goWholesale

Just curious what everyone uses.
I normally always run 7 day, but I see a number of users running 3 and 5 days auctions. I worry that 3 days means fewer people will see it and therfore lower bids...Or do 3 day auctions cause more frantic bidding, in turn running up the price?

depends what you're selling, if it's a rare item you want to run it for 7 or 10 days, if it's commonplace very high demand shorter auctions will let you increase your rate of turnover and probably not have too much effect on finishing price.

I'm in the process of reading a book by Scott Wingo called eBay Strategies 10 Proven methods to Maximize Your eBay Business Scott Wingo is the CEO of ChannelAdvisor, an auction management company.
There is a section on recommended listing days:
*CR - conversion rate: number of items listed/number sold = %

10 day listings: for unusual items that benefit from prolong exposure.

7 day listings: Average. Good if you like to post or close on the weekends because weekends are the peak traffic times especially if you run $1 NR auctions.

5 day listings: If your CR* is above 50%. If your CR is > 50% you have adequate demand and can accelerate your time/turnover(velocity) by using shorter listing times.

3 day listings: If CR* is greater than 75%

1 day listing: If your CR* is above 85%, if it is a perishable item, or on promotional items

My opinion: I run 3, 5 and 7 day auctions. Most items don't get bids until the last minute and the more variety you have listed the more bidders you attract. Since Feebay raised the cost of 10 day auctions I avoid 10-day all together. The book is okay. Most of the case studies are on sellers who do more than $10,000 per month. W411 is also mentioned as a source

It really depends on the items you are selling! You would have to do a little research on the supply and demand on the products you carry. I prefer 7 day auctions that start on Sunday morning, but not to early! This way you get most of the first Sunday listing, pus all day on the following Saturday, plus the same time on the second Sunday. This is why it is best to start your auctions later morning or early afternoon on the first Sunday. So when your item is ending most people are home for the end of the auction to place those last minute bids in to drive up the price.

But first you must do some research on the supply and demand of your items. Why not do a comaprison on the same product, one week run a 3 day auction, next week run a 5 day auction and the last week run a 7 day auction. Start them at the same time of day, run them over the weekend to optimize your viewers and see what the final prices are at the end of each auction.

One can speculate what will happen all day long, but until you run some actual live auctions like I stated, one will never know how it would turn out.

Hope this helps!