Sending Offers to Watchers Strange Result

[nanbosnan]

FWIW.  Yesterday I decided to try the "send offers to watchers" option for the first time.  I sell surplus from my late step Father's Laboratory and generally sell about 4-5 items a month.  I read these boards and post occasionally looking for advice on increasing visibility/sales.  I sent very modest offers in the neighborhood 5% or so on 11 items to about 25 or so watchers.  By the end of the day I had THREE sales, yay me.  All three were from the 11 items for which I had sent offers but NONE of them were bought at a discount by a watcher.  All three were sold for full price to other accounts.  I've made no sales directly from the offers.  SO STRANGE!  Conclusion of my little experiment: Does sending offers to watchers increase sales?  Darned if I know.

[city*satins]

I've found that maybe 15 to 25 percent of my offers to watchers result in a sale.

I've also found that offers that I send within 48 hours of the 1st and 15th of each month get a better result.

[tamaralea]

That is really weird!  It reminds me of the time I increased all my handling times to 5 days and had several sales.  Some types of changes must increase visibility.  

[lovefindingtreasures2]

I am so glad you brought this up as the exact same thing has happened to me 3 times this week. I sent out offers and the items were almost instantly sold to someone at the original price. Since we have no idea who the watchers are, I don't know if the 3 separate buyers were coincidence or if the system DIDN'T give them the discounted deal.

I have one to send out today and the other 2 have gone out but not arrived yet. I am worried that this is a glitch and these 3 sales are going to complain. I don't know but this is happening to me too.

[nanbosnan]

I compared the partial user name under the "review all offer" tab with the user name for the buyers and none of them matched. I don't think it's a glitch with the offers but I don't know if it is a way to increase visibility or just a fluke.

[nanbosnan]

Oooo... I'll try that too. Nothing to lose.

[the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth]

I haven’t accepted an offer for several weeks but the last time I did it was complicated to get the offer price. It didn’t show on the listing page from my watch list so I had to pull it up from messages. Could be the buyers realized you were making offers to watchers, did not want to miss out but could not figure out how to get the offer price. 

[eburtonlab]

@nanbosnan 

eBay has changed the way that the usernames are scrambled -- they no longer are guaranteed to contain any letters in common with the real usernames, so such comparisons are no longer valid.

You can verify this by opening the bid history of an item you have bid on. Copy the page URL and paste it into an incognito or private browser session where you are not signed in to eBay and check how your scrambled username appears.

That is also a good technique to check your 30-day bid statistics -- by clicking on your scrambled username. If you try that while signed in, you are just sent to your profile page. Once you can see your bid statistics, try signing in in another browser tab of the same session and then reload the bid statistics page for further details.

[esg-enterprises]

I have recently talked to several other ebayers and we have shared the same experience.

You send decent discounted offers and no response, but the same item sells shortly after at full price, it is real and very odd, but not complaining:)  

[nanbosnan]

Interesting. How would new potential buyers realize I was sending offers?

[keziak]

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@esg-enterprises wrote:

I have recently talked to several other ebayers and we have shared the same experience.

You send decent discounted offers and no response, but the same item sells shortly after at full price, it is real and very odd, but not complaining:)  

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I think this just happened to me, too, but memory is hazy. There was some sort of offer or counter-offer involved and I took notice because the book sold for the full price instead.

[nanbosnan]

Oh, I'm not complaining either! 🙂

[lovefindingtreasures2]

Me neither! The odd thing is the item that sold today at full price instantly after I sent an offer to the one watcher is a listing with multiples, so it wasn't a get it before the other buyer, there is more than one 🙂

[tamaralea]

Thank you so much for this tip.  I tried it this morning and it worked.