ebay - Get it sold by sending an offer to interested buyers / Promote it Boost your item to help it

ANNA

Get it sold by sending an offer to interested buyers / Promote it. Boost your item to help it sell faster.

I'm a private seller, selling some of my surplus furniture on ebay as BIN or BIN with Best Offer. I have lots of views and a number of watchers. I followed ebay's suggestion of sending my watchers an offer price. This hasn't resulted in any sales. Any advice about using this feature? I'm surprised that ebay suggest it where listings already include "or Best Offer" meaning a buyer has the opportunity of placing an offer without waiting for a seller's offer. I suspect some watchers are rival sellers doing their pricing research.

What about the "Promote it" ? I have never used it. Have any of you ebay sellers had success with it?

The only thing that has improved my sales has been offering a furniture courier (buyer expense) instead of local collection only.

soolin

I get the occasional sale when I send offers out but not as many as I used to. I have also used the promote option, but set it fairly low due to costs and sold a couple of bits, so a bit hit and miss. 

Bobo_Brazil

Personally I don't bother with this 'send an offer' any more at all. Majority of my listings are BIN (with offers), as I am mainly offloading collectible items that I don't collect any more, & things that don't necessarily do all that well in auctions. 

I have used send an offer approx. 20x in the past year or more, and have always done it when an item has multiple watchers, ie. at least 2 watchers. several times when I did this the item had 9-10 watchers, one item had 16 watchers. Have never had a single response, or counter offer, at all, from using this feature. Meanwhile every item that I sent an offer on (with the exception of one item) has subsequently sold for a price I was happy with, many sold for full price within weeks, or at the absolute most, a couple of months.  

Generally, if a buyer is serious they will buy (or make a serious offer or inquiry) within a few days of coming across the item.. I've noticed auctions are basically the same, maybe 20 years ago it was popular to 'snipe' a last second bid, but in my experience at least the last few years, serious bidders and buyers get their bids down within the first 2-3 days of an auction start.

mimi1234

I tried doing the "send an offer" a few times last year but some buyer take the mick.

Widget for sale at £10 - 3 watchers - I offer each one a £7.00 deal - they either message me or send a counter offer (I know these can be turned off) asking if I will take £4 or less.  

Not really worth it especially with postage going up and up.

kazzyv

I sell clothing mostly and sell a lot of items on offers - but I usually price to allow for a discount. With clothing there are usually a lot of similar items so I think sending an offer starts a conversation and engages the buyer. 

Having said that I would think that selling with pick up only must limit your potential items - could you put in your description that you can help arrange a courier if they can’t pick up ?

prowla

I often watch things whilst I'm gauging prices; I mostly ignore the offers I receive.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

As a buyer I'll often add things to the watch list in the hope of an offer.

As a seller I tend to send them out on stuff that has been sitting around for a while and I want gone, if the discount is decent then it seems to work well but I find a lot offers that come through to me as a buyer have very little off which isn't much of an enticement unless it's something you need to buy. 

I would recommend using the promote your listings feature, just set it at 2% (the min eBay allow, which will be billed at 2.4% due to the added VAT, ignore their suggested rates), if your listings don't get much interest they will sink fast in the search results if there are a lot of other listings that are making sales every day, promote gives them more opportunity to be seen.

80% of my impressions (times the listing has appeared in the search results to a buyer), 25% of page views and maybe 30% of sales come from promoted, if you are unsure you can test it with a few listings and monitor here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sh/performance/traffic

I'm clearing our mountains of unwanted tat treasures and get the 70% off offers (so 3.87% FVF), fees end up at around 8% all in, but that does include some international fees which you won't have with collection only so for you, if you get the 70/80% offers, perhaps 6-7% fees overall.  

Just to add, it's best to fill in as many item specifics as is relevant, have at least 3 photos and put keywords in the first 3 words of the title

Tall white bookcase stunning piece 

is better than

Stunning tall white bookcase

soolin

I've been buying a fair few things recently, I usually add items to my watch list while I have a think and also on the basis that I might get an offer. Sometimes if I have added a few similar items at the same price I will wait and buy the first that send a decent offer.

Sometimes if I get an offer for an item I am not watching and merely viewed I'll buy it if the price beats the ones I am watching.

I do also look at things that have sold and have been listed if I am looking at things to buy at auction or wholesale to see the sell through rate and end prices, I often get offers on those as well which I do of course ignore. However if I get very low offers on items I am researching it is useful as it means I won't risk buying my own stock to sell.