Auction Start and End times are entered on Page 3, “Pictures and Details:”
When should you start and end an auction? Different circumstances (and experts) will give you varying answers on the best times and days to conduct your auction. If you have a time sensitive item such as concert tickets, you’ll probably want to offer your items in a one-day auction, however, a majority of auctions do not fall into this category and deserve other considerations.
In general, the best time to end an auction is between 9 and 11 PM (Eastern) on Sundays as this is the time when more people are browsing auctions than any other time.
If you are competing with products or services similar to other businesses, you will already be familiar with your competition. When are the most successful competitors making their sales? What day of the week do their auctions start on? Are they 3-day auctions, 7-day auctions or 10-day auctions? Understanding your competitions success is key to your success.
Don’t forget the tools we examined as a part of Step 3. Andale Tools and Hammertap’s Deep Analysis provide information about when auctions are most successful.
Suppose you have that niche product or service, with no competition. How do you determine the best start and end times for your auction? In the case of a niche product you will have to gather the information over time by varying the days and times for your auctions. If it is a true niche product that people can’t wait to get their hands on, you’ll have success no matter when your auction starts and ends (with the exception of end times occurring during eBay scheduled maintenance), however, there will still be time periods where you will net more bids than others so track your sales history and fine-tune your auction times to achieve the highest level of success.
There are a few days of the year that don’t see the auction traffic that others do. eBay will even typically offer listing specials around those times because there are fewer participants, both on the seller and buyer sides of the business. Typically one time sellers should avoid is an auction ending on a Holiday weekend. While this “is” a good time to find some bargains as the buyer, I have personally seen items not sell, or sell well below the expected value as the seller.
This may not be the best place to note this, but it is important for your business planning. Seasonal products are just that, seasonal. If you sell lawn care products you will obviously start to see the business fall off in August and start to pick up again in March. If you sell snow shovels, you may not see business until some region of the country has their 1st snow, and then business will start to fall off around January or February. If you are selling winter clothes, business will start to pick up in September and fall off in January. Clothing will typically follow what you see in the stores, although it may lag by a month or so when people can’t find the item they wanted to buy in the store and turn to eBay as their alternative supplier. If you are targeting Christmas sales, don’t expect to start selling in November or December. If your product is not a niche product, those selling similar products are already beginning to lower their prices to close out inventory. Christmas season (for the seller), really starts in late September through October. You make the larger margins during those months for the more popular products. As in all cases, there are exceptions, however, you can’t always plan business success around exceptions. You have to be there for the exceptions, but the success of your business should be planned around the norms of activity.