Have you ever lost a bid on eBay? I will be surprised if you have not. For me, I lost quite often before I found out the trick. It is quite simple to understand and it is more of “thought” than anything else.

eBay does have guide on how to do automatic bidding. However, it lacks the thought that putting higher bid live allows other bidders to bid more. Thus, the price of the product goes up! There is gain to seller as he/she gets high price and eBay who could take cut on higher value. Really buyer is paying higher price when he/she could get away with less. Right let’s get to the point!

 You have an item to bid. You know your buying power. Now, all you have to do is decide the maximum amount you could afford to pay for this item.

 STEP 1. Open up the listing page

Say for example you could afford to pay maximum £100 for this bike. This is quite popular with 31 bidding at the time of writing. Quite impressive!  You must have noticed the automatic bidding is shown as light grey. There is automatic increment in bids by 50p (orange circle) in early history and latest automatic increment is £1.0 (green circle).

The next bid it is expecting is £67.00, £2.00 above current maximum bid. So if there is automatic bidding in place the bidding goes up by £2.00. The increment in bidding differs when there is sudden change on the bid. However, there is only minimal change in the incremental automatic bidding so you are safe!

STEP 2. Open another browser window and arrange the size as shown below so that you can view both windows.

STEP 3 Put maximum amount you could afford to pay for this item, £100 in this example and click place bid. (Remember click only “Place Bid”)

You have screen like this. Do not confirm the bid.

Step 4 Leave the second window and stay on first window. You will notice the changes in bidding. If somebody bids more than £100 you lost it. You could not have afforded it anyway! Move to the second screen in last 2 minutes. When there are last 10-15 seconds left, click “confirm bid”. Now either you won or did not buy the item which could not afford.

The interesting bid is, you will pay for the item lot lesser price compare to normal bidding system which increases the value of the bike or automatic bidding system which allows other bidders to bid higher than yours.

The trick on this is to give a thought what you could afford and bid at the last minute. Love me or hate me, leave your comments !