What should i start ebay auction at

Avoid ending an auction on a holiday even if the holiday falls on a Sunday. Buyers do not typically pursue online auctions on holidays as they are preoccupied with the festivities. Avoid ending an auction on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving. During this holiday period, end your auction on the Monday after Thanksgiving to piggyback on Cyber Monday, a marketing gimmick designed to promote online shopping.

Based in Atlanta, Casey Kennedy has been writing online content since She specializes in writing about small business, careers, real estate, and ecommerce. She also enjoys writing about a variety of other subjects, including home improvement, gardening, and pet care. She attended the Academy of Art online, studying interior architecture and design while pursuing commercial flight training at Aviation Atlanta in Georgia.

By Casey Kennedy. Best Ending Time Long-time eBay sellers maintain that the optimum time for ending an auction is between 6 p. Best Ending Day End your auction on Sunday to have the best chance of getting higher bids.

Like nearly all websites, eBay doesn't experience traffic in smooth, continuous flows. Instead, there are peaks and valleys that can be measured by day, week, and season. Listing so that your auction spans or closes on a visitor traffic valley can mean that you don't earn as much as you could have.

To take advantage of this, do your research and learn the best time to list your item on eBay. There are two simple principles you should keep in mind whenever you prepare to list an item. Many of eBay's visitors check the site once per week or less, so a listing of at least seven days is preferable, and ten days is ideal. The vast majority of eBay bids are placed within the last few minutes of an auction listing's lifespan. Though it takes days to accumulate watchers, most of these people won't actually bid until the auction is nearly closed.

Once your auction is down to its last half-hour or so, it will also begin to appear in "closing soon" results, which can draw in still more bidders. But that's only if there are bidders around to see it. Peak traffic on eBay's main site runs in daily and weekly cycles, following the same pattern seen around most of the Internet. Usually, daily peak traffic is between 8 p.

Eastern Time, and weekly peak traffic is usually on Sunday evenings during that same timeframe. To maximize bidding for daily peak time, set your auction to be completed during these times so that it will gain the largest possible daily audience. Listing seven-day auctions every Sunday evening is also a convenient way to time your auctions well without having to think about it too much while also avoiding the surcharge on ten-day listings.

A few items have both kinds of buttons and show two prices at once. Items like this are for sale both ways. If nobody uses the "Buy It Now" button, the item goes to the highest bidder when time is up. If an item you're interested in has a "Place Bid" button meaning that it's an auction item , you'll have to bid on and "win" it in order to buy it.

To do so, enter a dollar value into the box your bid and click "Place Bid. Before you decide to bid, however, there are some things you should know:. In a traditional non-eBay auction, bidders frantically place competing bids. When bidding slows to nothing, the auctioneer pounds the gavel and the item is sold.

On eBay, auctions are open to bids for exactly 1, 3, 5, 7, or 10 days. When time is up, the high bidder wins, even if people are still frantically bidding. You must place a bid that is higher than the current bid. Below the bidding box, you'll see the text "Enter some amount or more. You may pay less than your bid if you win. When you win an auction you always actually pay only a small amount more than the next highest bid —even if your bid was thousands of dollars more.

If your bid wins, you must buy. Your bid on an auction is a legally binding contract. If, when time runs out, your bid is the highest, you have purchased the item and must pay the seller for it.

Use 1-Click Bid to place small bids. In the last 15 minutes of an auction you've bid on in the past, you can instantly bid one increment higher than the current bid by clicking the "1-Click Bid" button. Other bidders may be using the automatic bidding system.

Because many shoppers use eBay's automatic bidding system, eBay auctions may not behave in ways that make sense to you. Through the system, eBay will bid automatically on behalf of the high bidder against underbidders. This allows bidders to bid very high while at the same time ensuring that they never pay more than the absolute minimum needed to beat the next highest bidder. Here's how it works:.

The following scenario helps to illustrate how the eBay bidding system works:. Day 1. Day 2.