It's time to sell the junk filling up your closet, and you're in luck. All day today, Yahoo!(Nasdaq: YHOO) Auctions is waiving its listing fees. What? You didn't know Yahoo! had auctions?

eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) has become synonymous with online bidding. And it's no wonder -- eBay hosted 145.2 million auctions this past quarter, with registered users now topping the 50 million mark. Pretty stocky sums for a company that started out as a place to trade Pez dispensers.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! has tried to flesh out its portal, but its auction listings just haven't caught on like the company's other services. There was a time when all listings were free at the Internet giant. Yet, even then, Yahoo! Auctions couldn't compete with the breadth of eBay's offerings. Buyers flocked to sellers. Sellers flocked to buyers.

What's worse, the site's liberal listing policy cheapened the quality of more legitimate offerings. Losing the war on both quantity and quality, Yahoo! bit the bullet and began to charge listing fees -- making sure it was considerably cheaper than eBay's rates. Fees haven't improved the number of featured listings, but at least they can be taken more seriously.

So, in a valiant effort to win some market share, Yahoo! returns to its free listing day. Yes, eBay has done this from time to time, too. Even in this gimmick, Yahoo! follows eBay's lead.

Time is ticking. Yahoo! hears it all too clearly, as it wonders how things could've played out had it been a first mover in this recession-proof industry. The company struck early in Japan, and it's doing well there. But, alas, not in the U.S.

As eBay celebrates that it's one of the few dot-com stocks to sidestep an implosion, Yahoo! grapples with the prospect of implementing fees into its premium services.

Is optimism cut out for the auction block? If so, for today, at least, the listing's free.