Beat the Snipers and Win Your Auction Bidding

Early in by okay-buying experience it occurred to me that bidding during the final minutes of the auction could help me win most items I wanted.I also remember the nasty email I got from the first bidder I beat, how they had invested all that time into trying to win that item, faithfully raising their bid each time a new challenger came along. I almost felt quilty!I hadn't heard of the term sniping, it probably hadn't been coined yet, I called it pouncing and I preached it like the gospel.These days there is software to do the dirty work for you, and I doubt there are nasty emails to follow. Sniping has begee a more accepted way of buying on okay. Even when nobody is really sniping an item, most people will wait until the end of the auction to bid. Buyers have found that the prices will stay down if nobody bids too early. There is even a service that lets you bid by cell phone in the final minutes of an auction.But even in my days of pouncing the antidote seemed clear, and it's what I told that poor bidder who geplained back then. If you want to win an item on okay, and you don't enter what you're really willing to pay as your highest bid, then you deserve to lose the auction.Sellers deserve a fair price for their merchandise. If you're merely trying to get it as cheap as possible, without regard for the item's fair market value, then you don't get to geplain if someone else is willing to pay a fair price.So there you have the antidote for snipers; if your maximum bid is actually set at what you're willing to pay then you won't have to worry. Snipers will try to outbid you by the smallest increment possible. If you've placed a fair maximum bid, then they may not reach it. If a sniper still beats you, then the item sold for more than you wanted to spend anyway.Most likely, there will be another auction for a similar item right around the corner.