How Long Should Your EBay Auction Run?

When it comes to durations, you have a wide range of choices: your auction can run for 10, 7, 5 or 3 days, or even only one day if you have a good enough feedback rating.

There’s a reason why you get to choose your duration, and that’s because different durations are good for different things. To decide how long you should list your items for, all you need to do is ask yourself a few questions.

Do you want to sell things quickly? If you’d rather sell now than in a few days, even if it means losing a little of your profit, then go ahead and choose the shortest duration you can get. If you’re the more patient type, on the other hand, you might as well sell slowly.

How much is your item worth? Items with a higher price are worth re-listing every 3 days or so using Buy it Now. The fees aren’t that big as a percentage of the item’s cost, and you’ll sell more when you’re constantly higher up in the search results.

Could your item benefit from competitive bidding? Not every item is going to make bidders get excited and try to outbid each other. If you have items that consistently attract more than five bidders, though, you should always list then for as long as possible, to get the best price you can. People will be quite happy to follow your auction for days, bidding the price higher and higher as they go.

What did the seller getting the best price do? Go back to that completed items display, and take a look at which durations the top seller uses the most often. The chances are that what they’re doing works.

Can you ship quickly? You might find that customers get frustrated if they have to wait for over a week for your auction to end, only to have to wait some more for the item to actually turn up. If you’re running auctions with the longest duration, try to have the thing packed and ready to go for posting the day it ends.

Is there a rush on? If it’s the holiday period, or there’s a sudden surge in demand for your particular item, then don’t list items for as long as you would usually. It’s in your interest to have a quick turnover, then you should be listing for the minimum of one day.

How visible do you want to be? You might have noticed that most of the effects caused by varying item durations are basically caused by the fact that, by default, eBay sorts search results so that items ending sooner appear first. Since it’s the default, this is the view most people use – meaning that items ending sooner get viewed much more.

If you’d like a few more tips about increasing your auction’s visibility on eBay, make sure to check out the next email. See you there!