Easy answer - list a rare item that has super high demand and start it at .99 - find a copy of Action comics #1 and start that at .99 and you're guaranteed to get hundreds of bids! LOL
There's been some good advice so far and as said it really does come down to supply an demand. here's my .02, and it all depends on the item. Starting everything at .99 is good for some items, but I've been burned doing this so now I vary things up. The problem is when you get an expensive item but not a very big market, this is where that .99 cent auction will be a great deal for the buyer but not you. For example I might have a decorative wall plaque featuring a fat french chef. If I put that up for auction starting at .99 I guarantee you it might at best get 1 bid in a week and you've just lost money. However, start that auction at say $15 (or put it in your ebay store if you have one setup) and that same single person may be the only bid again but now you've made another $14.
I just recently went through a lot of old video games (super nintendo, genesis) that I just wanted to turn around really quick. I had over a hundred of these games and started each one at $5 and $10 (depending on if it was still in the box or not). Most of my listings have free shipping too which is why I can't always do .99 (unless I know it'll get a lot of bids). Some of my games didn't sell, some only got one bid, then others (obviously the more rare games) got a bunch of bids and went for as much as $85.00. Another random tip - if you come across empty video game boxes don't just disregard them - I just sold one super nintendo empty box for $71.00!
Here's some other general tips I found help. First is take alot of QUALITY PICTURES! Not blurry or so far away that you can barely see the item, and take ALOT of them. ebay lets you add 12 pictures for free so use them. I always try to take as many pictures as I can and I'd bet on the fact that I will get a higher price than someone else that only has one pic. For example take one of those video games, I took a picture of the front, back, each corner, the fingers on the cartridge, different angles of the box and even a screen shot from when I tested it. Some people say that might be overkill, but I've had alot of people straight up tell me they bought my item because I had so many pictures they could see. Helps with feedback too, I recently saw one person got a bad feedback because there was marker writing on the back side of a game cartridge, if he just took one extra picture of the back that could have been avoided.
It also helps to fully disclose anything you know about the item. Have a good description while keeping it simple. Write too much and people just won't read anything (although sometimes it doesn't matter if all you write is "BROKEN" in all caps, underlined, highlighted, bold in a gigantic font in some crazy bright colors and then make it flash while shooting fireworks they still won't notice it and complain later that the item was broken, lol).
I agree that if you do a 10 day auction Thursday is the absolutely best day to start those, and if you just stick with a 7 day auction I've found Sundays are usually the best with Mondays being second (for all those people that hate going back to work on monday and would rather waste time on the internet).
Regardless of all that though, and not to sound like a broken record but it mostly just comes down to supply and demand. Doesn't matter what you do, if you don't have an item in demand you won't get any bids.
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