In the earlier days of eBay, the "game" of bidding was a big thing. In recent years, eBay has moved away from auctions and has promoted buy-it-now and fixed price sales a lot more. (A recent change takes fixed price sales out of the "free" 50 listings per month, though).

I have never played the game. I have always set my maximum price, bid it, and never looked back - letting the automatic bidding system do my work for me. I have never raised my bid in 10 years of buying. Some people still do this, but I don't.

I also do not use sniping software. It's probably not as popular now that so much is sold by fixed-price or B-I-N.

As a seller, a large proportion of my sales have been via fixed price and B-I-N in the past couple years, although I have not run the stats.