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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 the maximum exposure, ie 10 days. Surely holding your auction longer would give bidders more opportunities and thus result in a higher selling 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 if you 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 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 weekend peak 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. Items in this category would include those offering goods for business users.
If your item is targeted at businesses, you want people to bid on your item while they’re at work. In these cases, make sure your auction covers business days and ends 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 below.)
b) Known popularity of the article
If you know your item is very popular and your past experience shows that it will always sell at or above the price you want, 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 sorting facilities after search
Whenever an eBay user uses eBay search, the default is to return 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 be held 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 note that a large proportion of bidding activity takes place towards the end of an auction. this is natural. Buyers look for bargains. If they can 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 they’re interested in.)
However, the search engine can easily reorder the list of returned titles. A popular option is to reorder the list in the “just listed” sequence. The top of the list will now display auctions that have been recently 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 moment, the number of days ahead that you select as the duration. However, if you are offering your item internationally, you should be aware of the time zone you are targeting in terms of the end point of the auction.
For example, in the US, half of all eBay members reside in the Eastern time zone. So an auction that ends at 10pm Pacific Time is fine for West Coast eBay members, but on the East Coast it’s 1am! Therefore, 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 anytime, anywhere 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 to use 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 auction duration dynamically. You need to be monitoring your auctions closely, meaning around the clock, to pull off 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 list. Therefore, it is advantageous to keep the time remaining on 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 over 12 hours left, access 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, access 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 automatically close. If you have another same or similar item to sell, you can republish it.
f) Fixed Price Auctions – Multiple Items
With a fixed price auction for multiple items, I would recommend that you set the auction duration to the maximum: 10 days or 7 days if you are 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 length of the auction, even if 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 the 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 are selling items that you know from experience will definitely be purchased at acceptable prices, then you can reduce the duration.
I hope you find this best auction duration selection scheme helpful.