Best time to finish an Auction

[datsunpartsinoz]

Hello there.

What day of the week and time of day have Sellers found works best from experience?

Thanks for your time.

[springyzone]

I'm a buyer these days but I would guess a time when people are likely to be home and able to be online. Maybe a week night, about 8pm?

Not that many sales are via auction these days and I know some people used to use proxy bidders too.

I was going to say the weekend but that is when a lot of people go out, so I think, on the whole, a week night might work better.

[siddieswans]

For the last 20 years I have run 2 auctions per week, one ending 4-4.30pm Sunday, one 4-4.30 pm Tuesday (I am on holidays atm). At the time I carefully considered the Sunday one as being convenient for the buyers, the Tuesday one was convenient for me (gave me the rest of the week to pack and post before the weekend, so long as the buyers paid promptly.) However even at  that time many were using snipers.

Points to consider: Many people will never look at auctions, they want immediate gratification. No matter when you end an auction, you will almost always get someone who says immediately afterwards “I forgot to bid.” There is little point in running an auction when an item has a generally accepted value and / or is readily available elsewhere.

It looks as though the vast majority of your items sell as BIN, the few that sell through auction have just been attracting the one  (very low) opening bid. Perhaps your items are not ideal for auctions? In which case it wouldn’t matter when you ended them. If you are doing OK with BIN I would suggest you stick with that. Good luck.

[lezned-toycollector]

Best time to finish an Auction

2008

[davewil1964]

That's when I stopped using them, as that was the time store items showed up in searches.

[lezned-toycollector]

My point exactly 

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

many years ago, when I was selling often, I chose Sunday night around 8pm to end auctions.  This gave people a chance to watch the news, have dinner,  and then sit back and bid on auctions that ended before bedtime.  It also gave them time to receive an invoice and pay.

I would then post on my way to work on Monday morning.

This worked well for some time, but, as others have pointed out, auctions aren't like they used to be.

[pirie661 · Accepted solution]

Sunday Evening around 8-9pm

[chameleon54]

I still run just about everything I list through an auction first before relisting unsold items as BINS. Every item is started at the price I intend to list the item for as BIN later. ( my auction starting price is my BIN price )

Several reasons -

* There's still a few buyers who only look at auctions as they think they might have more chance of getting a bargain that way.

* It puts time pressure on the buyer to bid as they cant be sure some-one else wont bid late in the auction, or the seller may not relist the item. ie. it pressures them to actually buy rather than think about it if they want the item.

* Most importantly, every now and again, I still get a bidding war with the item eventually selling for much more than I would have sold it as a BIN. ( sometimes up to double what I would have sold the item for )

Its a simple matter after auctions have run to go to unsold items and click, relist at fixed price. Only takes a few seconds. I usually end auctions during the work day from 10 am to 3.30 pm, usually earlier in the week. I use scheduling outside this time if I want to list at other times of the day.

On one selling account I still regularly sell around 10% of all items through auction.

[domino-710]

Ethically - most are are at work - 10am - 3.30pm.

The rest - Ho hum.