How to Avoid Losing to eBay Snipers

Sniping occurs when a bid is about to end. Some 
yahoo rushes in and bids a little higher than the 
highest bid as the clock runs out of time – winning 
the bid. Sniping is against the rules at eBay, but it 
doesn’t slow the snipers down! In most cases, even 
if you report it, the sniper will get away with it, and 
you will have lost the item that you wanted to win 
so badly. Unfortunately, in order to avoid losing the 
items you want to snipers at eBay, you have to 
take on the sniper mentality. You also need to 
snipe in a way that will not violate eBay’s rules. 

Snipping can be done in one of two ways. The first 
way is the safest, but not necessarily the easiest. 
Simply keep up with the item you are bidding on. 
Make a note of the date and time that the auction 
will end, and make sure that you are in front of your 
computer and logged into the auction well before that 
specific time. The objective is to either bid higher than 
the highest bid during the last few seconds – which is 
what snipers do - or to simply make sure that you are 
not outbid by a sniper. 

Remember that sniping is against the rules, so you 
should log in about thirty or forty five minutes before 
the bidding ends, and get your bid up until it is the 
highest bid. At that point, all you need to do is to 
keep an eye out to make sure that nobody else 
raises the bid. If you’ve been logged in for a while, 
this cannot be considered sniping.

Using this method, you must be aware of automatic 
bidders. It is very hard to bid against people who use 
bidding software. That software has been designed for 
the purpose of snipping, and your chances of 
outbidding the software manually are very slim – 
which leads us to the second method of snipping
 – Snipping services.

Snipping services are very easy to find online, and 
they are relatively inexpensive. You can also 
purchase your own snipping software. If you want to 
become a sniper, purchasing your own software is 
usually the best way to go if you bid on a lot of items. 
You just set up the software, tell it which auction to 
watch and what the highest price you are willing to 
bid is, and let it do the work - just remember that it 
is against the rules, and while eBay seldom enforces 
this rule, you will be running the risk of getting 
banned from eBay.

Sniping is bad if someone does it to you, but if you 
use it yourself to win bids, it can be a wonderful thing. 
On the other hand, it may not be very ethical. 
Outbidding someone is one thing, sniping is 
something altogether different!

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