How to Send Offers to Watchers on eBay: A Seller's 2026 Playbook

You list a fixed-price item, it collects eleven watchers in a week, and nobody buys. Those watchers are usually waiting for a lower price, a payday or a nudge. This guide covers how to send offers to watchers on eBay, why the option is sometimes missing, and how to set a discount that still leaves you a profit. eBay gives sellers a direct way to deliver that nudge. Most sellers either never find it or send it at a discount that quietly wipes out the margin on the sale.

Quick answer: go to Seller Hub Active Listings, apply the Send offers - eligible filter, select one listing (Send Offer) or several (Send Offers from the Actions menu), set a percentage off, a dollar amount off or a custom price at least 5% below your Buy It Now price, add a short message, and select Update. eBay sends the offer to the 30 most recent interested buyers, and each offer is valid for 96 hours or until the listing sells.

• Only Buy It Now listings qualify. Auctions don't.
• The offer must be at least 5% below the Buy It Now price, and shipping isn't included in the offer price.
• Interested buyers are watchers and people who added the item to their cart. Cart items must sit there for at least 2 days first.
• The Send automated offer toggle keeps sending the same terms to future interested buyers between the dates you set.

On this page: Is it still available? · Step by step · The rules · Why you can't send offers · Offer floor math · Automation · Is it worth it? · Watchers into buyers · Doing this with Ecomli · FAQ

Can you still send offers to watchers on eBay?

Yes. As of Sep 2026, eBay's help page on adding Best Offer and sending offers to buyers still describes the feature, and the Seller Center page on offers to buyers covers the same tool, including automated and rule-based offers. What changes from listing to listing is eligibility. eBay says eligibility depends on a number of factors, including the age and format of the listing, which is why the option can appear on one item and not on the next.

One rule has changed since many forum answers were written. Older replies on eBay's own community boards quote a tiered minimum (5% under $200, 3% between $200 and $1,000). The current help page and Seller Center both say the minimum is 5% off the Buy It Now price, at every price.

How to send offers to watchers on eBay, step by step

Once a listing is eligible, the send takes about a minute. These are the steps as eBay's help page lists them:

1. Go to Seller Hub Active Listings.
2. Use the Send offers - eligible filter to see which items qualify.
3. Select a single listing and choose Send Offer, or tick several and choose Send Offers from the Actions menu.
4. Set the offer as a percentage off, a dollar amount off or a custom offer amount. It has to be at least 5% below the Buy It Now price.
5. Add a message to buyers. eBay marks it optional but recommended. A specific line ("Happy to move this before the weekend") gives the offer a reason.
6. If you want eBay to keep sending the same offer to future interested buyers, toggle on Send automated offer and set start and end dates.
7. If you don't want buyers to counter, check Don't allow counteroffers.
8. Select Update to send.

You can track offers and counteroffers afterwards in Seller Hub Active Listings or in My eBay.

The rules that decide who gets your offer

The click path is the easy part. These mechanics decide whether the offer reaches anyone and what it costs you.

• Who receives it. The 30 most recent interested buyers, meaning watchers and cart-adders. If more than 30 buyers are interested, eBay sends 30 offers first and then continues sending up to 30 every 48 hours.
• How long it lasts. Each offer is valid for 96 hours or until the listing sells, whichever comes first.
• Minimum discount. At least 5% below the Buy It Now price. Shipping isn't part of the offer price.
• Bulk sends. When you select several listings, the highest minimum discount percentage among them applies to all of them. Group listings by price band and margin before you select, so a thin-margin item isn't pulled into a deeper discount than it needs.
• Multi-quantity listings. Buyers can keep using the offer until all items in the listing are sold, so a single send can cover several units.
• Counteroffers. Unless you block them, buyers can counter. You and the buyer can send a maximum of 5 counteroffers each, and each counteroffer expires after 96 hours.

Offers only work on listings that already attract watchers, so they convert interest you've already earned. They don't create it. If items aren't being seen, the fix is upstream: keyword research for your eBay listings and titles that earn the click.

Why can't I send offers on eBay?

