AuctionCut

Right, so I just got up an account and I'm beginning to sell some stuff. Anyway, I've heard that a good way to encourage repeat business is to offer incentives -- discounts, for example. So, my question is, after somebody has purchased the item, can we continue to negotiate the price. For example, say somebody buys one of my items for a winning bid price of 5 dollars, but they have, due to previous purchases, a 10% discount from myself. Can I then tell the buyer to only pay 4.50, or does Pay Pal automatically transfer the amount won to my account? If that's the case, is there way to make effective discounts? Thanks in advance so much for helping out an eBay beginner.

Well there is nothing to stop you offering discounts as it's up to the winning bidder to transfer the payment to your account. Payment is never transferred automatically.

If you start selling a few items it could be difficult to keep track of though.

Also, if you sell an item for $5 you will be charged a final sales fee by eBay based on $5 - not whatever you choose to accept so you'll be losing out in this aspect as well.

When I was into selling a lot, I printed up coupons. Each one had a number, and entitled the individual to a 10% discount. To use the coupon. they just had to quote the number.

Nobody ever used them, and I moved away from selling shortly thereafter. Had I continued the program, I'm certain it would have made some difference in my numbers.

You may want to consider such an idea as a test period of sorts.

The way that I keep customers returning is to offer the same product "off-ebay" on my own website.

I got a load of cheap business cards from Vistaprint and enclose them with each sale, and my website price is slightly cheaper as I have no ebay fees to pay. I use custom buttons from paypal which come as a simple HTML code to put in the web page for each product, so there is a small fee to pay on that.

I have enough confidence in my product and first transaction service levels to know that the buyer has equal confidence in making a purchase outside of eBay.

Maybe you coule make a small email template with a picture of an item your discounting, and a custom paypal button with the discount. Then add every person from your previous sales to your email campaign, and send them the offer....? Good way to get traffic, and hopefully a sale....

Just an idea.

Make sure you still make profit with your discount.
eBay fee's, paypal fee's......

stevew8975 wrote:The way that I keep customers returning is to offer the same product "off-ebay" on my own website.

I completely agree. You simply cannot make a good living out of eBay if you do not have an alternative way to sell your products without getting crucified with their fees.