When do you find most people bid?

[BrownSuga]

I'm new to this marlaky, have an item with 1 bidder. Just listed it as standard 7 days. Do you find that people bid in the last hours/minutes the item is on for? (ie 5 people are watching, why are they just watching!?).

In which case, should I not waste days, and list it for bid, say 2-3 days instead of the standard 7?

7 or 10 days is best. catch all the people, some who may only log on one day a week (for eg)

number of watchers - some may watch if they are about to list a similar item; they are curious as to what yours will sell for.

I reckon I get about 30% of bids throughout the listing and 70% within the last half hour - so don't have your listing ending when there is something good on the telly

The longer you list it, the greater chance there is for people to see it, even if most people wait to the last minutes to actually bid.

It's also worth tailoring your listing times to have the item finishing at a time/day when you'll get the most amount of people online to bid (so 2am on a wednesday morning will be a bit crap compared to say, 7pm Sunday evening iyswim)

Ahh, I didn't even consider then end time newbie! Will bear in mind if I list again. (checked this one, it's friday 2220, so maybe lucked out there)

turbo lister is good - list your items as and when you have time and then upload at once when the time is right

I always bid in the last minute. I agree with having finishing times at reasonable hours as well. Relate it to what you're selling. Some things are good to finish at lunchtime when people may be surfing in their lunch hour, but others in the evening (when kids are in bed) I also agree that you should list it for 7 days to allow people to see it.

7-10 days best. I always think between 9 pm - 10.30 pm is a good time to end the auction (maybe not for baby items!)

But bear in mind that a lot of people use 'snipers' to bid in the very last minutes.

I must admit, I really don't understand why people start bidding in the early days of the auction - all it does is push the final price up?

I saw an item today with a Buy It Now of £20.00, and a starting price of £20.00 (WTF?) and someone had bid on it!

I find I get watchers throughout, a few bids in the early days And then most bids in the last half hour or so. I always list mine to finish between 9 and 10 in the night and also use turbo lister so i can create listings whenever i get 5 mins and then upload at the right time - you can get it free from the ebay site - it's really made doing e-bay a lot easier for me!

Is that cos it was cheap listing on auctions, but not but it now items last Thursday Gameboy??

I'm a 'list on Thursday, finish on Sunday' girl myself. Just off to do a bit of listing now actually!

Hope you love the Ebaying Brownsuga. It's slightly more addictive than crack when it goes well. A bit like too much chocolate when you've got lots listed (nice, but eventually you get sick of it) and it can make you sick as a parrot, when you spend 4 hours ironing and photographing and it goes for 99p (just check my listings later for evidence of that one!).

Happy Ebayig everyone!

What's a 'sniper' (re. last minute bidding) gameboy/anyone? lol squillu about the ironing...me too!

Snipers are pieces of software which bid on your behalf, usually in the last few seconds of the auction. It means you can give the sniping tool your highest bid, and then in the last 20 seconds or so it will bid up to that amount.

If you've ever lost an auction, and thought ' how the hell did they get that bid in before me?' it's probably because it was sniped?

I think eBay has it's own automatic bidding system now though?

Yes it does, you enter your highest bid and it will outbid each time for you until it gets to your highest bid (I.e: if my highest bid is £10 someone will have to bid either continuously until they've outbid me or bid £10.01, but they wont know how much my highest bid is, sometimes it's worth guessing though, just for kicks lol)