With the rise of technology in the modern age, e-commerce has transformed the way of selling and shopping – including the rise of online auction platforms, which are easily accessible and require minimal effort.

Looking for a way to make sales? Online auction platforms are an easy way to do so. It opens up your market enormously and means all the technical elements of e-commerce are looked after for you, allowing you to focus on your product and customers.

Whether it’s a commercial item you’re selling or a secondhand item that’s no longer necessary for you, online auction platforms are a great way to makes sales. Today, several sites operate as an online sales platform for people to list their items.

To make it easier to you to narrow down which platform to list your items on, here are some of the top auction sites available and a quick rundown of their pros and cons!

1. eBay

It wouldn’t be a complete article without the website giant eBay – and with good reason. One of the oldest and biggest auction sites, eBay has the largest amount of active buyers and sellers, opening up your market to a huge amount of people. With over 160 million registered users, eBay is a safe bet for a good selling platform.

One downside to listing your items on eBay, however, is the relatively high costs in comparison with other platforms. While there are no seller verification fees, only your first 50 listings are free – after that, you need to pay 30 cents for every item you list.

This can be avoided if you are hosting a web store on the eBay site but you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee to do so. Furthermore, eBay will take 10 per cent of your final sale, one of the highest final value fees for online auction sites.

Despite its high costs, eBay is a good site to use, especially for those new to online selling. It has an easy interface to work on and allow buyers to make payments through multiple methods like PayPal, Skrill, ProPay, or credit cards. It also opens your items to an international audience and shares your past transaction history and customer reviews so that buyers know that they can trust your service.

2. eBid

Not a fan of the costs? eBid offers an online auction platform with significantly lower costs than eBay. With no seller verification fee and a 3 per cent final value charge for every sale, eBid is much more inexpensive than eBay.

However, eBid’s platform has over 2 million registered users, making it much smaller than eBay. It means your market isn’t as large and your product isn’t as visible as it could be on the eBay’s giant platform. But eBid is still a great option for your sale listings – it has an international user base and it costs nothing to list an unlimited number of items!

You can show your buyer feedback from past sales to let new customers know you are trustworthy. eBid doesn’t let customers pay with a credit card, limiting the options to PayPal, PPPay.com or Skrill. There is no traffic reporting available for your listed items.

3. Bonanza

Although it has a significantly lower registered user count than the previous two options, Bonanza is great if you want to sell your items across platforms. It makes things easy for sellers by allowing them to import items from eBay or Etsy.com. So while Bonanza by itself doesn’t offer a huge market for your items, it’s an easy and affordable way to add to your market and create more product visibility.

With no seller verification fee and just a 3.5 per cent claim of your final sale, Bonanza is a good, inexpensive option. You can list all your items for free and if your item doesn’t sell, you’ll get one free relisting.

Furthermore, Bonanza makes things simple by offering a photo editor and cropper onsite. This means that your photos don’t have to perfect and you can fix them up before listing your item. It saves you time and lets your listings look a little more put together!

It is always worth to compare auction platforms before choosing the best one. There are so many online auction websites available for you to make your sales on. They all have different negatives and benefits so the best online auction platform for you depends on your purpose and product. Think about what you need in order to make that sale and find the best site for you to use based on its components and features!