Myth # 78: Sunday nights are the best time to have your auctions close, because that's when there are the most people at home browsing eBay for something to buy.
If your items appeal to business people, you might find that Monday afternoon when buyers are trying to acquire things for their organizations may be best. Or perhaps, early Friday afternoons when nobody in the office wants to start a new project, so they hop on eBay to check out auctions for their business (or personal stuff.) During the school year, afternoons between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. might be best for things appealing to kids.
Most bidders vs. highest bids. Don't forget the flip side of the equation. Popular closing times can mean lower prices for common items. When popular mythology defines a particular period as the "best" time to close an auction, a large number of sellers will time their auctions to end then. That can mean an enormous amount of competition if your item is fairly common. Sure, there will be a ton of potential bidders browsing the auctions, but it's likely that your particular auction will be lost or overlooked in the flood of competing auctions.
Worse, when buyers make their bids, they'll naturally choose to make an offer for auctions that have the lowest prices. That means that an auction for a common item closing at a popular time may receive fewer bids, and those bids may be lower overall than if the auction had closed at a different day or time with less competition. If all you want to do is unload an item to clear out your garage, and don't care whether it brings a high price, by all means shoot for Sunday nights. Just about anything will sell on eBay if it's priced low enough, and Sundays are as good a time as any to dump unwanted merchandise.
When I was selling Atari stuff, I found that Sunday nights were the absolute worst time to have an auction close. My Atari items were more or less commodities, and since most of the other Atari sellers had swallowed the myth, that's when their auctions closed, too. There were a gazillion bidders, of course, but there were also eight gazillion auctions, all competing for those bidders. Things sold well, but at lower prices. I looked for the times when there were fewer bidders looking, such as Tuesday or Wednesday evenings, and found my Atari games and consoles went for 30-50 percent more at those times. I'll take three bids that top $100 over 57 bids that peak at $60 any day.
Supply and demand. Simple economics apply to those mythical Sunday night "booms." Imagine there are 100 people looking to buy a Hyperbaric RF Modulator and willing to pay an average of $100 each for this gee-whiz device. If 300 sellers decide to offer one on a particular Sunday night, smart buyers will bid a small amount, no more than they think is necessary to win. They'll probably bid late in the game, too, to avoid tipping off others that they're interested. When the auction closes, if a buyer loses, he or she will simply bid a little more on the next one closing a few minutes later, and so on, until everyone who wants an HRFM gets one, probably at a price that's only a little more than the opening bid price.
Now, imagine the auctions are closing on a different, less popular night, and only 20 Hyperbaric RF Modulators are available. Unless all the auctions close at roughly the same time, each lucky seller is likely to receive the maximum bid for their offering. Indeed, buyers who aren't aware of the easy availability of this item on Sundays, or who need the item right now, may bid far more than they would have otherwise. The last few auctions of the night might close at $150 or $200, simply because demand exceeds supply.
Rare items sell anytime. Potential Sunday night competition won't hurt the sales of hard-to-find items, because there will be few, if any competing auctions. If you're hawking an ultra-rare item, such as the impossible-to-find Atari video game called "Chase the Chuckwagon," or a rare first edition book, or that limited edition hood ornament for a 1954 Hepmobile, closing on a Sunday night won't do you any harm, and may actually help your sales because of the large number of people browsing eBay. You probably won't have to worry about a dozen other sellers undercutting your bids with their own cheap copy of "Chase the Chuckwagon."
Of course, truly rare items aren't uncovered by casual browsing. It's more likely that someone who really needs that hood ornament and who will pay top dollar for it will be searching the eBay listings regularly and will find your auction no matter when it closes. A Sunday night closing may have little true advantage.
When is Sunday night? Timing an auction to close on "Sunday night" is complicated by the fact that it's difficult to define when Sunday night is because of the difference in time zones. If you're selling to the Lower 48 states in the US alone, then "Sunday evening" (7-12 p.m.) encompasses all the hours between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. Eastern time. That's nine full hours! If your auction closes at 10 p.m. Eastern time, that may be too late for early risers who must get up for work the next day and who have already gone to bed at that hour. Those on the West Coast (where it's 7 p.m.) may not have settled down in front of their computers yet.
If you want to expand your potential market to all 50 states and/or to Europe, "Sunday evening" is virtually all day long. The myth of the ideal Sunday night closing time is tenuous because Sunday nights themselves are so ephemeral.
All Sundays are not created equal. Even if you do well on Sunday nights, remember that some weekends are better than others, as I noted in Chapter 4. The Sunday before Labor Day or another warm-weather holiday is likely to find most of your bidders out having fun and not seated in front of their computers. The Sunday after Thanksgiving might be the best night of the year as browsers begin searching in earnest for holiday gifts.
Your best bet for determining ideal closing time is to do your own study. List similar items on different days, and measure which days work best for the things you well. Someone else's study about best closing times, as well as the common rules of thumb may have little or no relevance to you. Also keep in mind that, in the long run, closing times don't have as much affect on your sales as your auctions themselves. It's far better to out-smart your competition than out-time them.
For example, in one case, my logging showed that orders tripled during the few weeks before school started, and the few weeks after, because my widgets are useful for college students setting up their dorm rooms. I not only listed more items during those times, I included phrases like "Perfect for Dorm or Apt" in the auction title of a few of them. Those sold first.