Timing Your Auctions --

When to start your auctions to get the most bids, and how to do it

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The following article was written for GoTo Auctions (formerly known as AuctionRover). The rights have reverted to the author.

Most bidding occurs in the last couple hours of an auction. For items that are common, many people won't even bother to look at auctions that have days or even a week left to go. Rather they'll click on the ones that are ending soon. That way they may get the immediate gratification of finding the item they want and winning it on the same night, and they also can have a clearer idea of the likely ending price before getting emotionally involved. Hence the auctions that end on the day of the week and at the time of day when most customers are connected will get the best results.

The two top auction sites, eBay and Amazon, don't give you a choice of when your auction will end. At those sites, the time of day that you start is the time of day that you end. If you start your auction at 7 AM EST (which might be convenient for you -- taking care of it before leaving for work), it will end at 7 AM EST (which might be terrible in terms of how many potential bidders are connected at that time of day). So you have to plan ahead and post at the right time to get the right setup. And if getting high bids on your auctions matters to you, you might have to rearrange your life. For instance, it might turn out that Monday evening is the best ending time for your category of merchandise, but that's your bowling night or bridge night, or you don't want to miss Allie McBeal. Or the unexpected happens frequently, and you miss the perfect time slot, and wind up waiting another day or another week before posting. Even if you can free up the right time, if you have dozens of items you want to post, it will difficult to get them all in with an end time close to what you want.

Yahoo does let you choose your closing time (pick any hour, Pacific Time); but you can't afford to miss the more interesting opportunities at eBay and Amazon.

Fortunately, as part of their Auction Manager service, AuctionRover allows you to schedule your auctions -- for eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo -- to post at whatever time you choose. You can schedule your auctions up to a month in advance, and can schedule them to start during any 15-minute time period.

So how can you take advantage of this new flexibility and control? When should you schedule your auctions to end? What day of the week? And what time of day do you want your auctions to end, to make it more likely that interested buyers will be connected during the final, potentially exciting and hectic moments of your auctions?

The market fluctuations for different kinds of goods tend to be different.

People buying for hobbies and personal use are likely to connect evenings and weekends, or maybe over lunch break from work. People buying items for use at work, may prefer business hours.

Also, remember time zones. 6 AM on the East Coast of the US, pretty much rules out participation from the West Coast where the time would be 3 AM; but might be convenient for folks in London, where it is 11 AM. If you end auctions at around noon Eastern Time, that will allow Western Europe and California to get involved in last minute auction frenzy for your items.

Also, remember that the audience is global. If you have a potentially large market south of the Equator, the seasons are reversed there (winter there when summer here). And for Australia and the Far East, noon time there is midnight on the East Coast of the US.

From my experience selling collectibles, I do best with auctions that end on weekends -- Saturday a little better than Sunday. And 9 PM Eastern Time works best for me as an end time. For others who are selling new and refurbished merchandise, like digital cameras and computer gear, week days may be better than weekends.

So how important is timing to you?

If this is just a lucrative hobby and you've been selling for a few months or more, you own personal experience and instinct may be enough to go by. What has worked best for you in the past and when would you go on line to bid on similar items? Then consider where in the world your bidders are likely to be concentrated, and adjust for time zones.

On the other hand, if you are going to sell a number of items in the same category, and this is a business for you, you may want to do some serious research. Use the search function at your favorite auction site. For your particular category, check the ending days/times of auctions for items similar to yours, and log the results. Noon on Saturday might be great, but noon on Tuesday terrible. Also, log the months, looking for seasonal variations. There may be a significant seasonal dip over the summer. Also, check to see if the duration of auctions seems to make a difference in the final price (at eBay you can choose 3, 5, 7, or 10 days; at Amazon 1, 3, 5, 7, or 14; at Yahoo any number of days from 2 to 10).

Then, using AuctionRover's Auction Manager, you can do all the input for your auctions at the time that is convenient for you, and schedule you posting for the optimal times. And if there are seasonal variations, you can use that information to schedule your much-needed vacation.

Other auction articles by Richard Seltzer

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