When Is The Best Day To Start Your Website Auction Listings?

This has been a burning question not only for myself, but for a lot of website flippers as well. I was a full-time eBay seller six years ago and Sundays – specifically the evenings – were always the best days to start your auctions.

The theory was most people were home on Sunday evenings and were more likely to be on their computers. The theory held true and still does today. However, it doesn’t appear to carry over to the website flipping world.

Justin from FlipFilter.com made an excellent post about this topic back in May. His website flipping tool, FlipFilter, aggregates auction listings from the top website flipping marketplaces so he has a tremendous amount of data at his fingertips. At the time he studied the data, the number of new listings per day was fairly consistent from one day to the next – roughly 250-320 listings per day. The fewest new listings were on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with around 240 listings for each of the those days.

Based strictly on the those numbers, it would appear Friday-Sunday would be the worst days to start your auction listings. The best days would be (in order of the most new listings per day): Thursday, Tuesday, and Monday.

So The Best Day To Start Your Auction Is…

It depends! Sorry I can’t give you a definitive answer. It depends on the length of your auction. If you look at Justin’s post, you’ll see he also has a graph of the listing counts by end day. Friday had the most listings end with (in order) Saturday, Monday, and Sunday closely behind. If we assume most sellers go with 3, 5, or 7 day auctions, which I always recommend, then the best day to list will depend when you want your auction to end and how long your auction is in the first place.

For example, if you want your listing to end on Friday – the day most auctions end – and you are running a 3-day auction, then you’d want to list on Tuesday. However, the answer gets more complicated than that. Even though most auctions end between Friday and Monday, the sale price averages by end day suggest that Tuesday and Thursday would be the best days to end your auctions because those are the two days where auctions apparently sell for the most as evidenced by this graph provided by Justin.

O.K. What’s The Bottom Line Then?

I’m a firm believer that a quality website with value – whether it is traffic, revenue, a unique concept, a premium domain, or all of the above – will sell regardless of what day you list. The keys to a successful sale are dependent on the quality and value of the website first and foremost. The second most important thing is the auction listing itself such as the headline, the auction description and format, and the tags used (if selling on Flippa). If you have all these elements in place, it truly doesn’t matter what day you list or when your listing ends. It will sell!

Having said that, you want maximum exposure for your listings so some degree of timing is important. Everyone has different surfing habits. Some browse auctions during the week from work or from home in the evenings, while others will only check on weekend nights – and only on Sunday nights. You should time your auctions so that your listings get exposure through at least one full weekend. That way your listings will get in front of as many eye balls as possible.

About Travis Van Slooten

Travis is an affiliate marketer and website flipper who ran FlipWebsites.com until the Fall of 2010.

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This entry was posted in Selling Websites and tagged Selling Tips.

katiejo

Just a note – I have had the best luck, money-wise, ending auctions on either Tuesday or Thursday – any time. One thing that needs to be taken into account in today’s day and age, with smart phones, is that one does NOT need to be anywhere around a computer to bid on an item now! Thanks for the interesting data!
Sebastian

i know this post is quite old but I think something important is missing. Under which time zone you consider the stats? Because when is monday on my country is still sunday in a lot of other places. I may be posting an auction for what I think is monday but most potential buyers may be going sleeping already to wake up on tuesday. I bet if you change the time zone the graph would vary a lot.
James

Interesting data. I’d love to see info on the time an auction ends, not just the day of the week. I’ve often thought that auctions scheduled to end late in the night U.S. time are at a disadvantage, as US buyers are not likely to be up bidding at that hour. But I don’t have any data to bear that out.

Did Justin track times as well as days?

Travis

James:

I’m not sure if Justin tracked the times or not. If he did, his analysis wasn’t on the time of the day. Hopefully Justin will see this and shed some light.

Given that Flippa automatically extends your auction for 4 hours when any bids are placed within the last 4 hours of an auction coming to an end, I wonder if the time of day even matters. It *might* matter for international buyers and sellers given the drastic time differences.

I still say as long as you have a high quality website, day of week and time of day don’t matter. If it’s good, it will sell.

Travis

Travis

http://www.flipfilter.com Justin @ Flipfilter

Hey Travis,

Since the post, the number of auctions ending on Weekends have fallen even further still by approx 15%.

Maybe Flippa should use this to their advantage like ebay do and offer a $5 listing day for 5 day auctions starting on Tuesdays

Justin

Travis

Justin:

Thanks for stopping by with an update but I’m a little confused by your comment. Don’t you mean the number of auctions LISTED on the weekends have fallen even further?

The reason I ask is because when you made your post, the weekends had the most auctions ending and the least auctions starting.

Travis

Travis

http://www.flipfilter.com Justin @ Flipfilter

That’s just me missing out a whole lot of stuff in between.

I forgot to add that since the post, the amount of sites ending on Saturday and Sunday began to fall (which also coincided with an overall drop in clearance rates), now down to approx 22o on each day.

I think as sellers realised a change was occuring, they began to vary their patterns, tweaking, tracking and testing different things to see what worked.

I guess when they listed their auctions was just one of those variables.

Travis

Thanks for the clarification. So the bottom line is the numbers are down across the board and that now more than ever it probably doesn’t matter when you start your auctions since things are in such flux.

Travis