Are you selling on eBay and wondering how you can increase your sales? There are a number of sales opportunities on the platform, such as using the best offer, as well as strategies you can use to get the best out of your listing and keeping your feedback top notch.
In this article we are going to give you a few great hacks for getting the most out of eBay as a seller – so you maximize your sales.
Use Best Offer
Many eBay sellers overlook using this selling strategy. Perhaps this is because they don ‘t think it is right for their product, or they don’t understand why they would want to use it. So let’s be clear why you should be using best offer on eBay, to start with:
Good communication is key to a good experience!
Good communication is key to a positive buying experience, which leads to more sales, and a better post-purchase feeling. As an online seller, this is one aspect where you need to work a little harder than if your customers could meet and talk to you face-to-face like in traditional retail selling. Best offer is a good way of opening communication, and reassuring the customer that there is a real human behind the digital shop front.
Negotiation
Shoppers on eBay are very often bargain hunters, and will gladly place an offer on an item, rather than pay full price. By using Best Offer it signals to the buyer that you are open to negotiation. Since Best Offer is also going to be taken as a challenge by your buyers, much like an auction, be prepared to receive some very low offers, and not be offended. Buyers are going to try their luck. You just need to respond politely with your counteroffer.
Rank higher on eBay’s search
eBay is geared towards giving its bargain-hunting customers what they want. The more you can offer a customer, the higher you will rank on the Best Match search – the first and best way to get buyers to see your listing. Best Offer, along with other sales options, is part of how eBay decides which listings to rank at the top.
Determining market value
Pricing your product is a whole marketing topic in itself. What the market value of your product it isn’t going to be stable, and you should stay on top of the trends, including such things as seasonality. Best Offer can also be used to clear out some of your older listings that haven’t sold and get a good feel for what people are willing to pay for your items.
Responding to an offer
Buyers lose interest very quickly, so you should respond in a timely fashion to any offer you receive. You need to decide whether to accept, decline or counter the offer, which isn’t always easy. Here are a few points on what to take into account in deciding how to respond:
Key dates – Think about two dates – how old the listing is, and the date you last sold the product. If you receive an offer on a one-of-a-kind listing that has been sitting online for months or even years, you might be prepared to accept even a lowish offer.
Identify your Bestsellers – For your multiple quantity listings which have more than one item, it’s important to take into account the number of items sold on each listing, the average sale price, and the remaining amount of items in stock. Some listings might have good sales records and you would be less likely to discount.
Watchers– how many people have this item in their Watch List. This is valuable information, as it gives you an idea of the number of potential buyers who might be waiting for just the right time or price to purchase your item. Another good piece of knowledge making a decision regarding a Best Offer.
Purchase history – does the offer come from a customer who has purchased from you before? How many times? This is one way you can foster good relationships with your customers. Your response to an offer from someone who has purchased many of your items and already spent heavily with you might be different than to a first timer.
Free shipping- Check whether you have offered free shipping on the item, o you know hat the real co of the product is.
If all that sounds like a lot to get your head around then you might want to check out tools like Best Offer Advisor, that can deliver all this information straight to you, as soon as you get any offers on your listings.
eBay Feedback
Feedback on eBay is extremely important, and you really need to keep it at 99% to be in the optimum selling position. Feedback is basically your reputation on eBay, and being perceived as trustworthy is very high on the list of priorities for customers shopping online. High feedback ratings are also one of the key criteria for becoming a top seller and getting your items listed higher. – top sellers get 30-50% more sales than average sellers.
Feedback is divided into four categories: Item as described, communication, dispatch time, postage and packing charges. Each of these will require your attention to stay with high ratings. Take advantage of the tools in eBay to prompt buyers to leave feedback when they haven’t yet done so. It is also critical to get the number of feedback ratings over at least 100.
Negative feedback is another issue which might crop up and need to be dealt with. Max Godin at CrazyLister offers some helpful tips on neutralizing negative feedback, as well as other strategies for achieving a perfect feedback score. One top tip he offers is that if the negative feedback you receive is abusive, uses foul language, reveals any personal information or references other transactions or ‘investigations’ into you or your product, then it is a violation of the site’s terms and you can request it is taken down.
Bundling or not
It might seem easier to list a collection of items together, but you need to think about the right strategy for your items. Bundling too many or inappropriate items together is a common mistake, and in many cases is quite likely that you can get more money in total if each item is listed individually.
Since actually doing the research on a series of individual item s can be tricky and time-consuming – especially if they are unique or fairly rare items. David A. Karp explains that the one question you need to ask yourself is: “How likely is it that any single bidder will want all of the items I’m selling?”
If the answer is ‘highly likely’, then there is more chance that you will get a good price for the whole collection and what they are actually worth. If, the answer is ‘unlikely’, then it could be bought by someone with the intention of breaking up the collection for profit, or keeping some items, and selling some to make their a least some of their money back. In which case, you are better splitting them up and maximizing your income from the collection.