You could always extend the bid timer to 24 hours after the last bid. I think that’s how most artists deal with sniping.

I strongly agree with this solution. When you posted the journal a few days back and I commented on the 12h vs 24h issue, my thought was to make it end 24h after last bid, not 24h after the start of the auction (when you still used 12h it was after last bid, so I assumed the 24h version would work the same way).

I really dislike 10-15 min extensions like some other people suggested. I feel that there are several issues with doing it that way. First of all it forces buyers to sit and refresh the auction every few minutes to see if someone else placed a bid (I once lost an auction this way since I placed a bid, then my boyfriend called and by the time I was done with the call the auction was declared as over already). Second the times when I have been involved in auctions that have been resolved this way the artist has been very inexact with the actual times. Sometimes they have promised to extend by 10 minutes from the last snipe bid, and then ended the auction after 4 minutes, which left the people who were bidding utterly frustrated. In one case people were bidding for over two hours after the "end" of the auction, and then the artist makes a post stating that he already picked a winner an hour ago and notified them that they had won (without telling anyone else who was bidding). This made me unwatch said artist very quickly.

I don't really like extensions of one hour either, even if it soles some of the issues above, as it can cause confusion regarding time zones. There have been cases where I have looked up the end of the auction based on the posted time-zone, only to be an hour late because the artist did not post the correct daylight saving time version of their time (PDT vs PST, CET vs CEST etc).

Extending the bidding by 24 hours after the last bid means that everyone who has an intention to bid will have had plenty of opportunity, it completely prevents sniping and won't stress buyers out. The downside is that if there is a very small minimal increment on the auction it could potentially drag on for a long time (although I have never actually seen this happen in practice - people usually want their art somewhat soonish rather than saving a few extra dollars, and will escalate the bidding quickly if they are really interested). It could drag out for a few days, but I have never seen auctions drag out past a week this way.

I totally agree with that point of view. To be honest, I'm not sure the idea of the +25$ minimal increment is such a good idea : yes, it prevents people from snipping with just 5$, but at some point, it might also discourage people that were willing to bid let's say just 10 or 15 before the end of the auction, "the regular way", because they wanted the adopt badly, but couldn't afford much higher than 150.

Aight, I've reverted the bid leap and it should just end 24 hrs after last bid! Thanks for the helpful suggestion!

Aight, I've reverted the bid leap and it should just end 24 hrs after last bid! Thanks for the helpful suggestion!

Aight, I've reverted the bid leap and it should just end 24 hrs after last bid! Thanks for the helpful suggestion!

Most artists state that the final bid has to be uncontested for 10-15 minutes with no further bids. So you pick an auction end time. Say 18:00 - and someone bids at 17:59, the auction will then go on until 18:09.

Aight, I've reverted the bid leap and it should just end 24 hrs after last bid! Thanks for the helpful suggestion!

As a counter-argument to the twenty-four hour bidding extension - This could potentially drag an auction out for days-and-days if the two people having a bidding war are only available in the evenings for a brief amount of time - this could potentially hamper your ability to then produce the art and then move forward if the bidding goes back and forth for such a long amount of time with small $5 increments.

But that's the SMALLER of the two counter-arguments - the bigger is that you're eliminating what's called the "Bidding frenzy" - This is the state that happens in the last few minutes of an auction where bidders bid back and forth and generate a sense of the item being almost within their grasp that sometimes means they bid more than they would do under other circumstances (Oh it's only $5 more than my last bid, argh I really want it, $5 more, $5 more) - This impulse buying only occurs in high-pressure situations, such as an auction coming up to a finite close time and by extending an auction by 24hrs after a final bid, you may be missing out on this occurrence and thus be losing money. This is one of the key features of an auction and why it is a popular selling tool amongst a great many different markets.

