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People remove my items from their watch list after I send them offers
Or so it seems. And they never bite, out of the dozens of watchers I did have. I used to sell on EBay back in 2020, and business was never this slow. Is there something I’m missing, as in, is there a better time of day or of the week to send offers? Supposedly Sundays are supposed to be the busiest day of the week on the site, and I had one very small sale today, made even smaller by EBay’s fee increase for sellers.
29 comments
kh-stanley1
·1 year agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
ohabanero
·1 year agoAs a buyer only maybe I can shed some light on this phenomenon. So I place tons of items in my watch list and have to regularly go cleaning it out because I decide I am not interested in these things after all. However when a seller sends an offer that i either don’t like or decide at that time I’m not really interested anyway I’ll frequently just unwatch it from the item listing page where I ended up after opening the seller offer message. Convenient to just remove that item then and there so it’s gone already when I go to clean out my watch list which is something I put off because it takes extra time to do that. Most of the time it’s because I was just “window shopping†anyway but often times it’s also because sellers think that if they offer 10 percent or something off an item that will push the watcher to buy but many items are open to best offer and as a buyer I want a lot more off than most of the offers I get. Hence I figure if that’s all you’re offering off then I’ll pass. In my experience I’m better off offering 25 or 30 percent off before I get an offer and most of the time a seller won’t bite on that size discount after they’ve offered me 5 or 10 percent. so hope that helps.
ohabanero
·1 year agoAs stated I’m not a seller so I don’t know how complicated it is to message a watcher or if it’s even possible but I believe it is possible and as a buyer I think I would be more likely to end up making a purchase if I got a message instead of, or in addition to an offer telling me to make an offer of my own. That is a door opener to wheel and deal vs just get an offer for example 10 percent on a 20 dollar item is only a 2 dollar discount. So I’d suggest making sweeter offers or just message your watcher and say hey make me an offer on this. ( THEN you can see where your buyer is at and work from there.) On another note if you are not leaving “make offer†an option then that’s a closed door as well. Big retailers jack their prices way up so they can offer huge discounts. Buyers love to think they got a lot of money off. It seems like a no brainer to figure out what’s going on but it WORKS! LOL
downunder-61
·2 years agoI used to sell on EBay back in 2020, and business was never this slow.
2020 was an outlier - I think all sales boomed on all online venue's, obviously as people could not, for the most part, leave their homes, so not a good year to compare to.
In saying that, yes, eBay is, I think, at an all time low for a lot of people.
mam98031
·2 years agoOh yes. Sad days do to the Pandemic with all the deaths and shut downs in 2020 & 2021.
But for online sales, for me, it was AWESOME. For me in continued through the first quarter of 2023, then dropped off the edge.
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoWatchers watch.
Viewers view.
All watchers and all viewers are members who did not buy.
selsa84
·2 years agoSend offers as soon as you're able to. Don't wait because they may lose interest.
onefootflipper
·2 years agoA few things, don't hold the cards. You don't need a scanner, a lot of card sellers use a mounted document camera like an ipevo siggi HD Plus or similar.
Second, you are charging package shipping on cards under $20 that can go standard envelope for under $1. You will get zero sales on those cards.
This video shows how to pack for standard envelope.
https://youtu.be/f9SPX370_IE
In the card world people normally say "auto" and not "autographed", and the two words do not forward to each other in the search.
Finally, your extremely segregated price points leads me to believe you are either guessing prices or researching based of listed cards and not sold ones. Research off solds, if there isn't one, then use the closest one you can find as a guideline.
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 years agoRemember that once you have sent a watcher an offer, they do not receive any further offers on that item.
I take this to mean that your offer should be the best offer you are going to make.
yuzuha
·2 years agoHonestly, that's one thing I wish eBay would change as both a seller AND a buyer. Just because I don't accept an offer today doesn't mean I wouldn't accept it a month or two down the line if sent to me again.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years agoSounds reasonable that a buyer who maintains the item on watchlist should become eligible (again) each time item re-lists (every 30 or 31 days) ...
If its b/c you viewed multiple times or added to cart, then no. But if you keep item in watchlist, you should be eligible again. If someone argues it amounts to spam b/c multiple offers, i argue remove the item from your watchlist b/c you must not be interested if you consider it spam!
ckimodog
·2 years ago@subet-3
As others have pointed out, offers can be hits or misses. Sometimes they bite, sometimes they don't. Perhaps they found what ever you were selling from a seller who had a better price. Hard to say.
