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!

(word count 480)

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