Tips for Maximizing Success with eBay Auctions

eBay--friend of the thrifty, purveyor of oddities and treasured finds. Some of my finest eBay scores included a green crepe Catherine Malandrino dress, face masks from Japan, and a very gently used DLSR. And in turn, eBay has been good to me, letting me sell off items that needed a better home.

However, in my early years on eBay, I knew the pain of seeing an item sniped out from under me as I frantically refreshed again and again, and cursed my dial-up connection. If you've ever wondered why a particular item failed to sell, or how to guarantee a successful bid, read on.
 

In this day and age, the time an auction ends isn't as important as it used to be, due to the increased popularity of "Buy It Now" and fixed price listings. Also, the use of sniping tools that automatically increase your bid at the last minute have become more widespread and eBayers became more savvy.  About 75% of eBay auction bidders are estimated to be using a sniping tool so they aren't staying up until the wee hours to check up on their bids.

Sunday nights used to be viewed as a sort of magical time that guaranteed a flood of viewers to the site. The more people drawn to the site to look for listings, the more likely your item was to sell, and the the more listings were posted, in a soft of self-fulfilling prophecy that buys and sellers were more likely to fare better on Sundays.  

As a seller, there are a few things to keep in mind, but the most important one is to think like a potential buyer (this maxim holds true in eBay as it does for the art of sales). Imagine the kind of person who might be interested in your item. When will that person be surfing the internet, and maybe wandering over to eBay to lazily window shop for a bit?

For example, if you're selling something that appeals to a relatively specific niche, like tech geeks, then you'll want to end your listing on a weekday evening (not to stereotype too much, but as a fellow geek, I tend to stay up much too late and spend way too much time on the internet at night). A item that would play well with stay at home moms would end at an entirely different time, perhaps in the early afternoons on a weekday. The reasoning is the house in quiet, the kids are in school, the chores are (hopefully) done, and she can take some time to relax, check up on email and browse the internet.

Regarding your item itself, take a look at other items already listed that could provide competition. At what time do they end? If the bulk of the other listings are slated to end on Sunday evening, maybe you want to be the person whose auction ends a little earlier, say Thursday evening. This has the advantage of having your item appear sooner in the search results than other items with a later end time--if the searcher is browsing by auction end times.

Even armed with this experience, eBay still holds allure for me that in a way that I can't always explain--eBaying is like spelunking in a magical cavern where things seem to find you, rather than the other way around. And though I do profess to enjoying the thrill of the hunt (or the click), I'd prefer to catch my prey more often than not. Do you have other kernels of hard-earned knowledge not shared here? Chime in below in the comments!