Why do people bid at the very last moment?

[breatheslowly]

I don't really get this. Why not just put in your maximum bid and sit back and see if you have won?

Because if you put a bid on early other people may put on bids which rises your bid. I like to swoop at the last minute as I'm more likely to win and get a good price.

I bid 10 seconds before closing, that way no-one has chance to outbid me [hgrin]

Sometimes, by bidding early, all you're doing is putting the price up.

also there are some unscrupulous sellers who get their friends to bid, to up your bid once they know you are interested

To get the best price.

I often keep an eye out for things that I'd like to buy, but I don't actually need - like perfumes and such. If I see one that is going for a bargain price I'll keep my eye on it and may put a low bid in at the last minute - if I win it then to me it's a bargain. Someone else may have wanted it more and been prepared to pay more, but if they weren't keeping their eye on it for the last minute then I've grabbed myself a good deal. If I'd bid early they would have just outbid me.

the rule is bid as late as possible, bid once and bid your best price.

no point getting into a bidding war days before an item ends - I always try to bid in the last 10 seconds, then no one else, hopefully, has time to outbid you.

Thanks for all of the replies, I will need to brush up on my tactics.

gixen.com is your friend

i only ever bid at the last minute, not tried one of those sniper websites yet, had heard they can be a bit unreliable.

Last 10 seconds? That's a bit early, I wait till 3-4 seconds left. You need a clock that has seconds on it!

So if you're selling on eBay how do u actually make any money?
I'm currently doing a big clearout to make space for new baby I've sold about £1000 of stuff for around £60 after postage costs so far and it really does make me feel a bit sick to send someone a designer dress that I've worn once for £10 when it cost £180 to start with, on top of that it turns out to be bigger/heavier than I thought so I made a loss on the postage :-0 I did really expect to get better bids than I'm getting!

You need to weigh the item and calculate posting before you advertise it so you don't loose on postage. Also look for similar items to see what they are selling for and if you don't' want an item to go for a ridiculously low price then put a reserve on although this may put people off.

It's the time it take to put an item on that put me off. The photographs and weighing it and calculating postage and packing then trying to describe it accurately so that noone says 'hey you described this as nearly new but it says 1838 on the base'

The simple things are best, the ones that you can just enter a barcode etc and it comes up with it all...but I haven't got any of those to sell, mine are all one off tat antiques

loose lose

i do last 20 seconds, have been caught out before with dodgy internet connection, i was left hanging in cyberspace and missed bidding completely!

I used Goofbay for an item last night and won

Normally I leave it till 8/9 seconds to go.

Edward - maybe start at a higher price? I start at what I would be happy to get for an item and any bids higher is a bonus. Check out similar items and see what they go for.

you need to start items at a higher price, and have them ending at the right time of day. Use a reserve if you have to.

When I start at a higher price no one ever bids at all. Obviously people are looking for a real bargain ATM

I've just been guessing postage, as I'm listing around 20 things per week and it's too time consuming as it is baby's due in oct so I have about 6weeks to clear everything out of the room to give us time to decorate it.

It's not that difficult to calculate postage. I use kitchen scales and Royal Mail's pricing tool. I probably spend as much time as I would if I was just thinking about it. Are you doing title descriptons well? I don't use words people don't search for such as like, with, and, for, gorgeous, look, etc. Make sure you do your photos well. Put dark things on/in front of a light, plain well-lit background and vice versa. If a dress doesn't hang well on a hanger, show it lying down instead. And as others say, start the listing at a price you're happy to receive.
If you're doing all this and they're still not selling, then I don't have a clue what suggest!

I'd advise good photographs and reasonable chatty descriptions, oh yes and agree with thinking about what people will be searching for (eg no one searches for "L@@K"!). I start everything at 99p, no reserve and don't take the piss with postage.

I made £180 last week selling old clothes of my dad's though were Rohan etc things which probably cost him £50ish each new - you're never going to get your money back so don't think of it that way, think of it as clearing clutter and making money at the same time :) I've sold £50-100 Monsoon tops for example for a couple of quid

Take your pics in natural daylight and don't cut the legs off the pic like my mum does.

Please don't call him Edward. Thanks

Don't call who Edward?

The user name EdwardorEricCantDecide - i assume she (he?) is choosing a baby name, and my ex-Twatface had this name.

Oh I see, I was assuming she was trying to decide between Edward (Twilight) and Eric (True Blood)

EdwardorEricCantDecide The starting price thing is important if you don't want things to sell to cheaply. So you might have one person that's put in a bid of £50 and the next highest bidder but in £10. Then the higher bidder will win at £11 I think it is, even though they were willing to pay more.