Business model of apps like Offer Up, LetGo and Carousell
How does OfferUp work? These services have lots of things in common and work pretty similar. And one of these similarities is a business model which, as they claim, they dont have. These selling apps dont charge the commission for registration, profile creation, and not even for the number of ads. More than that, they dont take a commission for a deal. OfferUp developers intended to earn exclusively on advertising to keep the service free and available for everyone.
Yet, if you want to create an app like LetGo, Carousell or Offerup, we suggest you taking into consideration some of these monetization strategies.
Local marketplace app monetization strategies
Online transactions: If customers can pay via your app, you can charge a fixed price or a percent of every deal. Its easy to do with some third-party services like Stripe, for instance.
In-app-purchases: What is meant here is the ability to buy some special offers, or sellers can pay to place their ads at the top.
Delivery: Your service can also be a mediator allowing sellers to expand the trading territory.
Internal ads: An opportunity to publish action offers, special offers and a system of internal recommendations.
Basic features of the selling apps
To copy an existing LetGo business model is certainly the best way to create your own mobile app. Firstly, you can take into account your competitors drawbacks. Secondly, you can publish an app and scale if its needed.
Now, when we know how local online marketplaces apps work, lets see what functionality we need to include into our own model. We will consider an MVP development model because it gives more opportunities for startups, as well as saves money and time for development.
Thus, your mobile app has to include such features:
Basic features of apps to sell things
Social network registration
All best apps to sell stuff locally have social registration feature. The feature will not only increase the users reliance towards your service but also will simplify the process of proof of identity. Moreover, a user doesnt need to enter his data manually because all information will be pulled automatically from a social network.
Profile creation
Personal data of a seller or a buyer will be shown as well as all items for sale.
Search engine
Bear in mind that the search should be conducted on the basis of the customers location. What you need to add here is an option to extend or narrow the search band. It will be easy to perform as almost all modern smartphones have built-in GPS utility.
Advanced filters
Advanced filters are needed to make the search process easy and fast. You can divide all goods into categories, groups and subgroups to minimize search time.
Listing Items
Each listing can have two options. For instance, choose colour, necklace chain length, smell and other details for in case a seller has some similar goods with different variations. A user can choose an option from a list or enter his own. Here it would also be great to add a size chart.
Built-in camera
The ability to take photos in the app and upload them immediately. A pleasant addition that the sellers would appreciate is the opportunity to edit photos, cut them down, adjust brightness and contrast.
Built-in chat
It would be highly inconvenient to have an app without the ability to talk about the details of the deal, so the option for chat is really needed.
Comments and rating
The feature helps build the reputation of customers. And soft articles according to a sellers rating. At the same time, the feature protects customers from unreliable merchants.
Multiple language support
The feature allows the expansion of the audience of users.
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