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AuctionNavigator Help |
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Bidding and Sniping
How Does Sniping Save Money?
Let us look at two case studies: One where you are placing proxy bids throughout the lifetime of
the auction, and one where you are sniping a bid in the last seconds of bidding. Bid increment is $1.00.
| Regular Bidding |
Sniping |
| Bidder |
Bid |
Current
price |
| Opening price |
- |
$10.00 |
ANOTHER_BIDDER
Places a standard bid of $11.00 |
$11.00 |
$11.00 |
YOU
You place a proxy bid of $25 |
$25.00 |
$12.00 |
ANOTHER_BIDDER
tries to beat your proxy |
$13.00 |
$14.00 |
ANOTHER_BIDDER
tries to beat your proxy again |
$15.00 |
$16.00 |
ANOTHER_BIDDER
finally beats your proxy and has the high bid |
$26.00 |
$26.00 |
YOU
you are determined not to be outbid |
$27.00 |
$27.00 |
| Auction is finally won by you for |
- |
$27.00 |
|
| Bidder |
Bid |
Current
price |
| Opening price |
- |
$10.00 |
ANOTHER_BIDDER
Places a standard bid of $11.00 |
$11.00 |
$11.00 |
YOU
You wait until the last few seconds of the auciton before placing your proxy bid of $25. This is called sniping the auction. |
$25.00 |
$12.00 |
| Auction won by you for |
- |
$12.00 |
|
Placing bids early in the auction only serves to push up the price,
especially if you are placing proxy bids. By waiting until the last few seconds of the auction to
place your $25 proxy bid in the above example, you have saved more than 50% on the end price of the auction.
This is a typical result for sniping. In essence it all comes down to who has the
higest bid at the end, but sniping does eliminate the element of "one-upping" that causes the auction price to
rapidly climb.
How does sniping prevent me from losing auctions?
It is very easy. You leave no time for anybody to place their bid and your bid turns out to be the last one.
Bidding strategy
For a better understanding of how to bid and have better chances to win an auction, you
should understand how AuctionNavigator works. So, how does AuctionNavigator bid?
AuctionNavigator has two different strategies for bidding, they are "Step by step (min bid)"
and "Max bid". You can select the strategy according to which the program will place bids here.
Below you can find the description of how each strategy works.
The point of this strategy is in the following. When the program starts sniping the
"My max bid" value is placed at once. It is this variant that you can see in the "Sniping"
table above. To use this strategy, you have to specify
only 3 options:
- My max bid
- Quantity
- Time before end
As you can understand, the most important option is "Time before end". Unlike in case with
the "Step by step (min bid)" strategy, where this option can be set to rather high values,
here it should be minimum so that noone outbids you. So, for a DSL Internet connection you set
it to less than 5 seconds, while for a DialUp connection it should be 10..15 seconds depending
on how fast the connection is.
The parameters
- Exceed min bid
- Try to exceed reserve price
do not influence this strategy and you can leave them unspecified.
The main disadvantage of this strategy when compared with the "Step by step (min bid)" strategy
is as follows. If you specify "Time before end" incorrectly and there are a few seconds left after
your bid, somebody can try to outbid you. And in this case the program will not be able to do anything,
for it has already placed the maximum bid and cannot increase it any more.
| "Step by step (min bid)" Strategy |
This strategy somehow combines both "Regular Bidding" and "Sniping".
But unlike in "Regular Bidding", all bids are placed during the last seconds.
The disadvantage of this strategy can be the situation when the program just fails to
make you the higher bidder, as it starts bidding from the minimal possible bid. You can learn
more about how this strategy works below.
After AuctionNavigator receives a signal that bidding is started (this time can be
found in the bid plan), the following takes place.
AuctionNavigator finds out the minimum bid and adds the "Exceed min bid" value to this bid.
If this amount does not exceed "My max bid" and the limits are successfully checked,
AuctionNavigator places this bid. After that AuctionNavigator checks if your bid is the highest one,
if it is not the case and someone has placed a higher bid, AuctionNavigator attempts to exceed that other bid.
No attempt is made if the reserve price has not been achieved and the "Try to exceed reserve price" option is off.
If your bid is the highest one, AuctionNavigator waits till the auction ends and sees to it that nobody
exceeds your bid. If somebody exceeds your bid, AuctionNavigator places another bid in its turn.
Thus, AuctionNavigator takes various measures for you to be the auction winner.
The entire bidding process is reflected in the log.
So, what are the parameters that will give you the best chances to win?
You should set five paramters:
- My max bid
- Quantity
- Exceed min bid
- Time before end
- Try to exceed reserve price
As to the parameters "My max bid", "Quantity", "Try to exceed reserve
price", everything is clear.
And they do not influence the actual process of bidding.
Two parameters are left.
What do you need "Exceed min bid" for? It is highly advisable to set this value if the seller has
set a very small bid increment, say, $0.25, while the price of the item is considerably high,
for example $400.00. What is so bad in such a small increment? Let us consider the following example.
Let the current price of the item be $410.00, and the current high bid is $420.00. In this case
AuctionNavigator will have to bid 41 (!) times: $410.25, $410.50, $410.75 ... – until it reaches $420.25,
because only $420.25 will make you the high bidder plus it is the minimum price to win the auction. Why is
it bad to bid 41 times? Actually it is not bad, but AuctionNavigator can just fail to place all those bids
before the auction ends. If you set "Exceed min bid" to $2.00, the amount of bids will be much fewer: $412.25,
$414.50, $416.75, $419.00, $421.25. It means that you will pay only $1.00 more, but you will have to place
fewer bids to win, and what is most important it will take less time.
It takes 5..8 seconds to place one bid if you have a DialUp connection at 28,8. It means that you will need
25-40 seconds to win in the above-mentioned example. With a fast connection it will take much less time and
even 41 bids will probably be placed in time.
Now let us talk about the "Time before end" parameter.
To what value should it be set? There are two strategies possible here, you can
set it to be relatively high, for example 30..60 seconds (and more), or
set it counting on "one shot", i.e. for AuctionNavigator to be able to place only one bid.
It is worth mentioning that if you have a good Internet connection (not DialUp), you should prefer larger values,
30 seconds and more. In this case AuctionNavigator will be able to win the auction almost for sure.
If your use a DialUp connection, it is no so simple. Perhaps, you should prefer the "one shot" strategy,
when your "shot" takes place within the last 2..5 seconds before it is over. This strategy is good if a
lot of users are interested in this item. In this case it is possible that someone else will place the
winning bid and your "one shot" will outbid it.
The practice of using AuctionNavigator reveals that it wins using various strategies and
various connections, but of course the faster the connection is the better.
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