Question
Perhaps the most common question I hear in one form or another is:
How can I get myself targeted for bonus eBay Bucks offers?
eBay releases lucrative bonus Bucks offers most months of the year, and around four times per month. (See Ebay Bucks, Gift Card Deals, & Timing Your eBay Purchases for lots of useful info on eBay Bucks and bonus offers.) Some people, including myself, get these targeted offers consistently while others complain of never getting them.
How to get yourself targeted?
Short Answer
I don’t know.
Long Answer
First, to get eBay Bucks at all, you need to enroll – it is not automatic.
Second, you still won’t get bonus offers if you aren’t subscribed to receive spam emails from eBay. Here’s how to subscribe for that: go to Account Settings (found on the top left of the page, under your name), then Communication Preferences (top-left), then Promotions and Surveys (bottom of the page), then General Email Promotions.
Personally, I enrolled in everything. Here is what my account looks like:
‘Okay, Okay, but I’m still not getting the offers!’
I don’t know any other tricks. It’s odd that some of us get these consistently and some of us not at all. A few possibilities:
- Maybe only mildly used accounts get these offers? No way, too many indicators that this is not the case.
- Maybe only newer accounts get Bucks Offers? I doubt this will hold water.
- Maybe only older accounts get Bucks Offers? Again, this probably won’t hold.
Conclusion: I don’t know.
Bear in mind that eBay allows us to have more than one account. Although you’ll probably want to keep your main account with all the positive feedback for selling purposes, you can open up a second account and use that one for buying. Maybe the new account will get targeted with bonus offers for reasons which are unclear.
Note: eBay does not allow us to enroll more than one account in eBay Bucks. When trying your luck on a new eBay account, first un-enroll the current account from eBay Bucks and then enroll the new one in eBay Bucks.
Tips & Suggestions
In the comments of this post, there are a few suggestions on how to get yourself targeted. Here are two that I found interesting:
- Russ has an interesting theory that if you click-through eBay’s marketing emails, that gets you targeted for bonus offers. Try for a month or two clicking on some of their ‘Mystery Deals’ and other offer/ad emails and see if that helps.
- Mark says he called in and asked the to target him. Although they claimed not to have any power to do so, he hasn’t missed a bonus offer since.
- Readers suggest that accounts which are active in that you make purchases, earn eBay Bucks and generally browse the eBay site, are more likely to get targeted.
- Mike suggests simply opening a new eBay account and hopefully the new one will get targeted. First un-enroll your old eBay account from eBay Bucks then enroll the new account in eBay Bucks; eBay allows us to have multiple accounts but only allows us to have one account enrolled in eBay Bucks.
- Another reader suggests un-enrolling from promotional email, then re-enrolling a few days later.
Also, note that once you get on the wagon you should continue getting the offers. The main thing is just to get on that promotional list in the eBay system and then you just stay on it indefinitely.
Reader Input
Does anyone have a trick to get targeted with bonus offers? Did you ever do something that triggered it? Any patterns you saw regarding who gets them and who doesn’t?
Please let us know. There are many people who would like to hear…
