On eBay, you run your auction for a specific duration. Currently, the options are 1, 3, 5, 7, or 10 days.
But what duration is best for your auction?
In this article, I’ll give you some tips designed to help you answer the question.
You may be wondering why you would want to have less than maximum exposure, ie 10 days. Surely running your auction longer would give bidders more chances and therefore result in a higher sale price? Certainly eBay.com would seem to think so, as they currently charge a $0.20 fee for the privilege of running a 10-day auction.
However, if you have a very popular item or have many identical items to sell, you may want to have a shorter auction duration. Also, it pays to consider the end point of your auction very carefully. Also, if you’re running a fixed-price auction, there’s a little trick you can employ to gain additional exposure.
So, let’s go over the elements to consider in setting up your auction duration.
a) Auction start/end day
In my experience, for most categories, the weekend is by far the busiest viewing period on eBay. I estimate that about 50% of my auction views take place on Saturdays and Sundays. Therefore, when setting the duration of the auction, the peak of the weekend could be important to its success.
If you can arrange to end an auction on Sunday night, you get the benefit of those waiting until the end of the auction to bid, plus the improved viewing traffic numbers that show up over the weekend.
This means that if you post an auction on Tuesday night, a 5-day auction might be good.
Having said that the weekend is the busiest for most categories, some might benefit from a mid-week closing date. Articles in this category would include those offering goods for commercial users.
If your item is targeted at businesses, you want people to bid on your item while they’re at work. In these cases, please ensure that your auction covers business days and concludes during business hours. Office equipment and supplies have also been found to sell well in the morning.
Please note the time you post your auction as that is the exact time it will end several days in advance. There is potentially a big difference between an auction that closes at 10 am on Sunday night and 10 am on Sunday morning. If you can launch your auction to be your first, you could benefit significantly from those extra weekend viewers. (Note the section on time zones later.)
b) Known popularity of the article
If you know your item is very popular and past experience shows that it will always sell at or above your desired price, even outside of normal peak periods, then a 1- or 3-day auction might be appropriate. The benefit of a 1 or 3 day sale is that you can sell more items, faster.
c) Knowledge of eBay’s post-search sorting facilities
Whenever an eBay user uses eBay Search, the default is that it returns the auction titles in the order of the time the auctions have left to run. Auctions that have minutes or seconds to run will appear first in the returned list. Auctions that have more than 9 days to run will run last. And the list can span many, many pages.
Experience has shown that eBay users tend to only look at one or two pages in returned listings. This means that it is important that you place your auction on these first two pages at some point in your life; another reason why a 1 or 3 day auction may be better than a 7 or 10 day auction.
Also keep in mind that a large proportion of bidding activity takes place towards the end of an auction. this is natural. Buyers are looking for bargains. If they can enter with a bid at the end of the auction, they may get the item at a good price and there may not be time for others to outbid. (Buyers can also use “sniper” software, designed to bid as late as possible on auctions that interest them.)
However, the search engine can easily reorder the list of titles returned. One popular option is to reorder the list in the “just listed” sequence. The top of the list will now display auctions that have recently been added to eBay. This is why there is sometimes a flicker of bidding activity at the beginning of an auction, as well as at the end.
d) Time zones
eBay’s default is to start your auction from the moment you submit it. As you know, this means that it will end at that exact time, the number of days ahead that you select as the duration. However, if you are offering your item internationally, you need to take into account the time zone you are targeting in terms of the auction end point.
For example, in the US, half of all eBay members reside in the Eastern Time Zone. So an auction ending at 10pm Pacific Time is fine for West Coast eBay members, but on the East Coast it’s 1am! So you are losing about 50% of potential bidders at a critical point in your auction.
eBay offers an option whereby you can schedule your auction to start at a specific time (and on another day). In fact, you can set your auction to start at any time and day up to 21 days in advance. This means that you can start your auction according to the time that you think will attract the most viewers. There is a small fee for using this feature.
This is a useful capability if you want to create your listings in advance and then post them to eBay in a staged sequence.
e) Fixed Price Auctions – Single Item
I mentioned a little trick earlier. Well here it is. With a fixed price auction for a single item, you might consider managing the duration of the auction dynamically. You must be monitoring your auctions closely, that is, around the clock, to carry out this technique.
When bidders perform a search on eBay, you know that the auctions with the least amount of time remaining appear at the top of the returned listing. Therefore, it is advantageous to keep the remaining time of your auction as short as possible. This is one way you get four bites of that cherry for a single listing fee.
1. Start your 1-day fixed price single item auction. Wait for someone to buy.
2. When the auction has a little over 12 hours left, enter the auction and change the auction duration to 3 days. Yes, you can, as long as there are at least 12 hours left. Wait for someone to buy.
3. When the auction has just over 12 hours left, enter the auction and change the auction duration to 5 days. Wait for someone to buy.
4. When the auction has a little more than 12 hours left, go to the auction and change the auction duration to 7 days. Wait for someone to buy.
5. When the auction has just over 12 hours left, go to the auction and change the auction duration to 10 days. (Don’t forget this will cost you a small fee on eBay.com) Wait for someone to buy.
6. The auction ends naturally.
This may sound complicated, but it really isn’t once you learn how to do it. Of course, at any time during the above process, someone could buy your item and your auction will close automatically. If you have another same or similar item to sell, you can relist it.
f) Fixed Price Auctions – Multiple Items
With a multi-item fixed price auction, I would recommend setting the auction length to the maximum: 10 days, or 7 days if you’re not prepared to absorb the additional fee on eBay.com.
When you have multiple items, it is not recommended to use the chart described above for single item fixed price auctions. This is because as soon as you receive a bid (in this case, it would be a fixed price sale), you cannot change the duration of the auction, even though you still have many of the multiple items to sell.
If you sell all of your items within your chosen 7 or 10 days, the auction automatically closes anyway.
g) Value-based formula
If you’re happier using a value-based formula to set auction duration, here’s my rule of thumb for items I haven’t tried to sell before:
Min Bid amounts Set auction duration to
£5 - £25 ($10 - $50) 5 days
£25 - £100 ($50 - $200) 7 days
Over £100 (Over $200) 7 - 10 days
If you’re selling items that you know from experience will definitely buy at acceptable prices, then you can cut the length.
I hope you find this Best Auction Duration Selection Scheme helpful.
