Auction sniping is the process of watching a timed online auction (such as on eBay), and placing a winning bid at the last possible moment (often seconds before the end of the auction), giving the other bidders no time to outbid the sniper. Some bidders do this manually, and others use software designed for the purpose. A bid sniper is a person or software agent who performs auction sniping.

When it comes to eBay I sell far more often than I buy. Recently I was bidding on an electric automatic antenna for my car, and I was outbid with mear seconds to go before the end of the auction. I was sniped! This prompted me to look into applications to help do this myself from my Mac. There are several pay software packages out there but fortunately their is also a nice donation application to do this, JBidwatcher. In fact it is a multi-platform application, but I only tried out the Mac version.

Just tonight I had an auction to try it out on, and it performed flawlessly, outbiding my nearest competitor with seconds to go before the end of the auction.

The software is so simple and easy to setup that it doesn’t require my assistance in retelling how I set it up. I will say that while the GUI is not hideous, it certainly isn’t a pretty Mac application that we’ve become so spoiled with as of late. It has a look and feel of an old web browser with newer icons to me.

If you purchase goods from eBay this is most definitely worth your time.