If you bid for a few things on eBay, the chances are that sooner or later youll end up getting your bid beaten at the very last second by a sniper. This can be a frustrating experience, and while in theory sniping is against the rules and you can report it to eBay, in practice they never do anything about it.
The bad news is that theres only one way to beat the sniper and thats to become the sniper. The good news, though, is that once you understand sniping you can use it to win auctions at a far lower price than you would otherwise.
Manual Sniping.
Manual sniping isnt that hard, if you have a lot of time to spare and a reasonably fast Internet connection. Write down when each auction that are bidding on ends, and then make sure that youre sitting there in front of the page for that vital last minute. You can then outbid the current winning bidder, or defend your own winning bid.
The only tip you really need to remember for manual sniping is to make sure that you set your maximum bid quite high otherwise you might be automatically outbid, and the auction will have ended before you can bid again.
Also, its not worth your time to compete...