Sniping Information Sites
Free
news and resources for online auction users
Absolutely the place to go for independent eBay sellers
http://www.ecommercebytes.com/
Winning On eBay
eBay User policehistorian
http://reviews.ebay.com/Winning-on-eBay?ugid=10000000175237629
eSnipe, Sniping, and the eBay Sniper late bidder in Academic Papers
Software agents and the route to the information economy
Jeffrey O. Kephart correctly predicted in 2002 that services like
eSnipe.com with agents like Rovatron would become
increasingly important, and also recognizes eSnipe's role as a pioneer
in the fee-based website model (boo, hiss!).
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/suppl.3/7207.full
The Timing of Bids in Internet Auctions: Market Design, Bidder Behavior, and Artificial Agents [PDF]
Alvin Roth, Harvard, Axel Ockenfels, University of Magdeburg: "One of the most interesting of these bidder agents is the web based service eSnipe.com."
http://kuznets.harvard.edu/~aroth/papers/eBay.ai.pdf
Last-Minute Bidding and the Rules for Ending Second-Price Auctions: Evidence from eBay and Amazon Auctions on the Internet [PDF]
Mentions eSnipe multiple times. "The effect of the fixed deadline is no doubt as large as it is because it rewards late bidding both when other bidders are sophisticated and when they are not.
http://kuznets.harvard.edu/~aroth/papers/eBay.veryshortaer.pdf
Shilling, Squeezing, Sniping: Explaining late bidding in online second-price auctions [PDF]
Close look at sniping and related phenomena. Doesn't mention eSnipe but asserts that sniping is best practice for the ebay sniper.
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/barbaro/BarbaroBracht.pdf
Insights from Internet Auctions
Patrick Bajari, Stanford University, and Ali Hortacsu, University of Chicago: "...bidders should wait until the last minute in order to avoid revealing their private information"
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=467544
Bid Sniping on eBay by Andy Chou [PDF]
"Another reason that makes late bidding rational is to drive the final price down."
www.cramton.umd.edu/econ415/project-internet-auctions.pdf
Asymmetric Information, Adverse Selection and Seller Disclosure: The Case of eBay Motors [PDF]
Gregory Lewis, Harvard University: "... sellers selectively disclose information based on the quality of their vehicle." Briefly mentions sniping. Shockingly, omits mention of eSnipe. We forgive him.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/facseminars/events/applied_microecon/documents/ame_11_07_lewis.pdf
Gone in 60 Seconds: Last-Minute Bidding on eBay Auctions [PDF]
Ike Onur, author of several sniping-related papers discusses late bidding theory and the ebay sniper.
http://wwwdocs.fce.unsw.edu.au/economics/news/VisitorSeminar/Gone%20in%2060%20Seconds%20%20%20Last-Minute%20Bidding%20on%20eBay%20Auctions.pdf
AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF ENDING RULES IN INTERNET AUCTIONS [PDF]
Dan Ariely, Axel Ockenfels, Alvin E. Roth
Ariely is the celebrated author of the groundbreaking "Predictably Irrational". We love the book, so it's amazing see eSnipe mentioned (with a perhaps dubious and certainly now inapplicable statistic about our reliability)
http://www.ifo-geschaeftsklima.info/portal/page/portal/DocBase_Content/WP/WP-CESifo_Working_Papers/wp-cesifo-2003/wp-cesifo-2003-07/cesifo_wp987.pdf
eSnipe Friends
Rovatron: Better Living Through Androids
Autobiography of our favorite eBay sniping bot.
http://www.rovatron.com/