suddenly they'll listen to crazy low offers they'd laugh at earlier in the selling cycle. Because the thing that hurts even more than slim profits is no profits. Why not use that same strategy on eBay?
Suppose you have a good aluminum baseball bat already, but
want a wood one in good shape. You're not willing to pay a lot, but on
the other hand you'd be grateful if someone accepted $25 for your
favorite model. Sure, you know they normally go for $75 used, but why
not make an offer just in case no one bids?
If you bid early in the auction, all you do is attract undesirable
attention to the item and get the bidding process off to a healthy
start, which is great for the seller and an invitation to disaster
for you. The sweet spot is to place
your unreasonably low offer using eSnipe. If it's
less than the seller had on reserve, fine. You lost nothing. If the
seller was wiling to cave,
great! Because eSnipe doesn't charge unless you actually win the
auction. You come out smelling like roses either way: get a great deal
you didn't expect to win, or save your money until the next time you
can make a crazy lowball offer. Using eSnipe empowers you with
strategies you wouldn't otherwise have without sniping. Secret #4 of the eBay Bidding
Masters: If you bid late, they can't fake you out!
Are You a Collector?
Then You're Just Asking for Trouble if You Place Your eBay Bid Early
It turns out that placing any kind of a bid at all early in the auction is suicidal.
Because eBay is big, but each category is a small town. And as you'd expect in a small town, collectors all know each other.
I became an eBay user so I could find a rare guitar called the Fender Perfomer. And even though they sort of shroud the names of the bidders (showing them with asterisks separating the first and last letters), do you really think that in the world of Fender Performer collectors they don't know that the notoriously shrewd bidder shown as f***9 is going to be fritzyFritz2009? And that if fritzyFritz2009 (I made up the name, but you get the idea) bids on a Performer, maybe they should be checking it out too? Secret #5 of the eBay Bidding Masters: Collectors watch other collectors' auctions! If you want a good deal, keep your bid secret!
Don't Get Caught In a Bidding War!
That's how bidding wars start. Collectors keep an eye out on what other collectors are bidding because maybe they'll miss a rarity. Don't fall into that trap. Use eSnipe to keep your bid secret from other users until it's too late for them to do anything about it!
eBay Feedback Secrets--How to Spot "Bargains"
That Are Probably Ripoffs
Most people know that eBay has feedback. This is a voluntary scoring system where buyers mark their purchase experience as satisfactory or not.
Yet hard as eBay tries to stop it (and they do try hard) buyers and sellers both abuse this system, and recent changes in feedback scoring have muddled things up even further.
A novice buyer who sees a bargain that's just too good to be true may not check feedback at all, then pay for an incredible LCD TV bargain that never arrives, leaving the user $699 poorer with the seller nowhere to be found. Sure, the seller gets banned but they knew it would happen!
Sometimes A High Feedback Score Isn't Enough
A slightly more experienced buyer who sees that same bargain will check for high feedback. (Checking the feedback score is always a good idea.) It's been documented frequently that a seller who has sold 1,000 or so items makes most buyers might feel pretty safe. But sometimes a high feedback score and a high level of postives aren't enough. If you're about to risk a lot of money on something, just remember these signs. It will only take a few minutes and it may save you incredible heartbreak:
1. Feedback percentage: Anything under 98% is considered subpar. It sounds high, but it's not. 2. Recent problems with feedback: Suppose someon has 1,192 transactions and they're 99.5% positive. That means only 6 are bad. Sounds fine, and if those 6 were evenly distributed over a period of 5 years, no problem. But if the seller has 4 or 5 recent negative feedbacks and this is the first expensive item they've sold, it could be a scam! One common thing for smart scammers is to sell 1,000 very low cost items and get perfect feedback, then suddenly put a whole bunch of big-screen LCD TVs or laptops for sale--with nothing in stock. Then they take the money and run. Recent negative feedbacks can be an indicator, if they're sudden and related to the item you want. 3. Length of time the seller has been a member: If a seller has feedback score of less than 25 or so and is trying to unload something expensive, sit back and let someone else take the risk. What you want will almost certainly reappear from a more reputable seller. Secret #6 of the eBay Bidding Masters: A high feedback score isn't enough when you're shopping for a valuable item. Check for recent negatives and see how long that seller has been a member!
Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?
You made it. You worked and scrimped and saved for years, and you can finally buy that German sports car you dreamed about since before you had a driver's license. You've been approved for the loan, you have a good downpayment, and you've done all the work on what the price should be. You step onto the lot and a bored-looking salesman sizes you from behind the dealership window, saunters out with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip and a coffee stain on his shirt, and says "Yeah, whaddya want?" You do what any sane person would do in your shoes. You thank him politely and leave for another dealership, or at least find a different salesperson.
Because buying on eBay or anywhere else isn't just what an economist would think of as a sales transaction. It's a relationship. In any relationship, first impressions count. In a business relationship, they're everything. That's how it should be. Why? Because if you can't count on the person selling you something to be polite and to answer your questions honestly, you can't feel good about buying from that person.
Regardless of feedback count, feedback percentage, and recent problems as mentioned in Secret #6 of the eBay Bidding masters, if you're buying anything expensive on eBay, form a relationship with the seller. If you have any concerns at all about parts of it the picture doesn't show, or items that came with it new but which haven't been detailed in the listing, or whether they can change the shipping method to suit you and how much it would cost: ask a few questions of the seller. Even if you don't, try to ask a legitimate question or two unless that person has absolutely stellar feedback comments. If the seller responds promptly and courteously, all the better. If they don't respond in a way that tells you they thought carefully about your question and are trying to be as candid as possible, stay away. Millions of items get listed on eBay every day. Don't risk your hard-earned money with a seller you don't feel really good about.
Secret #7 of the eBay Bidding Masters: a sale is a relationship. If they don't treat you right in the honeymoon period, how do you expect them to treat you if something goes wrong?
As if You Hadn't Guessed
I recommend eSnipe to place your last second bids.
eSnipe is the oldest of the online auction snipers and will do the best job in all these areas:
- Keeping your bids secret from other buyers to prevent bidding wars
- Placing bids in the middle of the night while you're fast asleep
- Getting around eBay's controversial "no retractions" rule
- Stopping stressful, counterproductive overbidding
- Timing your bid with Atomic Clock precision
What are you waiting for? Try eSnipe free, now. You won't regret it, especially when you get to bed early for once when an auction closes!
