Boost your Sales With Best Offer

Many store sellers are afraid to use best offer, because of a bad experience, or because of horror stories they may have heard from other sellers.  The truth is:  Best offer can boost your sales big time if used properly.  It can also make your life miserable - with a lot of 1 cent, or $1.00 offers.  Think of it as taking the good with the bad.

How Best Offer Works 

  Suppose you put up the hottest Masked Marvel Comic Book, and your asking price is $3500.  You would be happy to get $2500 for it, but more is always better - thus the $3500 price.  When you add best offer, it allows buyers to send you offers for your item.  For you the advantage is that your item is listed at the price you really want to get from it, but you still may be able to attract the interest of someone who may only want to give you $2900, or $3200.  Then you can decide whether to part with your item at that price or not.

Best Offer Basics

1. Best offer is available on all ebay store auctions, and on all fixed price auctions.
2. You set up your auction just as you normally would, even the sale price - and, then you check the best offer option.
3. When you check best offer - you are given the option to automatically decline prices below a certain dollar amount. 
4. When your auction goes live - Just sit back and wait.  When you receive a best offer you have several options:

• You can accept the offer, and make the sale
• You can decline the offer - (When you decline the offer - Remember to be nice if you send a note to the seller.  Don't go off on them for making a ridiculous offer.  Once you decline the offer they can make two more best offers, or maybe even buy the item outright at full price.)
• You can submit a counter offer - (In the case of the Masked Marvel Comic Book, we wanted $3500, and someone made an offer of $2600.  Rather than decline the offer - You can make a counter offer of say $3000.  You know the buyer was willing to put up $2500, this gives you a chance to test the water, and see if they will go a little higher.

The way I use best offer is - I make best offer available on all of my items for roughly two weeks, once every three months.  This gives my regular customers a chance to snatch up a bargain on items they have been watching, and it also brings in many new customers.  It also brings in some dissapointments, because there are always a load of lowball offers to decline.  But the proof is in what you take to the bank - And, usually those two weeks of best offer activity give me an extra $1500 to $2000 in sales.

Another way you can use best offer, is to put it on items you are not sure of what the value might be.  Put a high buy-it-now price on the item, but make best offer available.  Other sellers use it with items they have had trouble selling at full price, or on hurt items.

Give it a try, and see what best offer can doe for your sales.