Edit: Pro auctions extend by a fixed time from five to fifteen minutes, to ensure that there is a finite ending to the auction, Again as I mentioned prior, that fixed ending time is very important to generate that bidding frenzy which sometimes means a much higher sale price

I don't agree with the first point. If it is a one-off sale then definitely, but nothing prevents the hosting of more auctions while one is currently being held. The extended lead-in time will only be a factor the first time (assuming new auctions get posted on a somewhat regular basis, which in Vethrax' case they are). It is a bit like starting a vineyard with wine that has to ferment for 5 years. You will need to wait 5 years for your first cash-in, but then you will keep getting income at a steady pace every year from the harvest that took place 5 years earlier. This of course assumes that there is no extreme variance in how much people are willing to pay (i.e that most auctions run for a somewhat equal amount of time). This might not always be the case, but in my limited time at FA I have seen very few auctions where this happens. In most cases one party gets frustrated with the slow progress and makes a massive escalation. Of course outliers exist. The impact of this variance is largely mitigated by the fact that bills tend to be due once a month, and not on a consistent basis throughout the month. As such there is not really a strict need for a somewhat homogeneous stream of income - it can afford to be a bit spiky. I mean most people with regular jobs get paid in one large spike every month.

If we discount extreme cases, most "expensive" art tends to go for around 300-400 USD here on FA. If a $10 increment is used, which is fairly standard, then in worst case an auction could drag on for 30-40 days. This would still result in bills being paid on time (it is a bit iffy with 40 days, but again, this is the worst possible case). And this is the worst possible scenario, in reality someone will probably escalate faster than this.

As for the bidding frenzy I definitely agree, however it is somewhat counter-acted by the fact that with fixed times you lose access to certain geographical regions. If the auctions always tend to end around the same time (which they likely will since it is the most convenient for the seller), then this will inevitably lead to some geographical region having the end time at 3AM or 4AM, in which they can not feasibly bid. Whether this is a problem largely depends on which regions that tend to be willing to spend more money on art. To me it has always seemed that certain regions are always willing to pay much more than others. That being said, it is probably a loss to lose out on the bidding frenzy - if they happen. I have only seen one a few times here, but I have a fairly limited sample size.

My suggestion really would be to try the 24h paradigm for a bit and see if it leads to auctions dragging out a lot. If it doesn't then I believe that it is superior. If it becomes unfeasible however with very long auctions then it probably bears changing. I really cannot speculate on the impact the loss of bidding frenzy would have - like I said I have only seen it a few times here with some of the most popular artists.

Oh, I wanted to add - one of the things that makes 10-15 min extensions appealing in "pro" auctions is that there is tool support for handing them in a convenient and graceful way. Those sites will usually have a visible clock that updates dynamically, without the need for a user to refresh the page, and will usually show bids from other participants in real time. Since bids show up in real time it means that the bidding chain stays clean, as opposed to split into several chains like they usually do when multiple people bid at the same time here at FA. On those kinds of sites the users are much better informed of where they stand in the auction. Doing the same with FA's forum-thread-like comment system, that does not update dynamically and instead forces users to spam the F5 key, has a potential to be a complete disaster.

Some artists use an external stopwatch for the auction end-times (which I appreciate a lot since it helps with time-zone conversion), but it cannot update dynamically with auction extensions. I guess that this is one of the reasons why some artists use external sites like commishes to handle auctions.

Haha! I can see you've put a great deal of time and effort into your thinking.

Lets see - starting with your premise for profits, you're not wrong in this regard but I think I may have not been so clear with what I was trying to explain - which was not that it is the money that is the problem upon coming in, it's a case of the workload potentially stacking up at a time when you are busy as the end-time is so unpredictable (e.g you can't plan based around an end time which might be tomorrow, or a week!) if it coincides with when you have other commissions that need finishing, this could cause customer dissatisfaction due to the extra time it might take for you to complete commissions you had planned at that time or for the winner of the auction. Managing workload is already a challenge for artists, making it even more stressful with this unexpected end-time seems problematic to me.

