Ebay Sales Trends - When To List
by the Staff at The Online Auction Academy

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.

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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/