August 16th, 2009 by Skip McGrath

The answer may surprise you.

I saw an article in the San Francisco Chronicle Online edition this week about finding the best time and day to end an auction. Theoretically you want to end an auction when the most number of people are on eBay. Conventional wisdom and some data mining has indicated that Sunday and Monday evening between 5PM and 8PM (Pacific time) is the best time to end an auction.

If you sell on eBay, picking the best time is very important for two reasons:

1. eBay’s search engine in the default Best Match mode gives auctions ending soonest the best exposure.
2. You want this exposure to occur when there are the highest number of people on eBay.

Now, obviously you wouldn’t want to end an auction at 2AM or on Sunday morning at 8AM when everyone is sleeping in or having a leisurely breakfast and watching Sunday Morning but eBay Prime Time may not be the best time.

For the past few weeks I have been experimenting with listing on different days and times and the results have been surprising. Yes it does turn out that Sunday or Monday is often the best day, but often the second best day results in higher selling prices.  I have also been cross checking my data with the HammerTap research tool and it revealed some more surprises –and even some answers.

I am working on a large article for the next issue of my newsletter. (You can read the current issue and subscribe here). I will present my data and discuss some of the reasons this is happening. But take my word for it –the conventional wisdom could be very wrong. In the meantime, if you are not using a research tool such as HammerTap, then you should sign up for a free trial right away and check your products to learn the best time and day to end your listings. You may have some surprises too.

See Also

• How To Start and Run an eBay Consignment Business has been revised and updated for 2009.
  Learn how any eBay seller can enter this low risk highly profitable eBay business with almost no investment