A missing or greyed-out Send Offer option almost always means the listing isn't eligible right now. It rarely points to a problem with your account. Check these in order:

• Format. The listing has to have a Buy It Now option. Seller Center says no auction types are supported.
• No interested buyers yet. Nobody is watching the item, or the only interest is a cart-add less than 2 days old.
• Listing age and eBay's own limits. eBay says eligibility depends on factors including the age and format of the listing, and it doesn't publish every rule. A listing can drop out of the eligible filter and come back later.
• Minimum Advertised Price. Seller Center says items with MAP treatment aren't supported.
• A paused automated offer. If you lower the price below the current automatic offer amount, eBay pauses offer sending.

The Send offers - eligible filter is the quickest test. If a listing you expected isn't there, one of the points above is usually the reason.

Setting an offer floor that protects your margin

A 5% minimum sounds harmless. On dropshipping margins it often isn't, because the discount comes straight out of the thinnest part of the number.

Here is a worked example using eBay's selling fees as of Sep 2026: a final value fee of 13.6% for most categories plus a $0.40 per-order fee on orders over $10. You list an item at $39.99 with free shipping, and your supplier cost is $24.00.

The 15% offer cuts the price by $6.00, but the fees only fall by $0.82 and the supplier cost doesn't move. Profit drops from $10.15 to $4.97. You gave away 15% of the price and about half of the profit. The example leaves sales tax out. eBay calculates the fee on the total amount of the sale, which includes any tax, so real fees run slightly higher.

That's why the floor should be worked out from cost upward, never from list price downward. Decide the smallest profit you'll accept, add supplier cost and fees, and solve for the price. For a $5.00 minimum profit on this item, the lowest offer is $34.03, which is about 14.9% off. Anything below that is a sale you'd rather not make.

Promoted Listings change the floor. eBay's general campaign help page says the ad fee is charged when the promoted item sells within 30 days of a click on your ad. It's calculated on the total sale amount at your ad rate, and if you accept a Best Offer, the rate in effect at the time of the sale applies. At a 5% ad rate, the $33.99 sale above carries another $1.70, and $4.97 of profit becomes $3.27. Build the ad rate into the floor for anything in a Promoted Listings campaign.

The last complication for anyone sourcing from suppliers: cost isn't fixed. A floor you worked out three weeks ago stops being a floor the day the supplier raises its price. Repricing rules that defend your margin help, and so does rechecking any standing offer after a supplier price change.

Automating offers so you're not doing this every morning

Sending by hand works at thirty listings. At three hundred it becomes a morning ritual that gets dropped within a fortnight.

The Send automated offer toggle on the same screen fixes most of that. Switch it on, set start and end dates, and eBay sends the same offer to future interested buyers. One behavior surprises people: if you lower the price below the current automatic offer amount, eBay pauses offer sending instead of selling beneath your own automation.

eBay Store subscribers get more. Seller Center describes rule-based automatic offers built on criteria such as category, price range and item condition, and the help page says that automation can run for up to 150 days. If you're weighing whether a Store is worth it for this and its other tools, our breakdown of eBay Store subscription tiers compares them.

eBay's automation manages the offer. It doesn't see your cost. It will keep sending 15% off a product whose supplier raised its price last Tuesday. That gap is where your own tools come in, covered below.

Is it worth sending offers to watchers on eBay?

Often, yes, if the floor is right and the timing is sensible. Offers reach people who have already shown interest, and on a listing that has sat for a while, a small discount can be what closes the sale. It's also cheap to test, because nothing is lost if nobody accepts.

It's not worth it in three cases. The first is sending on day one, because some of those watchers would have paid full price. The second is a discount below your floor, which turns a sale into a loss. The third is a listing with a deeper problem, such as a price well above recent sold prices or weak photos, because a 5% offer won't fix a 30% pricing gap. Let listing age decide rather than the calendar. A listing that gathered watchers but made no sale in its first couple of weeks is the clearest candidate. Our guide to sell-through rate shows how to spot which listings are stalling.

How to turn watchers into buyers on eBay

An offer is one lever. These are the others worth checking before you discount:

• Compare with sold prices. Search the item, filter to sold listings and compare. If yours is the highest price in the results, watchers are waiting for you to notice.
• Turn on Best Offer. It lets buyers make the first move. eBay says buyers can make up to three offers per item in most categories, and you can set auto-accept and auto-decline limits. Our explainer on how Best Offer works covers the settings.
• Fix the listing. Clear first photo, accurate title, honest condition notes, and shipping cost and speed that match what competing listings offer.
• Use other promotions. Markdowns and volume pricing can move watchers too. The margin-safe promotions playbook compares them.
• Build volume. More listings mean more watchers and more offers in flight. Sellers who steadily raise their selling limits have more eligible listings to work with.

