Ebay Sales Trends - When To List

by The Online Auction Academy

Published on this site: March 22nd, 2004

Watching the trends for your sales on eBay is very important if you plan to continue your success. What's selling hot today may change tomorrow! Any retail business has "seasons" and an ebb and flow of product sales according to them. Ebay is no different.

Most products can be categorized into one of three basic categories:
essentials, information, and fun. All three can be further categorized by one of the four seasons of the year. Some items transcend more than one of these three categories and may not be seasonal either.

Essential items are items that are required for everyday living. These items are rarely sold on eBay as they are the types of things available at most grocery, convenience, and similar stores: the places people go regularly to shop. Things like toilet paper, pencils, canned green beans and such aren't the kinds of things that tend to sell well on eBay. In fact, most items that could be categorized as "essential" are items that, unless you have a breakthrough or very low price, are not selling on eBay at all.

Information items are things like books, ebooks, software and so forth.

Fun items are things that aren't required for everyday living and aren't information products (basically they are everything else). Things like lava lamps, cell phone covers, games, etc. are "fun" items.

Of these three categories, the things in the "fun" category are the items that are most susceptible to seasonal change. Many of these changes are obvious: board games don't tend to sell as well during the summertime as beach balls do and vice versa.

Getting the season right is very important when listing an item that categorizes as "fun." Common sense can guide you through most of your choices when deciding which season an item falls into.

The other thing to know when listing is what time of day is best for that listing to be in its ending phase (last three or four hours). This is generally the time when the item will get its most bids unless your item is completely unique and sought after. When is the best time to end a listing? This question is usually answered as "6- 9pm Pacific Standard Time" (eBay time). There are plenty of exceptions, though. The most common are below:

Items ending on the weekend should end earlier in the day (4-7pm PST) or in the morning (9-11am PST) with Sunday being the most trafficked weekend day.

Products that persons who work regular office hours would buy (especially if they are office-type items or entertainment items for the office) should be listed to end during the early afternoon between noon and four p.m. (PST).

Items that appeal to a more late-night crowd (gothic jewelry, for instance) should end later at night (between 11pm and 1am PST) for best results.

Items aimed towards retirees, stay-at-home moms, and others who are generally home during the day should end in the morning on weekdays (9am-noon PST) for best results.

Obviously, what categories, seasons, and timing you choose for your products' listings are dependent on is the target market you wish to sell to. If you sell to a specific market that populates the Internet at a certain time most often, that is when your item should be in the ending phase of its listing. Further, if your item sells to more than one market, list it more than once to target each of those markets.

Hopefully this short guide will get you started. Every item, market, and seller is unique. Obviously we can't give specific answers to everyone in this article, but we hope that we've hit on enough to at least start you thinking and coming up with answers for yourself.

The Online Auction Academy is the premier training school for learning to sell at online auction and create a profitable business online. Sign up for a free online seminar featuring the AuctionMan Craig Meyer: http://www.awwstore.com/oaa/.