Question:
Many thanks for the thoughtful, detailed response. Excellent advice. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Has anybody collected data he/she would like to share regarding whether there are specific days of the week that are better than others for starting a standard 5-day eBay listing? I’m especially interested in knowing whether it is good or bad to either start or end an auction cycle on weekend days. Caveats: 1) Most people willing to share such information, myself included, don’t do enough volume on ebay, or have not made a study of it enough, to provide accurate information. 2) You may find a broader group of opinions on alt.marketing.online.ebay, to which I have cross-posted this. 3) General information may not be useful if you are doing coin-specific auctions. Having said that: Many people find that seven days is the optimum time for most items, with 10 days for stuff that just absolutely needs the exposure, and three days for time sensitive items like common ram, silver and gold bullion, and others that have rapidly changing market prices. If I had to guess, I would say five day auctions are the least popular of the four Sunday evenings from 7-11 Eastern are far and away the most popular time to end auctions, and since seven day auctions are the standard length, to start them. The biggest problem with that is sunday evenings are the most likely time for ebay to break down, which means you’ll have a hard time posting, and your last-minute bidders won’t get their bids in. It’s not at all unusual for an item to double in the last 15 minutes. It’s a good idea to have your auctions span a weekend, which is the time most people have to play around on ebay. Auctions ending on weekdays should close between 8-11 Eastern, which is not too late for Eastern zoners, and after work for Left Coasters. If you insist on five days, that means wednesday, thursday or friday starts. By starting on a saturday evening, you’ve missed half the weekend browsers. Items likely to appeal to someone in an office environment are probably better off ending during a weekday afternoon, between 3-5 Eastern. I like to end my auctions at 9:45 Eastern, monday evening. Still time for quick transactions to ship tuesday, and the rst of the week to ship everything else, plus less likelihood of crashes. Of course, they could solve a large part of the overload by making auctions last 3, 6, 8 and 10 days. That way the starting and ending times would always be on two different days of the week. If you’re serious about ebaying, you should run a series of test auctions with the same item ending at different times and see what happens. — We have all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare…Thanks to AOL, we know this is not possible.
Response:
| . Three | days is long enough for the listing to get into ebay’s search engine and | sell quickly. | You mean is *supposed* to be long enough. Not lately, at least from time to time.
Response:
Many people find that seven days is the optimum time for most items, with 10 days for stuff that just absolutely needs the exposure, and three days for time sensitive items like common ram, silver and gold bullion, and others that have rapidly changing market prices. If I had to guess, I would say five day auctions are the least popular of the four. I am new to this online auctioning so sorry for my ignorance. Why not auction it for the whole 10 days instead of 3 or 7? The auctioning price cannot go down after people bid on it. If you auction it for more days the highest bid can only do 2 things: stay at the same price which doesn’t hurt, or go up. I must be missing something.
Technically, the price could go down if a bidder cancels a bid. Also, Ebay recently began charging an extra 10 cents to list 10 day auctions.
Response:
I am new to this online auctioning so sorry for my ignorance. Why not auction it for the whole 10 days instead of 3 or 7? The auctioning price cannot go down after people bid on it. If you auction it for more days the highest bid can only do 2 things: stay at the same price which doesn’t hurt, or go up. I must be missing something.
Same reason we count by tens instead of sevens. Weeks are seven days, where ten days start and end on different days, requiring sellers to keep track of two days of the week instead of one. Maybe thursday is your day off, and you work sunday. If everything starts and ends on the same day of the week, it’s easier to remember. You can do your listings and closing notices all on the same day off. There is also a small premium for 10 days. Not enough to hurt, but a premium nonetheless. Ten days can also be a long time to wait for an auction to end, so a buyer may find a similar item offered that ends sooner. Or they can mean to bid near the end of your auction, and since it’s over a week away, just forget about it. The advantage to three day auctions are for items with high price volatility. No one is going to commit themselves to a price for an ounce of gold at auction when it can go down $10 the next day. Such an item would not get any serious bids until the last day, even on a ten day auction, so the other seven days are nothing more than a delay and wasted time. Three days is long enough for the listing to get into ebay’s search engine and sell quickly. Three day auctions are also useful for standard items that are good sellers, because they allow you to sell 2-3 items in the same time you could sell one on a 7-10 day auction. BTW, prices can go down at any time before the close. It’s called bid retraction, and it’s often used in cases where it shouldn’t be allowed, but that’s the breaks. — We have all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare…Thanks to AOL, we know this is not possible.