Moving on from this, in my experience even if you discount the more extreme cases (I've seen auctions go for 6,000-7,000 USD on very rare occassions, with plenty around the 2-3k mark and 1kIsh being very common in occurrence across the fandom), this method could cause ridiculous level delays - which, as I wanted to mention should be centered around customer satisfaction and planning when your work is being done rather than cash-flow, although in this instance several months worth of waiting could be absolute madness!

Gosh you've made so many points - lessee, ah! Geographical location - okay, this one is fairly easily fixed based on looking at the demographic of the site for FA (Majority of users are US, Secondary being EU and third being Asia) - planning this accordingly would allow you to pick an auction time that would be suitable for the majority of users, you're always going to potentially miss some - but this isn't about complete fairness in including everyone, it's just not possible whatever you do - some people won't have access to a PC on the day you announce, some people might be on holiday, internet cut out, you can't allow for every possible inconvenience your bidders may have occur and that's just it. It should be convenient for the artist.(Anyone on the very opposite end of the time picked, if they really wanted the piece would log in for the close time even if it were the middle of the night - I know several friends who have done so over the years, I'd agree with you though that this seems like madness.)

The Bidding frenzy only really relies on having two participants with a similar scope for spending, it doesn't require a horde of individuals bidding - but i will agree that it varies depending on artist demand, popularity and availability to some degree.

I think your additional comment here is a very valid point, auctions held on FA are an absolute pain and there has been so many faux pas as a result of this (I've seen auctions ending at the wrong time, auctions extended without warning, artists ignoring the winner because they didn't like the character and taking the second highest bidder, all kinds of things that I would consider incredibly unprofessional, I even had an instance wherein an artist asked me to shill bid for them, (The act of bidding to increase the cost of the auction with no intention of it being the winning bid) as you can imagine I told them in no uncertain terms that I would not and promptly cut all ties with them.)

I imagine an external stopwatch could be amended with an additional 10-15 minutes if need be, so I don't see that as being so much of a problem, but with the way FA comments handle bidding, it is indeed a catastrophic mess - I'm not sure there's a fix for that and almost all auctions are plagued by this fault. But I don't see it being an issue specifically for this extension, you refresh - you see the highest bid, you raise it - repeat until you're the winner. (There's the instance wherein both people bid the same amount, but Ideally the artist could be on hand to concisely respond to the current winning bid by looking at which was more recent).

Thank you for the discussion! I really enjoyed reading and thinking about your points - I might not agree with them, but I can see that they came from logic and reasoning.

You make a lot of very good points. It is very interesting to hear the perspective of someone that has been involved in the community for longer than I have, since you have more data to pull from. I had no idea that some auctions had escalated that far. Thank you so much for engaging in this discussion with me, I really enjoy when someone makes solid arguments and doesn't just resort to personal abuse (which has happened every single other time I have engaged in comments about something here).

I felt a similar vein of respect for you, in that I was happy to read your comments and find objective discussion without any hint of personal sleight!

You're quite right, people often quite quickly resort to personal attacks on here with very little provocation - I guess that's what makes finding an individual with the ability to remain civil over a disagreement so much of a gem!
I look forward to seeing your name pop up elsewhere on the site!

Basically what Resine said. You set up the rules to add time for the final bid in case someone tries to do it last-minute. As I'm sure most who bid would be checking during the final moments to make sure their bid is going through.

Aight, I've reverted the bid leap and it should just end 24 hrs after last bid! Thanks for the helpful suggestion!

Aight, I've reverted the bid leap and it should just end 24 hrs after last bid! Thanks for the helpful suggestion!

Your solution seems fine, You could also add. I saw an auction that allowed 30 extra minutes from the final post, so that if you sniped someone they were given 30 minutes to notice and what not -.- I'm sad your stuff's sniped its super awesome <3

Already solved it thoughhhhh

Congrats ;3