Watch counts and conversion also matter to eBay's search. Our guide to how Cassini ranks listings explains why a listing that turns interest into sales tends to get shown more. For a wider view of what moves volume, see how to increase eBay sales.

Keeping your offer floor accurate with Ecomli

Ecomli is a non-API browser extension for eBay dropshippers. It works through the eBay seller account already signed in to your desktop Chrome browser and sources from Amazon and AliExpress. It doesn't send eBay offers for you. That stays in Seller Hub. What it does is keep the cost side of the offer math current, which is the part eBay's automation can't see.

1. Keep the Buy It Now price tied to supplier cost. Stock Monitoring checks supplier stock and prices for your Ecomli listings and updates the eBay price and quantity, or ends out-of-stock items, using your rules (markup, out-of-stock rule and price-change tolerance). A failed supplier read holds the listing unchanged instead of ending it. When a price moves, recheck any standing automated offer on that listing.
2. See what discounted sales actually left you. The Overview dashboard shows eBay sales, fees, Promoted Listings costs, refunds, supplier costs and recorded profit by day or period. Profit is only as complete as the supplier costs recorded, so record them.
3. Clear out listings nobody watches. On Pro and Scale, Auto Pruner ends dead listings in one click by your rules, such as zero views or zero sales over a period you choose, so your offers go to listings with real interest. Scale's Advanced version also relists removed products with fresh supplier data.
4. Handle the supplier order when an offer converts. Starter runs Auto Ordering batches in your browser. On Pro, you click Auto Order and Ecomli places the supplier order in your own browser. On Scale, you can also turn on optional server ordering, so Auto Ordering places the supplier order from Ecomli's servers, as long as each order is within your buying limits (a maximum purchase price and a maximum loss). See Auto Ordering for details.
5. List products that have already sold. Product Hunting researches an eBay seller's sold history or current listings and matches the products to Amazon or AliExpress, so new listings start from items with sales history. A match isn't proof of profit, but it's a better start than a guess.

Most of Ecomli's work runs in your desktop browser while it's open, apart from Scale's optional server ordering, and the automation overview shows how the pieces connect. To match a plan to your catalog size, compare Ecomli's Starter, Pro and Scale plans.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the Send Offer button greyed out on my eBay listing?

Usually because the listing isn't eligible, not because of your account. Common causes are an auction-format listing, no current watchers, cart-adds less than 2 days old, MAP treatment, or eBay's own rules on listing age. Use the eligible filter in Seller Hub Active Listings to see which listings qualify right now.

How many watchers receive an offer when I send one?

The 30 most recent interested buyers, which includes watchers and people who added the item to their cart. If more than 30 are interested, eBay sends 30 first and then continues sending up to 30 every 48 hours.

What is the minimum discount for an offer to watchers?

At least 5% below the Buy It Now price. Older forum answers mention lower minimums for pricier items, but eBay's current help page and Seller Center both give 5%. On a bulk send, the highest minimum among the selected listings applies to all of them.

Do offers work on multi-quantity eBay listings?

Yes. On a multi-quantity listing, buyers can keep using the offer until all items in the listing are sold or the offer expires, so one send can move several units.

Does sending offers affect my Promoted Listings fees?

It can. If the promoted item sells within 30 days of a click on your general ad, eBay charges the ad fee on the total sale amount, and for an accepted Best Offer it uses the ad rate in effect at the time of the sale. Add that rate to your floor on anything you're advertising.

How often should I send offers to watchers?

Let the listing's age decide. A listing with watchers and no sale after its first couple of weeks is the clearest candidate. Once your floor is set, the automated offer toggle handles future interested buyers, so you don't need to resend by hand.

Sources

• eBay: Adding Best Offer to your listing and sending offers to buyers
• eBay Seller Center: Offers to Buyers and Best Offer
• eBay: Selling fees
• eBay: General campaign strategy
• eBay Community: Sending offers to watchers (Ask a Mentor)

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