Hi!
As you read this, I am flying to Dallas for eBay on Location. Yipppeee! Can’t wait to see everyone!
- Lynn Recommends: Shipping Dinnerware eReport & Video is almost here!
- Special Announcement: Kathy Flood has extended her book offer!
- Contest: The Queen of Auctions’ My Best Find Video Contest
- Feature Article: To Best Offer or Not to Best Offer?
This ezine is published every two weeks.
May 6, 2010 Volume VI, Issue 8
My mom is in town for a few weeks and I can sure use the help. After I picked her up at the airport we went and hit some thrift stores. Of course! At one of them, I found a Pier 1 dinner set that Mo and I had just been talking about on the Queen’s Court call last Wednesday night. It was weird! I haven’t had this pattern in a LONG time and then just because we talked about it, there it appeared.
Here is one of the listings.
Speaking of my mom, she emails me at least twice a week with Best Offers and says WWLD? I guess that “text talk” is short for “What Would Lynn Do?” She had a great idea for an ezine article, “Why don’t you write about when to use Best Offer and when to accept Best Offers?” Brilliant idea, Mom! Well, she is related to me after all. JK (Just kidding).
For those of you who are members of the Queen’s Court you know that we have been goofing around with text talk (it is the result of having a teenager and a half in my house (Houston is one and Indy is the half) and Mo having one in hers). So, check out my FA (Feature Article) about BOs (Best Offers). Don’t miss this one, Best Offers are really adding to our sales!
Speaking of the Queen’s Court, their gift for April was something pretty cool. It is a downloadable PDF and the online video showing my Garage Sale finds for a weekend, what I decide to research, and how I researched my finds in just a matter of minutes.
How much research will I do for this table full of garage sale finds?
This video and the accompanying short text are invaluable tools to teach you how to not waste time. eBay sellers that get caught up in the minutia will never be able to make a full-time living selling on eBay. I show you how to make quick decisions in this “Brass Tacks Research Guide.” If you are not a Queen’s Court member it is available for purchase here.
It has been baseball, baseball, and more baseball these past two weeks. A tournament in Huntington Beach (Houston pitched a one-hitter–pretty incredible–and his team won again), one in Hemet, and now we (I mean Houston) have been invited to a 13U College World Series Tournament in Omaha, Nebraska. We will be in Nebraska around June 20th. My dad is meeting us there so that we can check out Yankton, South Dakota where he was born. Fun! Hopefully, I will be able to do some antiquing before I fly to Las Vegas to speak at the eBay Radio Party on Thursday, June 24th.
Here is a link to learn more.
On our way back from the Hemet baseball tournament, we stopped off at their new Goodwill store. Houston was not happy! But Indy, my mom, and I had fun.
Here we are a few years ago.
We found 4 pairs of skinny jeans for Indy and I found a bunch of dinnerware. No way! Here is a photo of what I picked up for $29.74 (with my mom’s senior discount). You see, you can find dinnerware everywhere!
Speaking of dinnerware, In the Lynn Recommends section, I am very excited to let you know that the special report about shipping dinnerware will be ready next week. Please read this section to learn more. It will only be available to those who already own the Dinnerware eBook, so if you don’t own it already, you will want to check it out.
LIVE BOOT CAMP is filling up, we ONLY have 7 SEATS Left for 2010. If you are considering joining us, we recommend that you reserve your spot soon. This one will sell out. Here is a link to read more. We hope to see you there.
Happy eBaying,
Lynn Dralle, ‘The Queen of Auctions,’
Creator of the best-selling eBay Boot Camp in a Box.
Hi Lynn,
Just had to share. I haven’t even finished Part 3 of your Dinnerware e-book yet and I have already recouped its cost in sales.
I sold four salad plates by Wedgwood – Etruria Garden – Ravilious. They were really pretty, but I started them out at $4.99 each. They sold for $144.00 total. Can you believe it?
The buyer was in the UK and he collects these plates because of the artist – Eric Ravilious. He told me that he will buy anything Wedgwood by Eric Ravilious, except Persephone or Harvest Festival patterns as it’s common (it’s the same pattern, he says, just different names), or the modern copies by Martha Stewart – nothing against Martha, he said, but he only wants the originals!
