What I always suspected

[dianeduane]

nk(t+1) — nk(t) = w(k-1)(t)*n(k-1)(t) — wk(t)*nk(t) + sigma(k,1)*u(t) Or in other words:  Sniping is the best way to win on eBay.

Comments

[hyalin.livejournal.com]

Heh. Conflict psych works, too.

[hetzakoatl.livejournal.com]

Yanno, I could have told them this without them having to work out a formula for it. :P

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm sure they suspected it was a good strategy too. But there's a difference between suspecting something and proving that it's so.

Sometimes scientists can't win. If a scientist disproves conventional wisdom (including conventional scientific wisdom) on a subject then science is worthless because scientists keep changing the conclusions. If a scientist confirms conventional wisdom, then what was the point? Anyone could have told [scientist] that.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[hetzakoatl.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

But this point was proven long ago. Many successful bids on eBay were sniped ones. :P

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

But this point was proven long ago.

Proven how? Somebody has to do the research and crunch numbers from a whole lot of auctions in order to show whether sniping is truly more effective than other strategies or whether it just seems that way to snipers.

Many successful bids on eBay were sniped ones.

When you use a relative word like 'many', you have to specify what you're comparing to. Many successful sniped bids compared to what? And what's the source of your information?

[cleverthylacine]

My ex-husband never understood why I could make so much more money than he did on eBay. Until I pointed out that he listed his items at 2 AM when he was suffering from insomnia, which on the East coast was 5 AM, and that therefore he only got last-minute bids from overseas users, which there weren't a lot of in 1997.

Whereas I always carefully timed my auctions so that they would end at times when a majority of people in all 4 US time zones could get to their home computers without having to stay up past midnight or log on to eBay at work.

And I made LOADS on last minute bid wars.

Sniping is the only way to go. I would never bid early in an auction, that just drives the price way up by the end. Where a seller makes money is when s/he sets it up so that it's really, really, EASY for people to snipe, and then the snipers get into last-minute crazy ass bid wars because they feel entitled and nobody is going to take that listing they sat and waited on for days like a mother bird away from them. You can make quite a bit of money that way.

I won't do that as a buyer unless it's an item I feel is truly rare and HTF, and after over 10 years on eBay I've learnt that there aren't nearly as many things like that as most people think there are.

When I'm buying, I look for auctions that end at odd times when there won't be a lot of snipage, and then place a fairly low bid in the last few hours of the last day. I usually wake up the next day to find that I've won those items.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

You can even get the sniping for free. (http://freeauctionsniping.auctionstealer.com)

(Not, by the way, connected with 'em or anything. No, really.)