In case you're not familiar with the term, “sniping” an auction refers to holding off a bid until the last minutes of the auction. Essentially, you come out of nowhere with your bid to try to win the item.
Sniping makes good sense for the buyer. Bidding early, on the other hand, is good for the seller. What does bidding early accomplish? The item gets more attention in the listings, because it has bids. They stick out more. More people look at the auction. More people consider bidding. A few do. Auction gets more attention because it has more bids. And so on. Until you have a higher bid.
Sniping the auction denies the seller this additional exposure, and there's a better chance that you can get the item for the price you want. There's no harm in waiting until the end of the auction, as long as you have a fresh internet connection (my ISP kicks me off at regular intervals whether I'm surfing or not) or pay a sniping service like AuctionSniper.com a small fee to snipe the auction for you while you're away from the computer.
If your “mental” maximum bid (“mental” because you haven't actually bid yet) is $50, and the auction is going for $35, you can proxy bid $50 (or bid $50.05 if you want to try to win by a nickel if someone bid $50 even!) just as easily at the end as at the beginning. And, you might beat someone who was away from the computer right before the internet gavel fell. On the other hand, if the auction is going for $60 by the end, you wouldn't have won anyway at your price, so it doesn't matter!
So instead of “Bid Early, Bid Often” it should be “Bid Late, Bid Once!”
