eBay Sales Cycles, Best Times of the Month and Week To Sell

 

Most of this is common sense but like everything else, may have variations depending on category. I have been looking over the sales trends for about a year since and now that I am setting most of my listings as Promoted Listings, it makes it easier to see monthly and weekly sales trends. 

Observations:

• Common paycheck periods definitely have a major play with 1st and 15th of the month (starting a day before) being the biggest sales periods of the month, especially for higher priced listings. But I have found to take the best advantage of it, have your listings posted a week in advance if possible. I did a large number of listings 2 days before the end of the month and they seemed to have missed the wave. People have probably already made up their minds days in advance on bigger purchases.
• Government paychecks go every 2 weeks and can be found pretty easily with a Google Search.
• Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are generally the worst days of the week with it bottoming out on Tuesdays. It will keep moving up and then peak on Sunday. 
• For whatever reason, Saturdays are typically slower, with Saturday and Sunday mid-day consistently slow. Suspect that is prime-time for people to enjoy their weekend and do most of their buying in mornings and evenings.
• If Monday is a federal holiday, it is pretty consistent that it will beat Sundays peak.
• I don’t spend too much time trying to find the ideal time for an auction end but try to avoid mornings in general and after 9pm…with COVID and the masses still working from home, any time is eBay time. 
• A consistent trend on any day really is that most of my sales come in before 11am and after 3pm. Again, probably aligns to work and play patterns, even overnight wee hours do better than this dead zone. I love waking up in the morning and seeing a few sales (often international)
• Easter weekend…kick a$$ weekend. Spring break was before which may have helped and taxes were about to close (April 18th in 2022).
• Memorial Day weekend….Friday was good, Saturday and Sunday were slow, but Monday was very good and took up the slack, was a few days before government payday and end of month, so sure that helped.

Your mileage may vary, but probably not by much. And there are uncontrollable external influences such as stock market performance, inflation and gas prices to keep in mind. What do you see?

Just so I don’t forget, some months that were odd, I will keep updating and see if any trends.

• September, 2021 - This was a good month but probably only because I sold a couple high dollar items. 
• December, 2021 - I was expecting December overall to be awesome, but first 2 weeks were weak, but picked up on second half of month. Maybe anticipated and received gift money?
• January, 2022 - December end of year increase carried into January and was a good month. 
• February, 2022 - about average, slower than January but not terrible. 
• March, 2022 - dismal, maybe no one wanted to spend until they knew they were getting a tax refund
• April, 2022 - good month overall with fire 2 weeks being week, but after April 15th, things really started booming
• May 2022 - Kind of like April but consistent over the month. Month ends with Memorial Day. Used mu first coupon for last week on the month. Memorial Day was very good probably because it was right before end of month and the government pay day.
• June 2022 - About average, I guess the rest of the world doesnt recognize my birthday month, oh well. Flag day just didnt produce sales like I expected.
• July 2022 - July 4th came on a Monday and you had the trailing payday from end/1st of month, sales were excellent. Week following sucked…guess everyone spent all their money in the first week.

John