Ebay the watchers paradise | Selling | eBay Canada EN

Ebay the watchers paradise | Selling | eBay Canada EN

Buying & Selling

Ebay the watchers paradise

Summary: La discusión gira en torno a las estrategias para convertir a los 'watchers' en compradores en el sitio de eBay. spinning*my*wheels menciona el fenómeno de los 'watchers', mientras que mrdutch1001 y brettjet38 resaltan que los compradores son quienes realmente importan. femmefan1946 y brettjet38 comentan sobre las estrategias de ofertas y descuentos, coincidiendo en que los compradores suelen reaccionar más ante precios más bajos fijos que ante descuentos esporádicos. sunraycity_store sugiere tácticas como ajustar la cantidad y el precio para estimular las compras, aunque ricarmic advierte sobre las desventajas de estas estrategias para clientes recurrentes. Se discuten otras ideas como los 'trade dollars' para incentivar la compra repetida, mencionadas por reallynicestamps, y las dificultades con programas de cupones en diferentes plataformas de eBay resaltadas por regs43 y lotzofuniquegoodies. En última instancia, varios participantes comparten sus experiencias personales y opiniones sobre cómo manejan los 'watchers' y compradores en eBay.

Ebay the official website of the watchers.

spinning*my*wheels

2 View listings

Posted 3 years ago·Last reply 3 years ago

15 comments

hansatrade

·3 years ago

brettjet38

·3 years ago

Was reading the messages this morning and when I saw...

"Ebay the watcher's paradise"

and then for some reason, this popped into my head.

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

@brettjet38 wrote:
Was reading the messages this morning and when I saw...

"Ebay the watcher's paradise"

and then for some reason, this popped into my head.

@brettjet38

Remember this one? When folks used to go to eBay...First? 2003.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuefKsXb2UU

-Lotz

needsmorerobots

·3 years ago

@spinning*my*wheels wrote:
Ebay the official website of the watchers.

Hey, some watchers are like me.

After I make some purchases, instead of using my browser to bookmark an Ebay listing (like I used to when Ebay was young), I watch an item I wish to purchase soon or at some point when funds are available.

msau4301

·3 years ago

@needsmorerobots wrote:
@spinning*my*wheels wrote:
Ebay the official website of the watchers.
I watch an item I wish to purchase soon or at some point when funds are available.
I do the same, I really am one of those watchers that "hopes" to purchase and would have bought if the item was a little less and/or I came into some extra mad money. I'm a collector but I can't buy everything I see I like (don't I wish). I think a lot of watchers would buy if the price was less, I've seen it happen to my own watchers, something had 12 watchers and no action then I reduce the price (usually as auction) and most times this will help. I have a current auction now that had been around a few months, I had just reduced and now have a bidder. (She also bought three other items to combine with it!)
I also know some watchers might buy if I list something else they are interested in (to combine shipping) that they might not buy on it's own (shipping cost is more palatable for a few things).
A lot of times it's nosey people too of course, I've done the same thing as run geek has done and used it like a bookmark (what was the name of that thing again?)

sunraycity_store

·3 years ago

Just curious if anyone has tried these strategies for getting Watchers to buy.

1) Raise the price on the item and after a few days, lower the price by at least 10%. I belive that the system send out a notification to those Watchers that the item they were watching has just lowered the price.

2) If you have more than one quantity of an item (e.g. 5), reduce the amount available for sale to one. Once again, the system may send a message to the watchers that only one item is left. If this works, the updside is that generate a sale. The downside is that you will need to relist the item. When doing so, choose relist rather than sell similar because it's likley that eBay will message those other watchers that the item is once again up for sale.

Good luck to all.

ricarmic

·3 years ago

The only caveat I would add to the "bump the price" and then discount is that at least in my case 50% of my sales are to repeat customers.

