Choosing a Different Start Time

eBay also lets you choose a specific start time for your auction—which, of course, also becomes your auction’s end time. By default, an eBay auction starts as soon as the item listing is placed, so if you place your listing at 10:00 a.m., that’s when the auction starts and ends. However, you can pay an extra $0.10 (what eBay calls a “scheduled listings fee”) and schedule your auction to start (and stop) at a specified time different from when you created the item listing.

This is a good option if you have to create your auction listings at what would otherwise be a bad time to end an auction—in the morning or early afternoon, for example. It’s better to end an auction during the evening, when more users are at home. So if you can’t launch your auctions in the evening, spend the extra $0.10 so that eBay can automatically schedule the start of your auction for you. (Alternately, you can subscribe to an auction management service—or use listing creation software—that handles the scheduling of your auctions for you, at no extra charge.)