I personally don't provide the best offer option as in the past they had accepted & then didn't pay me. Lesson learned. Now they have to provide a payment method, as there are so many non paying bidders who sport bid and waste a hard working sellers time. Some like that feature, others do not. Again...hit or miss.
Hey!! Congrats on your sale! You're doing better then a lot! Keep up the good work!
Happy Selling!
luckythewinner
·2 years agoPeople remove my items from their watch list after I send them offers
That makes sense. I suspect some buyers do not actively curate their watch list, so your offer may remind them to go clean it up.
Is there something I’m missing
I don't think so. Sometimes I send offers and get no response, and sometimes it spurs a flurry of sales.
redlinear
·2 years agoFriday (payday). And usually just 5% which is enough to be "something". BUT, it's more of a reminder than anything.
ittybitnot
·2 years agoAnd they never bite, out of the dozens of watchers I did have.
@subet-3
What sort of "offers" are you sending? For example, $2 off a $40 item? or something more enticing? You are also using a new seller ID, and it may take some time for you to develop a "following" so to speak. As suggested, you do not know who you are sending offers to be they a buyer, someone who is interested, or someone who just looked at your item as either a fellow seller or buyer.
I am only a buyer here now. As a buyer who likes to "make offers" on multiple listings from the same seller for a combined order, I refrain from making offers anymore since that is no longer available to me when the seller retains the default preferences eBay awarded to all sellers. I will put the items on my watch list instead, or I will put items on my watch list to read carefully later. Oftentimes, I will get seller generated offers (which do not require forced buyer auto-pay yet), and I can accept, request a combined invoice, and use the payment method of my choosing.
Surprisingly enough, often the seller generated offers are for less than I was willing to spend anyway. That happened for a jewelry piece I wanted the other day. I missed the original listing in "auction" format, and it was relisted as BIN/Make offer. Had I actually succumbed to the forced participation in the "New Smoother Checkout" scheme, I would have offered $75, Seller sent offer to me for $45 which I accepted and paid for in a few minutes.
palmetto_unlimited
·2 years agoEveryone has answered the watcher question pretty well, so I'll just throw this out there.
If you're planning to be selling cards, and going to stick with it I'd recommend getting a scanner for pictures of these. They're not super pricey these days, and especially with Refractors and the like, can really get you better pictures and up close when you crop them.
If that's not an option at the moment, make sure you're cropping the photos so that potential customers can see better up close views of the cards, and that will also reduce a lot of the background noise you've got going on. (you can do this when you upload the photos while making the listing)
You've got some cool cards, so just hang in there and the buyers will come as your feedback total rises. Good luck!
soh.maryl
·2 years agoIf you have sold here before, then I am certain you know that not all watchers are potential buyers.
Some are other sellers waiting to see if your item sells so they decide on whether they want to sell a similar item they have. Others may be like me -- item is really odd and I am just curious to see if it sells.
What fee increase for sellers?
albertabrightalberta
·2 years agoIt's not just watchers who get offers. If I open one of your listings, that can make it so you can send an offer to me. I get lots of offers for items in listings I merely opened and looked at. I wasn't interested in the item and may have just looked to see why it was priced so high, so low, or if it was indeed "rare" as the seller may have stated in the title.
My point is that merely opening a listing can make it open to receiving an offer.
When you see "send offer eligible," you have no idea whether those people have the item on their watch list, if they just opened it to look at it or if they removed it.
annadryl
·2 years agoIt's very possible, in fact it may have been a reminder of something they forgot was even on the list. I got an offer for some shipping supplies I was watching (I forgot, no longer needed) and it was time to get in there and clean up that list. Don't take it personally. Very few watchers are actually buyers, even with discount offers. Good luck~
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years agoThis is so key.
mam98031
·2 years agoThat is a guess. It may be true, but none of us have any way to tell if it is true or not. We can't see who the watchers are.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years agoI think you misunderstood the meaning there. They didnt mean buyers vs sellers. They meant those who will buy vs those who will not buy (just watch).
Don't need to see "who" the watchers are, just know that many watchers inevitably will not buy. Hard to convert a "watchet" into a "buyer".
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years agoI send tons of offers, I get some sales from them. Often I send offers and seem to get full price sales shortly thereafter. Go figure.
