The Second Chance Offer (SCO) is an interesting feature that is introduced by eBay recently. This feature allows the seller to offer those bidders that lost out in the biding a second chance to purchase the item at the price they have bided. In case if the winner back out of the deal, you can use this feature to offer the item to other bidders if you wish. Alternately, if you list an item under the "reserve auction" term, and the final price does not hit the reserve price, you can use this SCO feature to offer the highest bidder if you so decides.
Take for example, there are a total of 5 bidders as follows;
Bidder 1 : $200 (winner)
Bidder 2: $190
Bidder 3 : $180
Bidder 4 : $170
Bidder 5 : $160
Bidder 1 will get the item, no question about it. Under the SCO scheme, you can then offer the other 4 bidders individually at the price that they bided assuming that you still make money based on the lowest selling price of $160. In this way, you can sell all your 5 items (assuming that you have 5 items) at one go. There are several benefits of this feature.
Firstly, you only pay one time listing fee. Yes, one listing fee and can sell 5 items. What a deal. But, you will still need to pay the normal eBay final value fee schedule for individual item. You can save on the listing fee in this way. It is always good to have a lower overhead if possible.
Secondly, this method allows you to sell many identical items at one go without the bidders knowing that you have stocks at hand. As you know, scarcity will increase demand.
Thirdly, to take advantage of this feature, you can consider to list your item with a starting price that can cover your margin. By doing this, you will be ensured that every offer will be over your margin. You can then decide to sell them all or just offer to the top few bidders.
As you can see from the above benefits, the use of the SCO strategy will certainly give you a better reward. If you have not considered this method, you should try it out to test out its benefits to its fullest. It is always good to have another strategy to play with when trading in eBay.
