Order your eBook now, click here.
Order in three payments here.
You can read more here.

SUPER SPECIAL RECOMMENDATION...

If you already own the eBook, please watch for a special email next week with information about my Dinnerware Shipping eReport. I have already filmed most of the video clips for it and am now working on the text.

My friend, Lori, needed to ship an entire dinnerware set and Carmen and I helped her with it. We got it all on camera. I even learned some shipping tricks from Carmen that I didn't know about!

This eReport will only be available to you if you own the Dinnerware Success eBook. Its value is priceless! Watch for the email.

'To Best Offer or Not to Best Offer?'
by Lynn Dralle, The Queen of Auctions

Should you offer items on eBay with the Best Offer option? In this article I will take a look at when (if ever) you should make a listing with eBay's Best Offer feature.

To prepare for this article, I looked back at my sales for two days in April, from April 28th to the 30th. Of the 34 items that sold in that 48-hour time period, 14 of them were sold by my accepting a Best Offer. Wow! 16 were sold at my regular eBay store price and four items were sold at auction.

If we analyze the unit numbers, that is 47% at regular store price, 41% with Best Offer and 12% at auction.

Lets look at it another way, by dollar volume. Actually, let's put it all into a chart so that it makes more sense.

As you can see, you are giving up A LOT of volume if you are not offering the Best Offer feature.

Now I'm going to share my Top Three Tips and Tricks for making Best Offer work for you.

#1. Only use it on items that are priced higher than $9.99.

To keep buyers from making ridiculous offers, we only put the "or Best Offer" on items that are above $9.99. This means that only items that are $10.99 or higher get that feature.

If you look at my listings the only items that you will see that have "or Best Offer" that are less than $9.99 are books. I list all my books with the best offer feature no matter what the price. I do this because the book world is very competitive. It is a commodity-based business so you are mainly competing on price. Thanks to everything I learned from Sheila Anderson Mochrie, I am now grossing about $1,000 a month on books. Thanks Sheila! For more info about selling books, please check out our teleseminar here.

Here is one of those $9.99 or Best Offer books that just sold.

#2. Always double check the terms before accepting and NEVER do an automatic accept based on $ limits.

Here is what the front page of a Best Offer looks like.

Here is what the 2nd page of a Best Offer looks like once you click "Accept." Notice that the term section (circled) is blank for this offer. This is a good thing!

Funny, this is the shoe pin that I had added to the costume jewelry article two weeks ago. It is a good offer and I decide to accept it.

Watch the 'Terms' section very carefully because many times a buyer will put in things like, "with free shipping" or, "only if you sell me other pieces at these prices," etc.

As an example, someone offered me $5.00 for a coffee mug that was priced at $10.99. I had owned the mug for quite some time and was ready to accept it until I read the terms. The buyer wanted FREE shipping. Give me a break! "Hello buyer, let me PAY you to take that coffee mug off of my hands."

Be CAREFUL!

#2. Evaluate each Best Offer on a Case-by-Case basis using these criteria.

a.     How long have you owned this item?

Here is an item that I put on eBay about 1 1/2 years ago. It was originally priced at $49.99. Since I had owned it for so long, I was happy to accept the offer.

After, I accepted that offer; I got a really nice email from the buyer. See, offering the "Best Offer" feature makes happy and hopefully REPEAT customers! Interestingly enough, the buyer was from Seattle, Washington.

Subject: has sent a question about item #250307721059, that ended on Apr-30-10 10:59:44 PDT - Green Jade Vintage Heart Pendant Carved Hole Mottled
Sent Date: May-01-10 10:38:12 PDT

b.     Is the offer at least 50% of your asking price?

This is another very important consideration. If it is over 50% of the asking price, I will seriously consider the offer. If it is under 50%, I usually decline it right away.

Here is an item that I recently accepted a Best Offer on and it was over 50% of my asking price. I had not had it for very long (4 months) so I did not want to settle for too much less than the asking price. I ended up taking their offer that was 74% of the asking price.

Here is that item.

c.     If you have multiples, are they buying all that are available or just one?

I will decline an offer if I have multiples for sale and the buyer makes a low offer on ONLY one piece. My goal is to sell all of the pieces to one buyer at a fair price.

Here is a multiple listing that I accepted a Best Offer on this past Saturday. The buyer wanted all 10 pieces and the price they offered was fair. $100 in my pocket on a Saturday morning while watching baseball. Wow! I am getting paid to watch Houston play. Pretty cool!

Here is the listing.

#3. Never Counter Back

You can counter back with a compromise if you like, but I have only had about 10 to 20% success with counter offers.

Here is why I don't use counter offers.

a.     A counter offer will tie up your item for 48 hours.

You can NOT edit the item or add anything to the listing until that buyer declines the counter or the 48 hours runs out. Of course, great if they buy it, but again, I only have about 10 to 20% success when I counter back.

Here is a silverware chest that I had up for sale and received a Best Offer on. They offered me $24.99 and I countered at $39.99 since I had not had it listed for very long. Then the bidder that made the original offer wanted to see more pictures. I had the pictures and realized that it would be a great selling tool to add the pictures to the listing.

Here is the silverware chest listing.

I went to add the photos and realized that I couldn't edit it until the buyer declined the offer or 48 hours ran out. Darn! Once the offer expired, I was finally able to add the photos.

b.     When you make a counter offer, the number of offers on your summary page will include that counter until it sells, expires or they decline it.

I personally like to see a zero on the summary page so that I know I have processed all of my Best Offers in a timely manner. The zero reassures me that there are no offers I have missed.

Best Offers are a great way to add volume to your eBay sales. If you are not already using this amazing tool, I highly advise you to get started using it today!

Happy eBaying!

Lynn