Watchers are not serious buyers

[sakic92710]

I sent 35% off offers to watchers.  No one bought a thing & 1 watcher removed themselves.  lol  How dare I send an offer!   😛

[gurlcat]

I definitely seem to get less 'bang' from sending offers than I did a couple years ago.  But I still find it worth doing, for the times it does work.

[gurlcat]

---

@pls-consignments wrote:

Ever since SIO's started, it has trained buyer's to "watch and wait" for a better price. Sellers are having to cry-out to buyers like tenders of a carnival game. Not only has this affected values, it has forced many sellers to abandon the "Allow Offers" option. 

Things have certainly changed ... all by  design ofcourse.

---

How has it forced anyone to abandon the Allow Offers option?  I allow offers and I send them too.  The way I see it, buyers have vastly different buyer 'psychologies.'  Some love to get right in the haggle game, others would never dream of it (but they might accept a deal if offered it). 

[johnrj1226]

Have been a watcher many times with no serious intent to buy.  Just  wanted to earmark a listing  for  research purposes.  Would  delete items from my watch list when I got around to it.

As  a seller never did do the Make An Offer option - believed in the Joe Batten method of  selling served me well for over 4  decade shttps://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Your+price+is+right+sell+it.  Applied it when I sold on eBay.   Bottom  feeding prices ain't no way to make a profit.   Hint:  your listing is your best sales person.  Always  targeted my selling price at a bit above the mid point between the low prices to highest price, after deleting the highest of highs and lowest of lows  that would produce my target profit margin.  Preferred to make  a decent profit on one sale, rather than  selling a bunch of low  margin stuff to  produce the  same amount.

To each there own

[meme6253]

I do the exact same thing, I will end the listing after giving the potential buyer a few chances, after that oh well they missed out on a great price.

[jbbowers12012]

Hi,   If our sales have been a bit slow - we here in New Jersey will send offers to our watchers.  We do get lucky & net a sale on occasion. (J.B.)

[frodobagginskennedy]

I sent about 20 offers this weekend.  I have received 3 sales.

[soh.maryl]

Respectfully, perhaps your prices were already excellent to your way of thinking,  but not to others?

Plus, for those of us who just watch out of idle curiosity, the fact that your prices are excellent doesn't make much difference.  

[midwestmerch17]

@sakic92710 

I have sent about a dozen offer and only got 2 sales this week. 🤔

I also am guilty of : (1.) watching multiple of the same item that I am considering buying (so I can compare prices, or wait for offers), (2.) Watching items I am trying to sell or going to sell (however, I am not bothered by people sending me offers).  Also, when I sell an item, I "unwatch" the item because I no longer need to watch it. 😀

[jbbowers12012]

Actually,  If you have done your comp. shopping - A 5% or 10% off offer is a viable offer as long as it is in-line with the competitions' prices.  IMHO Of-Course!  (J.B.)

[gurlcat]

---

@midwestmerch17 wrote:

@sakic92710 

I have sent about a dozen offer and only got 2 sales this week. 🤔

---

Not to nitpick on your post in particular; this is something I always wonder about when someone talks about offers they have sent. -When you say you sent about a dozen offers, do you mean offers on a dozen ITEMS (with each item having 1 or more "interested buyers") .... or do you mean offers to a total of a dozen interested buyers (on probably less than a dozen items)? 

If it was the latter, a dozen buyers, then having 2 of them accept is actually pretty awesome! 
If it was the former, a dozen items, then it would depend on how many interested buyers those items had, like if there were an average of 5 interested buyers for each listing .... 12 x 5 = 60, and only 2 of those people accepted, then okay that would be kind of lousy. 

I just wanted to point out that we may be saying very different things when we talk about "how many offers" we have sent. 

[jonathanbrightlight]

I would say even 2 out of 60 isn't bad when it comes to seller-initiated offers, in my experience.  I can't even begin to guess how many buyers receive offers from us within any given timeframe (I sent offers on about 130 items just today, but who knows how many buyers that was), but I can say that in the last month, Seller-Initiated Offers made up 10.7% of our total sales according to eBay's Sales report.  I don't care if that's 2% or 80% of the offers sent, though, it's still enough of our sales to be worthwhile.  And we almost always send a flat 10% off, rarely anything different (I usually just do it in bulk on everything eligible).

[gurlcat]

---

@jonathanbrightlight wrote:

I would say even 2 out of 60 isn't bad when it comes to seller-initiated offers, in my experience.

---

And who can disagree really, especially if you use the bulk offer feature.  In a way the numbers of items/buyers is moot; what anyone should consider most carefully is whether or not it's worth the TIME.  Since I have such a small store, I do my SIO's piecemeal, carefully considering how much I'm willing to subtract from each item, versus how much I think it might take to get a bite, and so I'm considering things like how long the item has been listed, whether it has few or many watchers, etc.  I just did it on 8 or 9 listings today, and it probably took more time than the 130 you did, because of the handy bulk option, lol.  But I still consider it worthwhile. 
 

[gurlcat]

@sakic92710  Have you ever tried doing end/sell similar on 'old' listings (over 30 days old)?  It looks like you're about the same size as me, so I can recommend it highly and with experience to say it works.  By doing this treatment to only about 5-7 listings per day, it's very manageable and gets me great results.  I would also recommend marking the prices down when you have the SS listing view open.  If you were sending offers anyway, you might as well mark the item's BIN price down to what the offer amount was.  And now whoever buys it will have to pay immediately, no butt dragging! 

[jonathanbrightlight]

Very wise answer, and I agree.  Everyone needs to consider how much time it takes and how much that time is worth to them.