Here is a link to two of the salad plates that sold for the most!
Here is a link to the auction.
If you ever see Wedgwood dinnerware with Ravilious on it, be sure to put his name in the title when you list it! You might just get a great sale to the UK!
Thank you for all your help and sharing – you made this sale possible for me!!
Sharon Schnelle
This 3-volume eBook is an incredible investment in your future business. Check it out here and read more about it.
(Queen’s Court members, don’t forget to use your discount.)
Order your eBook now, click here.
Order in three payments here.
You can read more here.
SUPER SPECIAL RECOMMENDATION…
If you already own the eBook, please watch for a special email next week with information about my Dinnerware Shipping eReport. I have already filmed most of the video clips for it and am now working on the text.
My friend, Lori, needed to ship an entire dinnerware set, and Carmen and I helped her with it. We got it all on camera. I even learned some shipping tricks from Carmen that I didn’t know about!
This eReport will only be available to you if you own the Dinnerware Success eBook. Its value is priceless! Watch for the email.
The ezine article about costume jewelry by Kathy Flood was a huge hit! Thank you Kathy! Kathy has extended her special offer to you all, so please check it out.
BTW (by the way), Kathy will be joining us for a teleseminar in June. This will be the Queen’s Court gift for that month. More details to follow!
Kathy has some Angelina Jolie Christmas tree pins remaining in stock from the movie tie-in and can still honor the offer (book plus brooch) for anyone with regret pangs over missing it. The big 255-page Costume Jewelry Figurals Book gives you more information about figural jewelry than any other book, and you also receive the photograph of Angelina wearing the pin — as well as the pin!
Happy holidays … all year long!
– Kathy Flood
ChristmasTreePins.com
Once again, a very BIG Thank you to Kathy Flood for sharing her jewelry tips and tricks!
The Queen of Auctions My Best Find Video Contest
I’m excited to announce the Queen of Auctions’ My Best Find Video Contest where you can share one of your great eBay sales. Here’s what to do:
Create a short video, not more than three minutes long.
- Choose any one item that you purchased, tell me why you purchased the item and which of my tips you used when deciding to purchase it.
- Briefly tell me where you bought it and how much it was purchased for.
- Then show the auction listing for the item and, finally, how much it sold for and what your profit was.
Upload your video file to YouTube.com (you will have to create an account for yourself if you do not already have one). The title of your video should be: “I Sold [Your item] Using eBay Selling Tips by The Queen of Auctions” and send an email to Elyanna@Blinemarketing with a link to your video page.
That’s it! Most of you have read my 100 Best books, so think of this as your #1 Best. Choose any item, the wackier the better.
Prizes:
The top 3 winners’ videos will be featured on my web site, TheQueenofAuctions.com.
1st Place: Winner will receive a 20-minute phone consultation with me, The Queen of Auctions!
2nd Place: Winner will receive a 50%-off coupon for any item at TheQueenOfAuctions.com.*
3rd Place: Winner will receive a 25%-off coupon for any item at TheQueenOfAuctions.com.*
*Live events not included in the discount coupon.
‘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.
Let’s 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 volumes 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.
Here 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, |
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 counteroffers.
Here is why I don’t use counteroffers.
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 run out. Of course, it is 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 the 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 counteroffer, 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
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WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR ON YOUR WEBSITE? Yes, you may – just as long as you include all links as they are and append this complete blurb with it: The Queen of Auctions and eBay Power Seller, Lynn Dralle, publishes ‘eBay Tips & Tricks’ a weekly ezine with 10,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump-start your eBay business, make more money, and have more time, get your FREE tips now at www.thequeenofauctions.com
eBay PowerSeller and third-generation antique dealer, Lynn Dralle, is the creator of Boot Camp in a Box, the home-study course where you can learn to implement the Dralle Method to maximize your eBay profits.
If you liked today’s issue, you’ll love this step-by-step course that is guaranteed to be the most complete and enjoyable guide to selling on eBay that MAKES YOU MONEY.
Read all about it here.
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Happy eBaying!!
Lynn
Lynn is an experienced eBay Power Seller, author, and teacher. If you want to know the eBay tips, tricks, and tools that Lynn uses for buying and selling at an online auction click here.