Need advice from other powersellers please...

[canadabeltbuckles]

I am as 'green as grass' when it comes to listing times and days of the week.

eBay allows you to list items for 1, 3, 5, 7 & 10 days.

What have you found, historically, is the best approach to listing your product if you are shipping worldwide?

It is now 2:35 p.m. in Ontario, but certainly there are time differences all over the world...

I would like to for an approach to listing times and ending times, and whether it is better to list on Monday for 5 days, or list on Saturday for 7 days, etc...

When I search for a product, it usually brings up the products that are ending soonest, but of course you can change that to other options including 'best match'.

In your experience, what is the best time and day to list items, and... what day of the week to do it and for how many days...

I could just list items for 5 days and then relist them the next day, then the next day, etc... That way I could have items closing everyday, and I could do it at a certain time of day as well, but I don't think that is a good approach, well, not monetarily anyway...

Do more people view listings on the weekend?

I have checked my sites traffic reports, and it shows the majority of the people viewed my items on a Thursday, and not the weekend, but I can't believe that is the norm...

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Frank

[recped]

It's different for everyone but here how it goes for me.

Day of week: Doesn't matter except I do notice that the amount of "activity" (ie: emails etc) much lower on weekends (same is true for posting on eBay discussion boards).

Time of Day: I sell all over the world, mostly I start listings in the early afternoon (Eastern Time) this means that listings end during "business hours" in the USA & Europe.

I suspect the majority of my buyers access eBay during school/work hours.

I only run 7 day listings, don't see any reason to pay the same fee for less exposure.

There is no one-size-fits-all, different type of products attract different types of buyers and it always "prime time" somewhere in the world.

[dipmicro]

copper, I suggest that you list flatly spread listings for few weeks and find your maximums. I was trying to find mine and it varies so much that I don't care anymore. Sometime evenings are busy and mornings are dead. Other days morning sells for $100 and evening for $5. One Saturday is $15 in sales but Sunday $250. Another Saturday is $200 in sales and Sunday $20. It so goes up and down I think mainly due to small statistical set I am working with. Once I reach 100 orders a day I might start seeing patterns until then there is none.

[dipmicro]

Ok here is another idea - sign-up for Sellathon trial and they have tool that tracks how your traffic spreads through the day. It very much depends on when your auctions end, so you better have flatly spread auctions when taking the metric.

Omniture (eBay traffic reports) only graph the daily values, but not time of day. You still can extract the information from the tool but you might need to import it to spreadsheet and graph it yourself.

My Slow-a-thon HI-Lites tool just loaded, so it seems that most traffic comes around 5-6pm EST (6.5 UV/hr - week average) and 2nd peak is at 8am in the morning (6.9UV/hr). 3rd and 4th peak are at noon and midnight (5.7 UV/hr).

2am-4am is a dead zone, average 1.2 visitors/hr.

[canadabeltbuckles]

Thanks for the insight... Really good info.

Quick question recped...

I only run 7 day listings, don't see any reason to pay the same fee for less exposure.

In the above, do you run auction items for 7 days or flat rate 'buy it now' items, or both?

I get an impression that with so many individual items selling out there, a seller would not get proper exposure until their item is coming to the end of the sale, like in the last 2 days, unless the item was so unique, that it came up no matter what time it was listed and for how long... I think most people doing searches use the 'ending soonest' default sort when searching.

This question is for you both, how many buyers actually use the 'best match' option when searching for products/listings? Is it becoming more prevalent?

I would assume that the main title of the listing is what is used for search results, or does eBay's search engine look at internal listing text as well?

[dipmicro]

I only run 7 day listings, don't see any reason to pay the same fee for less exposure.

I noticed many sellers run the same 7-day auction daily or even multiple times a day. So what is the motivation for occasional buyer to bid if he knows there will be another one ending tomorrow.

For highly desirable items 1-day auctions allow to run the same listing daily and be the only listing - that generates the impression of short supply. There will be bigger pressure on buyers that want your item. Very few buyers actually check Completed Items history. However, 1-day auctions did not work for my market, the 7-day auctions work the best, but I need 7x that many P/Ns to list if I don't want to have same product auctions overlapping.

[cumos55]

When I sold at auction .. listings for 7 days, starting on Monday evening at about 10:00 PM.

Parcel up on Tuesday, and in the mail by Thursday and Friday with Paypal payment.

If you end listings on Saturday ... Parcel up on Sunday... Works if you have a primary job over Monday to Friday.

My primary time for listing was about 10:00 PM.

You catch the US from east at midnight to the west at about 8:00 PM... Winnipeg is home...

In Europe it is early morning... very early.

Australia, and New Zealand are caught as well but not as good as elsewhere..

[redshoshk]

I always auction our items ad Fixed Price with 10 days duration, I pay 40 cent extra for that 3 extra days and it worth it, I can have my items there for extra three days and I do have to spend time relisting three days later, so I think it work for me, my sale usually very good on Sundays and I try to list my items so they end on Sundays.

Regards,
StyleClash

[cumos55]

The logic with 10 day listings is to catch two weekends of views.