Response:
Many people find that seven days is the optimum time for most items, with 10 days for stuff that just absolutely needs the exposure, and three days for time sensitive items like common ram, silver and gold bullion, and others that have rapidly changing market prices. If I had to guess, I would say five day auctions are the least popular of the four.
I am new to this online auctioning so sorry for my ignorance. Why not auction it for the whole 10 days instead of 3 or 7? The auctioning price cannot go down after people bid on it. If you auction it for more days the highest bid can only do 2 things: stay at the same price which doesn’t hurt, or go up. I must be missing something.
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Many people find that seven days is the optimum time for most items, with 10 days for stuff that just absolutely needs the exposure, and three days for time sensitive items like common ram, silver and gold bullion, and others that have rapidly changing market prices. If I had to guess, I would say five day auctions are the least popular of the four. I am new to this online auctioning so sorry for my ignorance. Why not auction it for the whole 10 days instead of 3 or 7? The auctioning price cannot go down after people bid on it. If you auction it for more days the highest bid can only do 2 things: stay at the same price which doesn’t hurt, or go up. I must be missing something.
Some people don’t have the inclination to keep an item on their radar screen for 10 days. Takes more patience than most people have. Steve
Response:
Has anybody collected data he/she would like to share regarding whether there are specific days of the week that are better than others for starting a standard 5-day eBay listing? I’m especially interested in knowing whether it is good or bad to either start or end an auction cycle on weekend days.
Caveats: 1) Most people willing to share such information, myself included, don’t do enough volume on ebay, or have not made a study of it enough, to provide accurate information. 2) You may find a broader group of opinions on alt.marketing.online.ebay, to which I have cross-posted this. 3) General information may not be useful if you are doing coin-specific auctions. Having said that: Many people find that seven days is the optimum time for most items, with 10 days for stuff that just absolutely needs the exposure, and three days for time sensitive items like common ram, silver and gold bullion, and others that have rapidly changing market prices. If I had to guess, I would say five day auctions are the least popular of the four Sunday evenings from 7-11 Eastern are far and away the most popular time to end auctions, and since seven day auctions are the standard length, to start them. The biggest problem with that is sunday evenings are the most likely time for ebay to break down, which means you’ll have a hard time posting, and your last-minute bidders won’t get their bids in. It’s not at all unusual for an item to double in the last 15 minutes. It’s a good idea to have your auctions span a weekend, which is the time most people have to play around on ebay. Auctions ending on weekdays should close between 8-11 Eastern, which is not too late for Eastern zoners, and after work for Left Coasters. If you insist on five days, that means wednesday, thursday or friday starts. By starting on a saturday evening, you’ve missed half the weekend browsers. Items likely to appeal to someone in an office environment are probably better off ending during a weekday afternoon, between 3-5 Eastern. I like to end my auctions at 9:45 Eastern, monday evening. Still time for quick transactions to ship tuesday, and the rst of the week to ship everything else, plus less likelihood of crashes. Of course, they could solve a large part of the overload by making auctions last 3, 6, 8 and 10 days. That way the starting and ending times would always be on two different days of the week. If you’re serious about ebaying, you should run a series of test auctions with the same item ending at different times and see what happens. — We have all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare…Thanks to AOL, we know this is not possible.
If you like this post and would like to receive updates from this blog, please subscribe our feed.