Adam Ginsberg Reviews eBay Sniping Software

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HotSniper – the world’s #1 eBay Sniping Software allows you to jump on the sniping bandwagon and there’s even an unlimited 10 day Free trial.  In my experience, HotSniper is the easiest sniping services that I have used.

Here’s how it works.  You log in at HotSniper.com, enter the item number to bid on and your maximum bid and you are done. It is that simple. You can then forget about remembering to place your bid… HotSniper will do it for you within seconds of the auction close.

A couple of things to keep in mind with eBay bidding and snipe tools…

1. eBay will auto-bid up to the bidders maximum so waiting until the last few seconds of an auction to bid really is no guarantee that some previous bidder has NOT entered a higher maximum bid than your maximum snipe bid.  This is called “proxy bidding”. Remember it isn’t the last bid that wins it is the highest bid and you should absolutely make sure that you always bid the maximum that you are willing to pay. (Keep those shipping charges in mind too!)

2. Understand the eBay bidding rules… Snipe tools have to follow them as well. You can’t expect it to place a snipe bid for you if your snipe bid amount is lower than the current bid, or if your snipe bid is not higher than eBay’s next bid increment. (Remember eBay requires your minimum bid to be at least one increment above the current bid and this increment depends on what the current bid amount is at the time you place your bid.)

Here’s the good news.  If your “bid” gets “outbid” – remember, no bid is actually placed on eBay until the end of the auction – you will get an email letting you know you have been outbid, what the new high bid is, and how much you must adjust your bid (at a minimum) to win the auction.  You will get several update notifications.

4. Set it and forget it… at least until you win. Remember you are responsible for all bidding even if you happen to forget that you place a snipe request and then later find a better deal but forget to cancel the snipe. If you win the auction you need to pay for the item!

While HotSniper is a great tool and increasing in popularity every day, sniping really is a phenomenon that is tied to bidder preference and education. As I state above… eBay will auto bid up to a bidder’s maximum bid amount. The idea behind a snipe is that you are going to swoop in at the end and place your bid before some previous bidder has time to re-bid for a higher amount. You are basically gambling that the previous bidders either don’t know how eBay’s bidding works, or that they decide at the very end as the bidding activity increases that they should increase their bid.

I think eBay is doing a much better job now at trying to get people to enter their maximum bid and explaining how the bidding process works. You see it in their email, on the item pages, bidding pages, etc… So the real value of HotSniper is to keep that bidder from having time to re-think their maximum and with more and more people using sniping tools my recommendation to you snipers is to make sure you’ve done your homework and know what the absolute maximum is that you will pay.

How I use sniping (HotSniper) in my eBay bidding…

* I snipe EVERY auction on eBay that I want to bid on.
* Set my snipe with the maximum that I will pay based on what I know about the item, research I have done on others that are on the site, activity from the bidders, etc… I always place my MAXIMUM bid into HotSniper because you want to be able to “set and forget”.

If your maximum bid is high enough, you will win the item.  If your maximum bid is too low, you will not.  This is true whether or not you use HotSniper.

Overall HotSniper has been working flawlessly. I would put it in my strongly recommend column as long as you use it understanding how eBay places bids.