Buy it now vs. Best offer, I have been thinking maybe I am leaving $ on table.

We only put Make Offer on items over $50. This was there’s wiggle room in the price.

That being said, if we know an item is worth a certain price, we don’t allow Make Offer. That’s where doing the research comes in.

As you said, Make Offer on $25 items is just asking for low ball offers. Some sellers do this because they think Make Offer puts them higher in search ranking. Then they set the automatic rejection parameters to reject any offer $24 and lower.

do you have ebay alerts turned on on your phone? you should be getting offers the moment they come in, and responding asap. as you say, it stinks as a buyer to have to wait. that’s why we try to respond as soon as an offer comes in.

Right — I respond to offers almost immediately (unless I’m having a bad day and seething over how low it is… then, I give myself some time to cool off and consider it less emotionally.) There shouldn’t be a lot of waiting.

The following is just my opinion, and I’m sure there are plenty of higher-volume sellers with different ideas, but… Re-reading your post, it seems like you’re contrasting “spending time researching an accurate price” with “putting make an offer on an essentially randomly priced piece.” If you’re pricing basically blind with “make an offer,” I don’t think you’re using “make an offer” in its optimal way. You should always research the market price, and go from there. Maybe you decide to price it a little low to move it quickly, price it a little high with “make an offer,” price it on-point, whatever. But if it’s an item with a knowable market price (a Ralph Lauren shirt, a calculator, a pair of shoes, a branded set of dishes) you should know that market price before you list, whether you add “make an offer” or no. If nobody’s buying your (non-unique) item for a year until they come in with a lowball offer, maybe your price is just too high. The only way to know that is to research first. Again, this is just my opinion.

What you really should be asking yourself is, are you getting the ROR on your investment in the item at the price you are setting? Which leads into, how can you source profitably if you’re not sure what you can sell it for? Research is everything.

The appropriate $ amount to consider for a BO is irrelevant. BO is only to encourage buyers that are on the fence to make a decision. Sometimes a buyer prefers not to pay an extra $1-$5 more. Maybe your shipping is cheaper than another seller, or maybe they just want a better price. And there’s no evidence to suggest that BO raises your SEO

Not knowing your history with EB, you should know that everything has a BO regardless if the feature is enabled or not. Buyers know this. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t field an unsolicited offer w/o BO enabled. As a buyer, I even do this as well.

If you’re concerned about low-ball offers, then set your minimum amount that you would consider an offer. This way you would avoid such nuances and wouldn’t even see them. And to be to the point, really isn’t your minimum for consideration really the amount you would take? So you could set this amount to accept automatically if you wanted to be more passive in your selling approach.

Don’t take me wrong here, but as for minimally keeping tabs on your EB, it must be a personal trait. My take on it, is that a seller’s actions towards buyers is a reflection of the acceptable behavior that, that seller would receive as a buyer. Meaning… treat every buyer as you would want to be treated yourself as a buyer. Demanding more of one’s self is a bit hypocritical.

That being said, when enabled, I generally don’t reply to offers on those items that meet my minimum amount until the final moments until the offer expires. The idea here is to wait and see if other offers come in or someone buys it at full price. It’s function of time remaining and the amount of views an item is getting. When I do respond, I will always accept the offer.

I put best offer on everything I sell above $9.99. My theory is that prices on many items will fluctuate, especially more long-tail items. This way I will potentially sell the item instead of having to revise the price down if it changes in a year or two.

Also, Just a little tip for people, before I accept an offer, I will often sent the individual a message through Ebay and ask them if they’d be willing to do $5-10 higher, or more depending on the item. Most of the time they don’t respond, sometimes they say no, and sometimes they say yes, and you can get a higher price without having to counter offer (which almost never works).