It's usually when auctions are about to end that they get
half their bids ' sometimes that's when they get their only
bids. If you want your item to sell for a good price, then,
it makes no sense to let it finish on a day and time when
no-one's going to be around to place bids or buy.
Selling to Business consumers.
If you're selling business equipment and have mostly
business customers, you should really aim to have your
auctions finishing between 9am and 5pm on weekdays. It is
worth, however, trying to avoid mornings and avoiding the
'lead-in' and 'lead-out' that takes place on Monday and
Friday themselves.
Selling to Home consumers.
If most of your sales are to private customers having it
shipped to their own home, then you want your auctions to
finish when these kind of customers will be around.
Unfortunately, these times are the opposite of what they
are for the business customers. The ideal time to catch a
home customer is on a Sunday evening.
Listing Durations.
In order to get your listings to end on a particular day,
you can simply change the duration of your auctions
depending on what day it is. For example, if you mostly
sell to home consumers and the day today is Thursday, then
your auction needs to run for either 3 or 10 days to hit a
Sunday. If you sell more to business and the day today is
Friday, then:
a 1 day auction would not be good (finishing on Saturday
and no-one will be around to buy or bid), 3 days would be
alright (Monday), 5 days would be good (Wednesday), 7 days
would be good (another Friday), and 10 days would be good
as well (Monday again).
You could draw up a little timetable of when you should and
shouldn't be listing depending on the days of the week '
make it red, amber and green, traffic light style, and
stick it on your wall. You'll want to experiment to find
what day is the best day to end an auction, or you can use
a variety of web-based research tools to determine what day
and what auction duration is best for you product.
Scheduled Listings.
Of course, if that all sounds like too much trouble then
there is an easier ' if slightly more expensive ' way of
doing things. Simply use any of the many tools that let you
schedule listings (almost all listing programs and sites
do) ' you can set the start date for any day and time you
feel like.
Be aware that you will have to pay a few cents per listing
for this if you do it through eBay. With some software, you
may also need to leave your computer on all the time, so
the software can start the auctions when it's supposed to.
The advantage of this method, however, is that there will
be no per-listing fee, since the auctions were scheduled
through your computer and not through eBay. Check out
Turbolister 2.0. It is free from eBay. You can create as
many auctions as you want and Turbolister will calculate
listing fees and upload all the auctions you want all at
the same time.
Also consider that listing durations can be used to
generate a sense of urgency, especially with sought after
items. This can appeal to the impulse buyer and urge then
to bid now rather than wait. Sometimes a 1 or 3 day
auction works best.
----------------------------------------------------
Allen Owen is an enthusiastic home business entrepreneur
and engineer. Have a look at his eBay tips e-zine:
http://www.thedigitalresevoir.com
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