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A new feature that ebay has rolled out to sellers this year is the option to send an offer to interested buyers. Basically what this means is that if you have eligible listings, you can send an offer to a buyer – much in the way that they can send offers to you if you have Best Offer activated.
This is an exciting feature which could potentially increase your chances of a sale. Quite often, you’ll have lots of watchers on an item but no purchases or offers which can be quite frustrating, but this feature prompts buyers to act and feel like they’re getting a bargain.
How To Send An Offer
Go to My Ebay, Selling and you’ll see your Selling Overview. Scroll down and if you have eligible listings, you’ll see a ‘Send Offers To Buyers’ section. Click ‘send offer’ and you can input a price and a message to the buyers watching your item. Once you’ve sent an offer, you’ll see “Review offer sent” next to the listing.
The above is how the offer will appear to the buyer.
If there’s more than one watcher, they will each be notified that other watchers can still buy the item. The buyer then has 48 hours to accept the offer before it expires. You can only send an offer once.
On the flip side, if you don’t want to receive offers from sellers you can opt out in your communication preferences.
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Eligibility
All that eBay states about eligibility at the moment is that it depends on the age of the listing and the listing format. It does say that you don’t need best offer enabled to send an offer though. If you don’t see the feature, it might be that your listing isn’t old enough, you don’t have any watchers or it’s the incorrect format. Ebay are planning to expand the eligibility though, so it’s worth checking back.
The Downside
Not everybody sees this feature as a good thing, in fact some people think it actually minimises your chance of a sale.
Concerns include:
-Buyers worried that sellers have their email address and can see their usernames (which isn’t the case)
-That buyers will be annoyed at having received an offer – if they wanted to purchase it they would make an offer.
-Uninterested buyers will be contacted because people add things to their watch list for many reasons.
-It will make the seller seem desperate thus reducing likelihood of a sale.
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My Opinion
As with everything, it’s personal choice but I don’t see it as a bad feature. I’ve sent a few offers and made a few sales this way so I will probably continue to use it.
Have you tried it yet?
A good post, thank you Katie. Glad to see that you had some sales from trying this. One question please to which I haven’t yet found an answer:
Q: Have you been able to send the same Offer again to Watchers of the same product? ie. when the 10 most recent interested buyers have changed.
Hi Shelagh
If you have new watchers on an item, you’ll be given the option to send them an offer.