They would notice and the message I'd be giving to them would be that one never knows if the current price is my real price or my "about to be discounted" price, at least a chunk of them would wait to buy stuff until they saw it for sale, so going forward, they'd expect to buy stuff 10% less in this scenario eventually.

My own experience with "Sales" is that they don't work anyway (in my categories) so theoretically this wouldn't likely have a large positive impact with a possible significant downside (10% off expectations).

All categories and selling styles have their time and place, I'm simply putting this out there as something to consider.

With respect to the original post, at least in my world the larger the number of watchers the larger the chance it sells definitely holds true. One or two watchers is inconseqential, but if one (in my world) starts to see 4 or 5 or 10 watchers at auction or BIN, it is going to go, most of the time. In my experience, 10 means it is going to go WELL at auction.

mrdutch1001

·3 years ago

While I may agree that the higher the number of watchers, the better the chance of a "potential" buyer, there is no way to know if the actual buyer is one of those watchers or simply a serious-minded buyer who was more definitive in making their decision to purchse.

reallynicestamps

·3 years ago

DH has always been of the opinion that discounts attract customers who will wait for the sale price.

We always had slow Decembers in the shop, so he tried having discounts. There were more transactions than usual, but profits were lower (even lower than when we had almost no transactions).

So he switched to "trade dollars" .

We'd been doing those from when the GST came in, to the dismay of most Canadians. We were giving our trade dollars (think of Canadian Tire money) to cover the tax.

Buy $100 in the shop and get $7 in trade dollars for use on your next purchase.

Worked great and encouraged repeat buyers.

So DH sent out a flyer to our regulars, with a $5 trade dollar for use between Boxing Day and New Years.

Sales went through the roof.

For the cost of printing and mailing a flyer. And we had lots of mint stamps purchased at a steep discount.

BTW- the sale was targetted to our repeat customers. If you just walked in for the first time, no discounts.

Has anyone been using eBay's coupon program?

regs43

·3 years ago

@reallynicestamps wrote:
Has anyone been using eBay's coupon program?

If that and many of the other things that were available on the .com site were a thing on the .ca site I would use them. I list on .ca so I can't use that or multiples items purchased discounts.

Not sure why ebay has never implemented any of these things on .ca but only having a store discount is kinda junk, and doesnt allow anyone on this site to compete in any way with others using .com

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

@regs43 wrote:
@reallynicestamps wrote:
Has anyone been using eBay's coupon program?
If that and many of the other things that were available on the .com site were a thing on the .ca site I would use them. I list on .ca so I can't use that or multiples items purchased discounts.

Not sure why ebay has never implemented any of these things on .ca but only having a store discount is kinda junk, and doesnt allow anyone on this site to compete in any way with others using .com

@regs43

I'm wondering if the delay in implementing on ca has anything to do with the legalities involving coupons. I know we have(Canada) stricter rules and their are special exceptions for anything in Quebec(Or maybe no access to a French/English dictionary?). Otherwise this would/should have been a straight roll out on ca shortly after dot com. All Tyler stated in the past was possibly sometime in 2023.

-Lotz

femmefan1946

·3 years ago

I've been sending out Discount Offers to Watchers recently on items that do not have PL enabled.

No reaction although the PL items continue to sell steadily at a lower fee.

That is, in line with @ricarmic 's test, my usual 2% PL fee option sells more items than a 10% discount offer to a Watcher.

brettjet38

·3 years ago

I stopped sending best offers a month or two after the option started, my PL's with 2-2.3% sell way better than sending out discount offers with 10-15% off.

brettjet38

·3 years ago

Watchers Watch , Buyers Shop...

mrdutch1001

·3 years ago

Watchers Watch; Buyers Buy...and it's no differet on other sites where I sell...who really cares whether folks watch,favorite,heart, put an item into their cart & leave it there for weeks,months or whatever... ignore,ignore,ignore...

it is what it is....

B-U-Y-E-R-S buy and that's all you need to concern yourself with...

C'est la vie!

Que sera,sera!