Best thing to do on Egay is what i do. set yourself a top price. wait till the last 30 second and bid the full ammount you have set. but wait to confirm the bid in the last 10 seconds.
I have won lots of items for next to nothing this way.
If you are a seller then the early bidders are great for you as they are putting up the price.
If you are a buyer then this is more expensive for you.
Always leave your bid to the last seconds..
I use, and have used for the past ten years, a free program called "Bid o Matic" (or biet-o-matic) written by a some german bloke.
Autobids at a (programmable) 3 seconds before end of auction, you can put several auctions in group so it will autobid on them all until you win one of them.
Only downside is that your PC has to stay connected to the net, so if your connection goes down, or you switch of the computer, it won't bid.
Apart from that, I've been very happy with it - it's saved me a fair old amount of money, won me a lot of good stuff at cheap prices - often much less than my highest bid would have been.
Did I mention it's free?