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‘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.
| Format | Units Sold | % | $ Volume | % | Average | |
| Regular Store Price |
16 |
47.06% | $202.34 | 41.20% | $12.65 | |
| Best Offer |
14 |
41.18% | $182.74 | 37.21% | $13.05 | |
| Auction |
4 |
11.76% | $106.00 | 21.59% | $26.50 | |
| Total |
34 |
100.00% | $491.08 | 100.00% | $14.44 | |
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.
This 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.
If you set up your Best Offers to automatically accept above a certain price point, eBay won’t review the terms for you. You can’t set up the automated offer acceptance to take into consideration any extra terms listed by the person making the offer.
The terms (unfortunately) don’t show up until the 2nd page of a Best Offer (after you have clicked on the accept button). Once you click on the accept button, you will see the terms and then you will have one more chance to accept or cancel.
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
| Dear thequeenofauctions, Thank you for accepting my bid. I was wondering if you know the history of the pendant? Age? Where it was from? Has the jade been color treated? Thanks! |
| Here is my response:
Hi there, – thequeenofauctions |
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
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great info and I really appreciate what you have to say. But I have to respectfully disagree on the subject of counteroffers. I’ve had at least a 50% success rate with them, even including the ridiculously lowball offers that I know aren’t likely to accept my counteroffer. What’s great about counteroffers is that they let you open up a conversation with the buyer in the message you can leave for them with the counteroffer. I thank them for their offer, explain that we can’t go quite that low, then tell them what we can take for the item and how much of a discount that represents. I don’t think people always do the math on their own! It also gives the buyer a chance to counter with their own counteroffer, and hopefully a middle ground can be reached. Some folks really enjoy haggling! So my take on it is that you might as well counteroffer, because you might make the sale, but if you don’t, then you definitely won’t. Just another point of view…and I wouldn’t be surprised if experiences are different in different categories. My experience has primarily been in jewelry.
Sorry Lynn, but I have to disagree with you on B.O. I tried putting that on most of my items for a few months, but finally decided it was a waste of my time. Very rarely did I get a reasonable offer on anything. I spent way too much time responding to absolutely horrible low ball offers, and sold very little through B.O. Now that you’ve pointed out the buyer can specify terms on top of offering an unreasonably low price, I’m even more convinced that B.O. is a huge time waster. I’d rather focus on finding and listing stuff, writing a great customer newsletter, and similar sales generation activities.
OH LYNN!
This was so helpful!
I have made alot of best offers on ebay and this helped me soooooooooo much on when to do it.
Thanks again for the wonderful help.
Love: MayLyn
One way around a counter offer is this: I have an item up for a buy-it-now price of $120. I received an offer of $80. I wanted $100 but feel the $80 is a decent offer.
So, I revised my buy-it-now price to $100. Hopefully he or someone else will bite on that. If no one buys it at $100 in the next 48 hours, I’ll just accept the $80!
Ebetsy, you are an idiot! I just skimmed thru for your most stupid eBay guide on counter offers and make an offer.
first off, the ridiculously long three sentences that you claim you tell buyers in reply or sellers with your offer is not even possible because there is a severe characters limit. So you are a liar.
You sellers are such stupid morons. What’s up with declining offer? whatever happened to counter offers? I bid extremely low ( a conservative -$25 of what I am willing to pay) to allow for the seller to inflate their price in counter. We all know sellers are all about control and will never accept the first price you give them. So I am not going to give you the maximum for you to come back and max it or over inflate it. It’s a game FCOL!! and bitch stupidly declines, without even trying a counteroffer? What kind of stupid assholesellers don’t haggle back?) We all know that sellers type in most ridiculously high prices and they need a reality check.
Her loss: just found a of ring much more beautiful and 80% off what she wanted, and 50% off of what I would have paid her. So lesson learned, you utter idiot ?
Everyone has their way to sell, and no, sellers are not obliged to make a counter offer or to sell things the price you desire. Some sellers sell high, others sell low, it depends on what they are looking for. I personally try to sell low, since my goal is to empty my house of clutter, some people sell high for profit.
First off, we sellers need to pay 10% (ebay) 3% (paypal) fees. When you try to take into account those factors plus shipping cost and time, I don’t mind if a seller sells high, since it’s their item after all.
You as a person might want to control your emotions, ebay is just like any other place of sell/buy, it’s a business, not a game. Your personal feelings about the prices sellers try to make is just business. You should try to sell on ebay, so you can experience what it truly feels like to be a seller, you seem to be very entitled and spoiled.
Hello there! I could have sworn I’ve been to your blog before but after browsing through many of the articles I realized it’s new to me.
Anyhow, I’m certainly delighted I found it and I’ll be
book-marking it and checking back frequently!
Hey betsy, wanna touch my bat?
Never really understood the not-countering mentality. Imagine you’re at a flea market and a customer says to a trader. “Hey, I’m interested enough to buy this now. My ideal price would be $X”… and then nothing, either a blank stare or just a “no” from the trader. All because the customer didn’t guess the right number straight up. It’s just throwing sales away.
As for not bothering because you ‘only’ have 10-20% counter acceptance rate, I’d leap at a chance to recover up to one in five of my lost sales (and like one of your other commenters I actually get a better result than that through counter offers).
Your business and all that (and I’m glad it works for you) but it just doesn’t add up as good advice to me.
責任感が実に強く、社会への適応力をもつ。
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As a seller, I don’t use best offer. My prices are LOW, usually the lowest for any particular item (plus free shipping on everything). As a buyer, however, I will submit my best offer once in a while. My best offers are always 80% of the sellers price or higher. Because of this, I make it a strict rule not to accept counter-offers from sellers, and I also don’t send a second offer if they counter my original offer. Real example: Seller has DVD listed for $9.99 with best offer. I submit an offer of $7.99. Seller counters with $8.99. No sale.
Funny enough $7.99 is less than 80% of $9.99.
Apologies if this annoys anyone, just a bored person on a bored night.
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