Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
12 girls on my mind
You ever hear a song that just carries you away? A song that has such power that it almost always takes you to someplace painful or someplace joyous - but usually a place you felt like you needed to go. "Clocks" by Cold Play is one of those songs for me. But there is an even better arrangement of the same melody by a Chinese band called "12 Girls Band" that is truly the work of musical genius.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
eBay Sniping
OK this is my first online blog - I wanted to host this myself or somehow keep a local record of my blog rather than leaving it in the hands of some other computer in cyberspace but oh well...
Might as well post something I had on my mind today and wrote about - eBay sniping:
eBay sniping - my observations.
First off let me clarify my definition of "eBay sniping" - This is when someone bids on an item in the last seconds of an auction thereby not allowing anyone else the time to react with counter bids. This is done using scripts or automated services which are needed in order to accurately bid at a specified length of time before the auctions end. Some people think last minute bidding is sniping but actually it's not - this method still allows plenty of time for a response by the people who may be trailing with losing bids and re-freshing wildly in order to see who is doing what.
I have noticed a fair amount of interesting psychological characteristics when it comes to bidding on eBay auctions. Ideally an eBay auction would start with several economically rational people placing a single bid on an item by entering the max amount they would be willing to spend on any particular item. Then each persons max amount would simply be a stopping point for eBay which would only raise the bid amount to slightly higher than the second highest bid amount. So this creates essentially a battle between two people - the one who is winning, and the one who is trailing. In his scenario the auction outcome would actually be known long before it actually ends IF two thing were to happen; No more bids are placed, AND no new bidders enter the auction. Now I have heard so-called college educated eBay experts say that sniping is an easy thing to counter simply by asserting your maximum bid amount from the beginning and forgetting about it - this is the assertion that all eBay bidders are bidding totally rationally and not emotionally. Obviously these people have very little psychological training to go along with their supposed ebay training. Buying items on eBay (or anywhere else) is almost always an emotional process, not a calculated mathematical one. People love to buy stuff. People also love to win a competition. Thats two exciting emotional rides the eBay user goes on when he enters into a bidding contest. You will often hear that you should never let emotion affect your bidding decisions, but lets be honest. Where are the people who don't get emotional about bidding and winning eBay auctions? If there are any, I'd say they are the rare exception and not the rule.
Do you really think when someone enters a max amount for an item they wouldn't be willing to raise it by a dollar, or maybe 2, or maybe 3 in order to have the satisfaction of winning? You can see where this is going right?
In my experience people like to inch their way along in their bidding method in order to keep close eye on who may be present for the competition. This often drives the price up early and make many auctions just uninteresting for anyone looking for a deal. Each time someone's bid is beaten they are notified and called to take action - so what do most people do? Give up because they already entered their max bid? I don't think so and certainly has been demonstrated that this is usually not the case. Now I fully understand that there is a big difference between auctions for rare and unique collectibles versus new items whose value is easily attainable with a little research. Lets just say the margin for error is much smaller for new items than it is for the rare items. These days I rarely bother bidding for new items as I can normally find a good deal with 'Buy It Now'.
So instead of bidding up the price early and putting it out of reach for a good deal, along comes the eBay snipe tactic. This allows you to enter that winning bid at the last few seconds in order to eliminate the possibility of any retaliatory bids. In the early days this worked well because not very many people were doing it. Now so many people are doing it that we are almost back to the mathematical "enter your max bid and forget it" paradigm. Essentially we have squelched out the emotional rush and excitement of the bidding war and replaced it with immediate technological and surgical sniping in order to be done with it NOW.
There is another albeit rare technique I have seen that can be rather dangerous in its execution but effective as long as only 1 person in any given bidding war is doing it. It doesn't really apply to either sniping or bidding normally specifically but happens more in the sniping realm than the regular realm of bidding. The technique is bloated over-bidding in order to ensure a win at just above the 2nd place bidder. The theory is that if someone bids $100 for an items that is expected to sell for between $30-$40, then no matter who bids in that near $30-$40 range the person bidding the $100 will win by just edging out whoever had the highest bid below him. He gives himself a lot of margin for error by using the eBay bid methods which will only bid enough to beat the person behind you thus keeping your actual cost close to the real value of the item. Now of course this works great as long as no one else is doing it. I have seen items sell for much much higher than their value because it was obvious 2 or more people were employing this method. I doubt these auctions actually ended on good terms as most likely the winner, err, I mean loser wouldn't be willing to pay the inflated amount that he won with. So of course we are back to bidding only the max amount you are willing to pay but risking a loss to someone who bid any amount higher than yours and living with the fact that you lost by possibly only a dollar or two. You can see how this plays with you psychologically right?