You could argue its best to send offers immediately, because the buyer may be actively comparing your item to others so you have a small window to close the deal, but also, if you wait, they may buy it at full price. I don't believe there is any "right" answer.
Editted to add a note: Personally, I don't look at offers as better to go out on a certain day of the week, I look at offers specifically in terms time from when the buyer became interested or became eligible for offers. They either added to watchlist or they viewed it multiple times or they added to cart. Multiple ways for buyer to be "interested" and eligible for offers. I just see it as the time they first showed interest in my item, there is a ticking clock. The longer you wait to send an offer, the longer other sellers have to send the buyer an offer and the more chanced they have to buy from someone else
A buyer is interested in BUYING. Buyers usually want to BUY and BUY it NOW. Watchers like to window shop. They're not totally committed or they're just browsing. Window shoppers don't generally close deals. I'm interested in BUYERS
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One piece of random, off topic and totally unsolicited advice. I guess this is me personally, I don't buy any of what you sell, but looking through your listings quick, I'm pretty turned off by your pics of you holding the items. Personally, I'd say find a nice way to stage them with a nice mono-chromatic background and maybe a stand, and photograph them.
Seeing your hand in the pics, and you holding the items, as well as your constantly changing and very "busy" backgrounds, both those things scream "unprofessional" to me. I literally went to Jo-Ann Fabrics and paid $5 for some clean nice black velvet for a backdrop for my coins. I like it. Everyone is different. But your hands as well as your computer/desk/table/counter or whatever I see in the backgrounds don't seem to be helpful.
subet-3
OP2 years agoOh, yes. I know about the issue with my hands being there. I have to get a mini easel from the craft store so they can be held up still. If I lay them down on something, the lighting is terrible anywhere in the house and you can see the shadow of my phone if it’s on its back. That’s been on my mind for the past week, haha. I completely understand what you are saying about that. Unfortunately, that desk is the only place where the lighting is actually decent, and the only place where my back doesn’t hurt.
That’s another thing I wasn’t sure about that you cleared up for me. I didn’t know what made someone a “watcher.†Obviously I know they can add the item to the watchlist, but sometimes the item will have so many views and no watchers and it will still notify me to send someone an offer on that particular item. I just send out the offers because with cards, people are usually looking for a little discount. However, that’s only worked less than a handful of times this time around.
buyselljack2016
·2 years agoI use a rock, block of wood, or most anything that I can find to prop up my items (without them showing) for a photo op so that my hands are not in the photo 😊
A folded piece of cardboard, or posterboard would make a fine easel, and the rest of the cardboard/posterboard would provide a backdrop. I stay away from white as I don't have the greatest photography skills.
subet-3
OP2 years agoThese are really good improvisations and I have no idea why I didn’t think of that. As long as I can get the darn things in a standing position, the light will hit them correctly lol. Thank you!
sin-n-dex
·2 years agoI went to take a look, because I'm someone who chooses to use a very busy loud blanket for my background on most of my items.
Yeah, the scenery in the room is pretty busy and very distracting, definitely not intended to be the background, it just is.
I defend busy backgrounds under most circumstances because my busy loud background is how people doing a search and scanning photos know that I'm selling something, my listing jumps off the page (for returning buyers that is... I'm memorable that way). I have less busy backgrounds for certain things (like stamps and banknotes) where you don't want the busy to distract from the busy thing you're photographing. Seeing as how my coins are in holders, I don't worry too much about the busy black and gold weave around the holder.
C.
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 years ago@sin-n-dex
It is too bad that we cannot view your impressions and views, and compare then to sellers who sell similar items and use white backgrounds impressions and views, to validate our beliefs that listings with busy backgrounds get fewer clicks.
Certainly that is the belief of online marketeers who place ads.
sin-n-dex
·2 years agoI can probably post a screen cap, but then you'd need to find someone with similar items and a plain background to see if your theory is correct that I get fewer clicks.
It's possible newer buyers are less likely to click, but 75% of my business is repeat business, and many of them decide they want something and search, and buy mine when it comes up in the search.
Another thing is that photos with plain white backgrounds (or background removed) are sometimes flagged as stock photos or drop shipping, and the unique background is like a watermark. Since I can't actually watermark my photos or put text in them (against the rules), I use a unique background to identify it as mine.
C.