Common Sense eCommerce

Skip McGrath has a great spin on eBay’s newly tweaked “Best Offer” features (link here). He says:

Now you can actually haggle which is what I think Best Offer should be about. Once you get an offer you can accept, reject or counter it. The best option is to counter. And now the bartering begins. The buyer can accept or counter your offer. Each offer is good for 24 hours. After that you have to start again. TO be successful using Best Offer you should list your Buy It Now price a bit higher than you want to get for the item. That allows for the haggling process and lets the buyer feel like they got a deal by “talking you down.”

I agree completely with that haggling point he makes. Since this change was implemented, I have been seeing a lot more success with Best Offer than with the one-shot deal it was before. And I sense the buyers are also enjoying the feeling of getting that ‘great deal’ they seek.

If you do set up a best offer, be sure to beware of the point below which you cannot go. This should be determined well ahead of time. It should be a point that is below the Buy it Now price but still high enough that there is enough profit left over. No sense giving the stuff away!

To do this, you have to consider ALL the costs associated with your item. At my other blog, I had a post which details all the costs you might consider when trying to figure out eBay profit (link here). There is also software that does this for you (link here).

But I’m glad that eBay is still able to build some fun into their marketplace!

Tags: eBay Selling, eBay Best Offer, eBay Buy It Now, eBay Profits

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed