Send Offers phenomenon

[keziak]

I find that most of the listings that appear in that section of Active Listings were those I just listed, including some listed less than an hour ago. Is that the same for  you? I am guessing those are on people's saved searches? Only occasionally they are repeat buyers who might be using Saved Seller, I dunno.

[wastingtime101]

It's common for new listings to get more traffic and a higher search placement than stale listings, therefore resulting in an increase of "interested buyers" per eBay's definition. Not a phenomenon, just logic. 😉

[keziak]

Yes but it seems notable that listings appear in the section in a flash.  That seems a lot to happen via search placement. 

[wastingtime101]

I stand by my response.

I said more traffic and a higher search placement.

More traffic can be because of saved searches, people searching by newly listed, maybe items were promoted so the ad got priority placement, or any number of factors.

[pls-consignments]

🤔

Well, this is bizarre.... I just noticed that the number of "Send Offers" available to send, actually reduced by 50% in the last hour!

I've never see this before. I send offers daily. Did they add expiration dates to their availability? 

[wastingtime101]

50% is a lot so I don't know if this will answer what you experienced, but generally speaking it's very possible for items to no longer be eligible for SIO (seller initiated offers).

- buyer removes item from watchlist or shopping cart

- buyer changes communication preferences to turn off offers

- supposedly eBay only allows us to send offers to "recent" interested buyers - which I think mainly applies to buyers that viewed but did not add to list/cart. So if those interested views were no longer recent, those could drop off the eligibility list

And a few other reasons, but those are the main ones.

Like I said, 50% is a lot, but if the same buyer or couple of buyers were interested in a bunch of your items and fall under those points noted above, that may explain it.

Edit: 50% is a relative number. So ... 50% of 100 is going to be vastly different than 50% of 10. So maybe 50% really isn't a lot and is easily explained by the same buyer interested in a bunch of items. 🤷

[pls-consignments]

Yes, there was 8 offers available to send, then suddenly there were 4. This was the first time I noticed a drop like that. But I agree, it could have been the timing of removals from watch lists and recently viewed.

[keziak]

I stand corrected, I didn't understand you included saved searches under more traffic.

[keziak]

I haven't noticed listings falling off the list of eligible offers. But I tend to answer immediately. I suppose that makes me look desperate but I kind of am, I am not the kind of seller who wants or can list items for extended periods of time like years.

I'm sorry we dont' get more listings to which we can send offers. right now I supposed have over 300 watched items and no opportunity to send offers. Wouldn't it benefit Ebay to open these up for sales=money for them?

[wastingtime101]

---

@keziak wrote:

right now I supposed have over 300 watched items and no opportunity to send offers. 

---

That means either:

a) you already sent offers to those watchers

b) the watchers have offers turned off in their communication preferences

Option a probably applies to the majority of those 300. For good reason, eBay doesn't let sellers keep sending offers to the same buyers. If they were interested they would have purchased the first time you sent the offer, or they would have reached out if they missed the offer window.

[redlinear]

Just a heads up.
I no longer buy when I see.
I put a few like items in my watch list and wait for the SIO's to come rolling in.
It appears that many of my customers do the same.
Since I began sending offers on Fridays, my weekday sales have dropped while my weekend sales have increased. 
The difference: I'm making less due to the discount % on about half of my items.
Seems eBay is training this buyer behavior well.


    

[keziak]

You are very informative, thanks. I have sent a lot of offers so that might lean towards (a).

[keziak]

I like to theorize that if Amazon started to implement offers which both buyers and sellers can use, the site would explode. I do a lot with offers with what I think are good but not excessive discounts.