Now we can see why other auction sites like Yahoo extend bid time by a few minutes if a last minute bid is placed - just like in a real life auction.
Might as well post something I had on my mind today and wrote about - eBay sniping:
eBay sniping - my observations.
First off let me clarify my definition of "eBay sniping" - This is when someone bids on an item in the last seconds of an auction thereby not allowing anyone else the time to react with counter bids. This is done using scripts or automated services which are needed in order to accurately bid at a specified length of time before the auctions end. Some people think last minute bidding is sniping but actually it's not - this method still allows plenty of time for a response by the people who may be trailing with losing bids and re-freshing wildly in order to see who is doing what.
I have noticed a fair amount of interesting psychological characteristics when it comes to bidding on eBay auctions. Ideally an eBay auction would start with several economically rational people placing a single bid on an item by entering the max amount they would be willing to spend on any particular item. Then each persons max amount would simply be a stopping point for eBay which would only raise the bid amount to slightly higher than the second highest bid amount. So this creates essentially a battle between two people - the one who is winning, and the one who is trailing. In his scenario the auction outcome would actually be known long before it actually ends IF two thing were to happen; No more bids are placed, AND no new bidders enter the auction. Now I have heard so-called college educated eBay experts say that sniping is an easy thing to counter simply by asserting your maximum bid amount from the beginning and forgetting about it - this is the assertion that all eBay bidders are bidding totally rationally and not emotionally. Obviously these people have very little psychological training to go along with their supposed ebay training. Buying items on eBay (or anywhere else) is almost always an emotional process, not a calculated mathematical one. People love to buy stuff. People also love to win a competition. Thats two exciting emotional rides the eBay user goes on when he enters into a bidding contest. You will often hear that you should never let emotion affect your bidding decisions, but lets be honest. Where are the people who don't get emotional about bidding and winning eBay auctions? If there are any, I'd say they are the rare exception and not the rule.
Do you really think when someone enters a max amount for an item they wouldn't be willing to raise it by a dollar, or maybe 2, or maybe 3 in order to have the satisfaction of winning? You can see where this is going right?
In my experience people like to inch their way along in their bidding method in order to keep close eye on who may be present for the competition. This often drives the price up early and make many auctions just uninteresting for anyone looking for a deal. Each time someone's bid is beaten they are notified and called to take action - so what do most people do? Give up because they already entered their max bid? I don't think so and certainly has been demonstrated that this is usually not the case. Now I fully understand that there is a big difference between auctions for rare and unique collectibles versus new items whose value is easily attainable with a little research. Lets just say the margin for error is much smaller for new items than it is for the rare items. These days I rarely bother bidding for new items as I can normally find a good deal with 'Buy It Now'.
So instead of bidding up the price early and putting it out of reach for a good deal, along comes the eBay snipe tactic. This allows you to enter that winning bid at the last few seconds in order to eliminate the possibility of any retaliatory bids. In the early days this worked well because not very many people were doing it. Now so many people are doing it that we are almost back to the mathematical "enter your max bid and forget it" paradigm. Essentially we have squelched out the emotional rush and excitement of the bidding war and replaced it with immediate technological and surgical sniping in order to be done with it NOW.
There is another albeit rare technique I have seen that can be rather dangerous in its execution but effective as long as only 1 person in any given bidding war is doing it. It doesn't really apply to either sniping or bidding normally specifically but happens more in the sniping realm than the regular realm of bidding. The technique is bloated over-bidding in order to ensure a win at just above the 2nd place bidder. The theory is that if someone bids $100 for an items that is expected to sell for between $30-$40, then no matter who bids in that near $30-$40 range the person bidding the $100 will win by just edging out whoever had the highest bid below him. He gives himself a lot of margin for error by using the eBay bid methods which will only bid enough to beat the person behind you thus keeping your actual cost close to the real value of the item. Now of course this works great as long as no one else is doing it. I have seen items sell for much much higher than their value because it was obvious 2 or more people were employing this method. I doubt these auctions actually ended on good terms as most likely the winner, err, I mean loser wouldn't be willing to pay the inflated amount that he won with. So of course we are back to bidding only the max amount you are willing to pay but risking a loss to someone who bid any amount higher than yours and living with the fact that you lost by possibly only a dollar or two. You can see how this plays with you psychologically right?
Now we can see why other auction sites like Yahoo extend bid time by a few minutes if a last minute bid is placed - just like in a real life auction.
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