Buy it now versus auctions on eBay, which should you choose? We’re going to jump into both eBay reselling options.
This is a question we got from one of our listeners: “If there are no watchers and no bids, does eBay punish you in SEO for canceling live listings and re-listing? I called eBay and they said no, but I’m not sure. I do this a lot because I’m new and I’m trying to find out what type of listings, auction versus buy it now is working best. I’ve also realized I’m excluding the West Coast when I make listings end at 7:00 AM EST, so I’m changing that now too.”
There’s a lot to break apart in this, so thanks for the question.
Best Time For Auctions
We don’t do a lot of auction listings now but back in the day we did them. The best solution for doing an auction is to do a 10-day auction and list it on Thursday night at 10 p.m. EST. That will run you through two weekends with the auction.
eBay’s activity boosts up over the weekend so you’re getting the most bang for your buck. It will end on a Sunday night. Sunday night is when most people are on eBay because they’re not working and they’re hopefully watching the item. They’re usually at home getting ready for work the next morning.
From the question, we’re assuming you have auctions and are then canceling the auction because you have zero watchers or zero bids and are canceling and relisting it. We’re not part of eBay’s team, so we can’t say how their algorithms work, but I do know eBay doesn’t want you to cancel auctions.
Typically if you have an auction live they want you to run through the auction timeframe and they’ll drum up as much business as they can for you. Even if they just look at your listing, eBay will keep sending them that listing every time they jump into the app and depending on their notification settings, they might send them emails too.
Buy It Now
We mostly do buy it now, but auctions might make sense for you if you’re just starting out and are focusing on building feedback. We mostly do buy it now because Amazon changed the game and people don’t want to wait for items anymore.
The other part of this is knowing how to price your items. Go in and check the comps of other items that have sold. Find your exact item, find what has sold in the past 90 days, and get a good idea of what your item is worth. If you want to sell your items quickly, price them below what the other active items are.
Back to the question of is it bad practice to remove listings from Buy It Now? It’s fine if you do want to pull it off and relist it. We do that periodically to refresh listings. It’s different from doing it for live auctions. We don’t work for eBay, we just know what we’ve experienced.
We don’t do auctions anymore. Back in the day they sucked a lot more people in. But now people want that item quick, and if you price it right, they’ll use the buy it now option.
With buy it now listings we don’t accept offers. We don’t do that because we want buyers to see them and know the item is priced correctly and competitively with the other active listings. If I put offers accepted they won’t want to pay full price for it.
There are uses for both auctions and buy it now, so pick the one that works for you.
Show Notes
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