How do you organize a discount?

[c171zen]

Hi,



I’m new to this. A buyer asked for a discount, as he is going to make a big order. How do you organize a discount so it’s legal and up to the rules of the site?



Thank you!

[c171zen]

Thank you : )

[jasveena]

Talking about discounts here, I wanted to have a new thread to discuss about this because I had someone who came to me for translation service. Basically it costs more than 14 gigs (14-15) and I said I can give him for 14. I felt like offering lower than 13 wouldn’t really be worth it because translation needs more work than just writing out a new article.



How do you give discount? Are you comfortable giving discounts when you are at loss? I personally feel I would attach a logo, URL on video or lengthening video for about 15 secs as I don’t feel burned doing it.

[seo_teams]

offer here like this: order 10 gig i will give you 1 Bonus gig

[c171zen]

Reply to @jasveena:



Yes I suppose that a new discussion about the discounts would be great. Personaly this situation is new to me and probably it would be helpful for the other sellers to know how exactly to proceed.

[c171zen]

Reply to @seo_teams:



Thank you : )

[freelancemm]

I give out discounts within some of my gigs via gig extras. That’s always a good filler extra if you can’t think of a good one, and it appeals to those buying in bulk. In fact, in the past it’s attracted a lot of bulk order sales. Although it might appear as though it’s a “loss” offering discounts on bulk orders means you’re getting bulk orders, and that’s still a gain in my book. Big sales come from reasonable discounts. If you can offer your service at a lower price than others and have a good reputation built up, generally they will go to you for the order. It’s always a good practice in my opinion to mention that you offer discounts for bulk orders whether via your gig extra or if they contact you ahead of time.

[jasveena]

Reply to @freelancemm: what are the prices of the extras you normally offer for a discount? $10? $20?

[freelancemm]

@jasveena I kind of do it in price increments. For example with my writing gig, it usually works where if they are going to order five articles they get one free, if they order ten articles if they’re easy to write and not super technical I am sometimes willing to give them 3 articles free. So…



Let’s say 5 gig orders for the price of four, 10 gig orders for the price of 7 to 8, and with each increment they get a better deal and I drop a few gigs off.



So if they were to say order 25 orders, rather than just drop off 1 gig order out of each five, I may very well drop 8 for them being generous in their orders. In the end though it depends the client, what the order is and how big of a bulk order.



My general rule of thumb is the bigger the order they’re willing to place, the bigger the discount I will give them. This at least for me helps to insure that they order from me and in a lot of cases if they’re able to order in such bulk, chances are they will come back and order even more later. I generally try to focus discounts on those that don’t already state they are going to order in bulk. For example I have had someone before order just 1 article and they said they really liked it, so I hinted to them that I can give them a pretty big discount if they ordered x number more, and they did. This in turn may seem like a “profit loss” but if I didn’t hint at the discount, the sale probably would have never happened.

[jasveena]

Reply to @freelancemm: That sounds great!! I mean if you can afford to do it at that rate and you are comfortable that is really good. I think we all have our own comfortable mode I actually remember having someone who ordered a few articles and before he placed the order, I said if he orders I will throw one free blog promo with one gig lesser from the overall price, but then he wanted to trade the blog promotion with something else. When we show them we are willing to give discounts they tend to bargain more and he wanted a video instead. So I said he has to pay the exact amount it takes for 6 articles and I will throw one video free. It was fine for me, so I did it.



It is just that sometimes people tend to walk all over you when you show that you are willing to help them with discounts. I guess some top rated sellers live by the policy that quality matters and buyers get what they pay for 🙂

[freelancemm]

@jasveena Yeah, I have been here a long time and I am off and on super active. Lately been kind of busy with other obligations so I haven’t been on much to entice orders but the one thing I make sure never to do is to give TOO good of a bargain. A good bargain is nice, but if you give TOO much of a bargain, buyers may expect that every time they make a purchase. Well, writing isn’t all that time consuming for me as I can generally type over 100WPM. The only time consuming part is to get the article initially going and do some basic research. So in a sense, it’s no big deal to me and lately I have had a lot of fun articles to write on so I don’t really think of it all too much as being straining. I do get the person that wants the occasional technical article and for that I can’t really offer discounts and in fact, I recommend to them that they would have to order more for it as in some cases I may have to spend an hour researching for the technical ones and an hour for $5 is not going to happen. For the SEO I do discounts but at the same time the SEO I offer can be much more time consuming depending on the particular client so discounts generally only come to those ordering for pretty extensive optimization.

[jasveena]

Reply to @freelancemm: I get your point pretty well. It depends on what you can offer and if you are happy with what you offer at the end of the day. 🙂

[jasveena]

There are people who will also push you for extra fast delivery for free and this is what I despise the most

[jasveena]

Reply to @bachas85: Exactly! If a seller can afford for the discount without feeling bad for offering it, then it is fine but then most of the time we are doing small services for low price so I rarely give discounts!

[jasveena]

Reply to @madmoo: Very true!! How many buyers actually gets back to us and how often that happens? I have people who bought from me just $5 in a week and expecting me to give discounts. I refused because I know that there is no guarantee that they will stay. I have had a bitter experience with a buyer who knew my worth and made me deliver twice the amount of work I do for a fiverr, but that was during my first month here and he helped to build my portfolio. In just one month the guy vanished and no where to be seen.