I guess when you look at it...sniping is good for buyers, bad for sellers and ebay. Id imagine since the widespread adoption of sniping, ebay has suffered lower final commission fee's...what makes up for it is the ever increasing stream of new ebayers, as the internet enters more and more homes, and the professionalism of many ebay sellers these days who treat it as a job, and make a living from it.
Its bad for sellers on a couple fronts:
- "possibly" lower overall sale price because you dont get competition between buyers
- less people browsing your auction because the fewer bids on it, the less attraction it will garner from those surfing ebay's listings. Look at it this way, if you see a full page of forum posts, and out of the page there are 10 threads with no replies, and 1 thread with 5 replies, which do you think your going to look at first?. The one with the action off course....thats just instinct. Again this may lower the selling price.
Couple of ways a seller can overcome this i guess:
- start at a higher price, which will dissuade buyers off course, but thats an option
- cancel the listing if there are no showing bids. Ive seen a lot of sellers do this, and actually tell buyers in the listing they reserve the right to pull the listing at any time. You loose your insertion fee, but thats the price you pay.
Ebay is really a clearance house i guess. I think if your going to list really good domains on there, you either start low and cancel if no interest, or start at the lowest figure your prepared to accept.