Length of listings. How long should I list something for on eBay? Well, it depends on what you're selling and what your schedule is. But you have a lot of options. Many people choose the default seven day length for auctions. But auctions can run a shorter time of one, three or five days and a little bit longer of 10 days.
It just depends on what you're selling. one and three day auction listings cost one more dollar to list and that can add up if you're selling a lot of things. Plus, you might be limiting the amount of potential buyers that can see your short listings. So I don't recommend using one and three day listings very often. fixed price listings go from 357 1030 days or my favorite good till cancelled, also known as GTC GTC will actually renew every 30 days and run until you sell the item or in the listing manually. It's what I call the let it ride listing, you post it and forget about it.
If you have an item up for a longer time on eBay, more people can see it. You can change the duration of the listing, but only within the first two hours of posting it up on eBay. Other parts of the listing can be altered later than that time, but not the length of time of listing. If you discover an error in the listing, you could end it and redo it and post it later. Start times work like this. If you've posted something at 1pm The End Time will also be 1pm.
This will actually only matter as far as auctions go because the Lot of the bidding happens near the end of the item. Someone can buy a fixed price item at any time. So the end time isn't as important. Once you start a listing, it will be live immediately unless you use a scheduled listing. And you can do that up to three weeks in advance. It will cost you a tiny bit more, but it might be well worth it.
If you only have one day a week to do listings and want to spread out the listings scheduled through the through the week. It's a very popular feature for many people. You can relist an item that doesn't sell and pick a new length of time for the listing and method of selling. For example, I used to list everything at auction first, and if it didn't sell, I would relist it at fixed price. You can Also use an auto relist feature. But be careful if you have a listing that has multiple items.
This could mess you up later. Let me explain. Let's use an example of you're selling a frisbee and you have five in quantity. So during the listing, you sold four of them. And then the listing ends for whatever reason. When you go to relist it, eBay will think you still have five, but in actuality you only have one left.
So in this case, I would use a manual relisting, rather than the auto relisting. A listing will end when a buyer pays for a fixed price item or an auction buy it now item. Most of the listings will stay live until that happens. This protects the buyer Though you still will have some flakes along the way. eBay listing times are Pacific Standard Time. What timezone Do you live in, it may make a difference for your difference for your listings.
Think about a calendar for your end times before you actually make your listings. If you plan ahead for holidays, this can actually help. An example I use this for Halloween costumes. You want to make sure that your auction items on maybe the fanciest Halloween costume ends with plenty of time for the buyer to pay and for you to ship it so that they have it on time for October 31. So they can trick or treat. If your costume arrives at their house on November 1, they might be very disappointed.
So check your calendar before listing to see what's coming up in the way of holidays, or especially for your own personal vacations. I've taken many an item on vacation with me that I forgot to end before I left and people would pay me on the road and I would ship it from a post office of wherever my location was, so be careful. My favorite length listings are seven day auctions when I'm using the auction format, and good till cancelled fixed price when I'm using fixed price listings. You should try out some different lengths to see what you like best and what gets you the best results. Good luck. Give it a go.