The Best Time to Start and End Your eBay Auctions

The Best Time to Start and End Your eBay Auctions 

When you’re selling an item on eBay, you can maximize your chance of success
(and your final selling price) by making sure that your auction is exposed to as many people as possible.

That means listing your item for a full seven days, and
making sure that the auction ends when as many potential buyers as possible
are home to make last-second snipes.

So the question is—when are most eBay users at home and at their computers?
It’s easy enough to determine bad times to list. List during the day and too many
potential buyers are at work or at school. List during the very late evening (after
midnight, let’s say), and too many potential buyers are asleep. List on a Friday
or Saturday night and too many potential buyers are out dining or partying.


This leaves a small window of highest opportunity. You want to start (and thus
end) your auctions during prime time hours—and that means prime time on
both coasts. Remember, when it’s 8:00 P.M. in New York, it’s only 5:00 P.M. in
California, and many users aren’t home for work yet. And when it’s 9:00 in
California, it’s midnight in New York, and many users are already in bed. The
prime auction ending time, then, is between 9:00 P.M. and 11:00 P.M. EST, or
between 6:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M. PST. That will catch most users at home and in
front of their computers.

Which day of the week is best? Remember, Friday and Saturday are bad. Other
weekdays are better, but you still run into a lot of folks on business trips or
attending school events. The best day, by a hair, is Sunday, when a higher percentage of people are likely to be home and ready to bid.
Combine all this information, and you’ll schedule the majority of your auctions
to end on Sunday evening, between 9:00 P.M. and 11:00 P.M. on the East Coast.

Start Your Auctions on a Time Delay

But what if you’re not home on Sunday evening to start your auctions? eBay lets
you list your auctions at your convenience and schedule them to start automatically at a later time. This feature will cost you 10 cents to use, but it’s worth it if you can’t afford to be tied to your computer every Sunday evening.
To schedule a specific start time for your auction, make sure you select the
Schedule to Start On option when you’re creating your auction listing.