Do you send offers to your watchers?

[musicyouneed2]

Do you send offers to your watchers?  How has it been for you?  I used to send them and had some success but since I now promote my listings, I haven't.   

So they find my listings and 31 are watching (I am sure for a # of reasons) and for what ever reason do not purchase it, cost of item too high and/or shipping too high or my competition.   I just came back from being away for 4 months. 

I am having an internal battle, I am just wondering that the whole purpose of being on ebay is to sell and if it just sits on my shelf for a lousy dollar.  

I would like to hear your thoughts. on what you do.

[busybeas_books]

 I usually send a few offers each week, but only for my higher-priced items ($10-15 CDN+). 10% off usually doesn't work, 15% or 20% is better.  Once a month or so I'll send offers on all the lower-price items (under $10), at $10% off. Will get a few sales. You need to keep your costs/fees in mind to see if it's worthwile.

Quite often a few days or a week after sending an offer, the items sells for full price. Coincidence? or eBay's item-showing algorithm?

A saying from my flea-market days "It's better to sell it for $10 than not sell it for $20.

[mrdutch1001]

In a word NO...I see from both sides what that offers process does ....Not everyone that puts an item on their watch list is a potential buyer...I stopped putting items on a "watch" list over a year ago because of all those annoying offers..... even if a person looks at/checks out an item now an offer is sent because you"looked at it" and that is most annoying!

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@musicyouneed2 wrote:

Do you send offers to your watchers?  How has it been for you?  I used to send them and had some success but since I now promote my listings, I haven't.   

So they find my listings and 31 are watching (I am sure for a # of reasons) and for what ever reason do not purchase it, cost of item too high and/or shipping too high or my competition.   I just came back from being away for 4 months. 

I am having an internal battle, I am just wondering that the whole purpose of being on ebay is to sell and if it just sits on my shelf for a lousy dollar.  

I would like to hear your thoughts. on what you do.

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When sending best offers first arrived 2 in 5 used to turn into a sale. Now closer 1 in 10 or 15 that turn into sales. My guess is majority of those watchers are competition checking out prices and/or research for creating their own listings of similar stuff. Like most new features on eBay they work until they don't. Each new  promotion I have run lately is coming back with higher and higher rates when it comes to eBay's "suggestions". Unsure what the answer is. All I know is eBay has definitely become more of a challenge to sell with ANY type of consistency.

-Lotz

Sell similar(for refreshing listings) used to get traction. Now barely a blip in business.

[edubb101]

Hello,

When I send out offers I use the the "send offers elgible" tab.  Sometimes the listings that have multiple watchers are not even eligible.  That's a red flag right there.  

The offers that I get success on are the ones who are not watching my items but rather the ones who may have clicked on my listing a bunch of times.

Imo, watchers are either competitors, prospective sellers or vulchers.  The one scenario where watchers might mean something is if you have a rare one of a kind piece which is the only one on ebay.  That scenario I have had some success but I usually pull the listing down and shake the watchers then raise the price to see who comes back.  In this scenario my product ALWAYS sells for more than I initially listed it for.

For that CD that has the 31 watchers maybe try the above and see if that works.  

All the best

[reallynicestamps]

I make Offers to Viewers not Watchers.

Watchers are permanent- if they haven't bought by now, they never will.

Viewers looked at my item in the last 30 days.

I don't make Offers if I already have Promoted Listings on the item.

I only make Offers if I have enough 'room' for a profit after shipping. (My prices include Free Shipping.)

I make Offers on slow moving items, not in the first 30 days of listing.

I do allow Best Offer on most of my listings. With automatic Accept/Refuse parameters set.

Promoted Listings get Views but not necessarily sales.

Best Offer does work for me.

[reallynicestamps]

You can send your CDs lettermail within Canada, but for the USA you have to move to parcel (UPU regulations are being enforced).

That may be why your US customers think your shipping is too high.

You know that eBay and the post office have a newish agreement that reduces our cost for Tracked Packet USA by about 50%? Your $4.50 for Canada shipping would be $7.05 Tracked Packet USA.

Which sells best?

$50 +$4.50

$54.50+ Free Shipping

$59.99 + Free Shipping

It's not as obvious as it looks.

[flipistics]

I usually send offers out to watchers if the item is older than about 2 weeks. How much I'm willing to discount it depends on how long it's been in my store and how much space it takes up. I have pretty good success with doing so, especially for things like movies and music.

I don't use best offer. IMO it's an invitation to people who already want to buy the item to try and get it a bit cheaper ... and in the time it takes you to respond to the offer, they may change their mind entirely.

[dinomitesales]

Yes, I send out offers to watchers/viewers any time I notice the option in my Seller Hub. It's always 10%, no counteroffers allowed. I'm here to sell things - if 10% off helps someone pull the trigger, then great. If it's a category of item that I have a bunch of then I will add a little note encouraging them to look at what else I have available and remid them that I offer combined shipping and am happy to get them a quote if they want more than one.

I don't really keep track of how many of these offers turn into sales, but if I had to guess it's probably 1 in 20 or something like that.

[reallynicestamps]

I don't use best offer. IMO it's an invitation to people who already want to buy the item to try and get it a bit cheaper ... and in the time it takes you to respond to the offer, they may change their mind entirely.

You're not wrong.

I think of BO as a version of Auctions. The price is never fixed until both parties agree.

But responding to Offers can be automated.

Set your minimum acceptable and your maximum to be refused. You will only be asked about Offers between those two amounts.

EG your asking is $100. You set Acceptable at $90 . You set Refused at $80.

The offer of $70 will get a polite letter from eBay saying to try again. 

The offer of $81 you can consider, perhaps the item has been in stock for two months? or you can refuse /counter -offer. 

The offer at $95 is automatically accepted.

And you can set Accept/Refuse a penny apart and only see the Accepted Offers.

[imbuzzy]

Out of the 1180 items that I have sold this year to date, 258 were sold via Best Offer and 95 were 10% off offers that I initiated. Offers are large part of my selling strategy and are budgeted into the initial fixed price.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

You should have room in your price for offers. Even something like 5 percent off.

You can turn off counter offers when using the send offer to buyer feature. I would recommend doing this if your margins are very slim. If you have an item that a buyer has had in their cart or has watched for a significant amount of time, odds are they have forgotten about it or moved on. When you send an offer, they get a notification. It gets the item in front of them one last time. To me, that is worth taking a 5 cent hair cut.

It can also be useful for creating urgency because buyers have to accept within a set time period. If you simply have a good deal on an item through a Buy It Now price, a buyer might imagine that they could come back in a week and still buy the item. If the good price is a limited time discount, they are more likely to pull the trigger out of fear of missing out on the discount.

With that said, there are a minority of buyers who know how this system works. So you might get the occasional buyer who adds an item to their cart, knowing that if they wait a few hours, you might send them a nice discount. They would have bought at full price. I don't think this is the majority of buyers. If you want to avoid this, you could wait a set period of time before sending offers.

[38e_avenue]

I always do (usually at 10%),  but they rarely respond - maybe 5 for 100 offers work. I also offer counteroffers. 

[aviatorsparadise]

I always send offers to watchers. I figure out my estimated profit on each item and make a dollar figure offer based on the profit I am comforable with accepting. I would say 25% of my sales come from offers that are sent.

I don't use percentage discounts as my items vary so much in margin that it just doesn't work to place a blanket figure on it.