posted on December 10, 2003 12:01:17 PM new
Interesting article that takes BaconButtie one step further -----
Sellathon Adds eBay Snipe Alert to Auction Tracking Tool
By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
December 10, 2003
eBay sellers may start getting alerts, "You have snipes." Sellathon added a
feature to its ViewTracker service that informs eBay sellers when one of
their auctions is going to be sniped by a bidder.
ViewTracker is a tracking device that allows merchants to measure traffic
and analyze search behavior for their auctions. Once sellers sign up for
ViewTracker (pricing is $49 for the Basic Edition, with a free 30-day
trial), they place HTML code in their eBay listings. Sellathon can then
monitor those listings and give sellers traffic information, such as search
terms visitors used to find the auction.
Sellathon said it recently added a new feature to the service called Snipe
Hunter. The alert notifies eBay sellers when someone is planning a
last-second bid on an auction, called a snipe bid. The purpose of "sniping"
is to place a bid so late in the auction that other interested parties do
not have time to respond.
eBay bidders have been manually sniping auctions since the early days of
eBay. In 1997, Dave Eccles created Cricket Jr to automate the process.
Today, there are desktop sniping applications as well as hosted services
that use their own fast connections to place snipe bids.
Wayne Yeager, CEO of Sellathon, said Snipe Hunter only works for snipes
placed by hosted services. Sellers will not know if bidders plan to manually
snipe an auction or if they use a desktop sniping application.
Chuck Eglinton is CEO of BidRobot, one such sniping service, and said the
majority of snipers on eBay snipe manually. He said Snipe Hunter could
potentially help auction sellers if it provided the User ID of the bidder.
Some sellers have strong anti-sniping sentiments and might use such a tool
to prevent snipe bidding on their auctions. If they knew the ID of the
bidders, they could add them to their Blocked Bidder Lists so they would be
unable to successfully place a bid on the item.
Yeager said Snipe Hunter does not reveal the identity of the bidder. He
wasn't sure how sellers would use the information, but knowing that a
product has attracted snipe bids or has been added to eBay Watch lists may
be helpful.
Snipe Hunter alerts the seller to the snipe bid shortly after the bid has
been placed, when the sniping service pings the auction to gather
information. "There are characteristic features that a referring document
has that always appear when someone is using a sniping service," Yeager
said.
Sellathon's ViewTracker will also inform sellers when an auction has been
added to a visitor's "My eBay" page. Visitors interested in an auction may
place it in their eBay "Watch" list (in their My eBay profile), allowing
them to monitor the auction before placing a bid. ViewTracker will alert the
auction's seller when this happens.
Yeager has gotten a positive response to ViewTracker, reporting 2,000 users
have signed up for the free trial, and he's been getting a 25% conversion to
paid users. (The service launched last month.)
"Just as there are search-engine optimization services today for Web sites,
I predict there will be auction optimization services," Yeager said. He's
confident in the value of his service; he's already filed three patent
applications to protect ViewTracker technology.
-------------- sig file ----------- *There is no conclusive evidence that life is serious*
posted on December 10, 2003 04:39:04 PM new
Very interesting! For the life of me, I don't understand why a seller would try to prevent ANY bid, including a snipe bid. A bid is a bid, isn't it? Snipers only win if another bidder hasn't put a high enough proxy on an item. I'd love to hear the other side to this.
___________________________________
"In order to avoid poverty, just do three things: finish high school, marry before having a child, and don't have that child until you're at least 20 years old. Only 8% of people who do all three of these things wind up poor, but a staggering 79% of those who fail to do them wind up in poverty." ~William Galston
posted on December 10, 2003 06:18:31 PM new
Amen Roadsmith! If a seller didn't allow snipes, I'd either do one manually (if I HAD to have it) or ignore the auction if I found another seller or I wasn't going to be at my computer. I would NOT NOT NOT bid early on the auction!
posted on December 10, 2003 06:45:29 PM new
I learned early on to wait till almost the end of the auction. I LOVE SNIPE BIDS. I LOVE ALL BIDS. As long as their money is good, I'm cool with it.
posted on December 11, 2003 04:29:32 AM new
I wonder if a sniping alert might have a calming effect on nervous sellers. If an item is not getting many bids but shows a lot of snipes are coming the seller might be less inclined to pull the auction.
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“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
posted on December 11, 2003 07:38:13 AM new
Would be really cool if eBay bought this technology and added it as a feature - so potential bidders would see if an auction had snipe bids.
posted on December 12, 2003 08:04:17 PM new
[For the life of me, I don't understand why a seller would try to prevent ANY bid, including a snipe bid. A bid is a bid, isn't it? Snipers only win if another bidder hasn't put a high enough proxy on an item. I'd love to hear the other side to this.
]
I don't like them, because my items will go the entire wek without a single bid- and then there are nly two or three bids at the end, and the item goes for too low a price. I used to start my wands at a dollar and watch people fight over them. I let the market decide the value, and it was commeasurate with the time I put into each hand-crafted item. Now, if I want my minimum, I have to start the auction there.
Sniping doesn't give bidders the chance to attach themselves to an item and be willing to fight for it. I hate sniping programs.
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
posted on December 13, 2003 12:37:14 AM new
I had a friend snipe an auction and the person he beat threatened to report him to ebay... He was kind of paniced about it (he doesn't know too much about ebay), until I told him that bidding was not agianst the rules, in fact it was encouraged. He sent the poor sport an email encouraging him to report...
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. B. Franklin
