What is C2C eCommerce? A Marketplace

This allows the seller to keep more of their profits and the buyer to potentially purchase the goods at a better, more competitive price, since many times, there are more sellers selling the same products, competing with each other. Many times people call these types of eCommerce sites, marketplaces. Clarity's own C2C eCommerce platform can be used as a marketplace or in another model, such as a single online store, multi-store (i.e. many franchises connected to a single product database), multilingual-multi-currency global marketplace and much more. Read on to see how you can benefit from setting up your own consumer-to-consumer eCommerce marketplace.

Examples of C2C eCommerce Sites

One of the best examples of a site where consumers can sell online to other consumers is eBay. eBay is the largest auction site on the web. It makes money by charging a small flat fee or a commission on each sale, often called a commission or transaction fee, paid by the seller. The buyer pays the seller through a payment processor, and then the seller is in charge of shipping the item to the buyer. Another example is Craigslist. Craigslist is basically a website of online classified ads. Craigslist actually just helps people find buyers for the products they are trying to sell or sellers of the items they are looking to buy. Then it is up to the consumers to meet and make the transaction happen on their own. C2C sites are a little more secure as you never have to actually meet the seller in person.

Amazon also allows consumers to list items to sell to other consumers. Buyers pay with PayPal or credit card, and sellers are reimbursed through bank account deposits or PayPal. Amazon keeps a small percentage for helping facilitate the sale, although the percentage is much higher than almost every other marketplace, especially for businesses, however, their popularity and reach are second to none. According to Forbes, although C2C eCommerce sites may have more competition, they usually have a higher margin due to the lack of retail or marketing costs needed to promote your products.

The B2C e-Commerce Business Model

There are a couple of things to discuss when talking about B2C (C2B) vs. C2C. First of all, B2C implies that a business is selling directly to the end consumer. Businesses normally have some kind of infrastructure. Whether that's a bunch of employees, a physical location, an ERP, an Accounting department, or more, businesses know how to run their company and what that all entails. C2C means, like Craigslist, some end consumer of an item, wants to sell that item to someone else. That's how it may have started, but not how it ended. Now consumers, using technology relationships, can sign up as resellers of multiple products, list those in a marketplace, such as Amazon or eBay, and sell them. They don't have to handle checkout, the orders are sent to their vendors who pack and ship the items for them, and Amazon cuts them a check for their percent of the sale.

The only real business they have to do is to list the products, which Amazon has automated with UPC loading, and paying their vendors. Consumers are now their own business. The final thing that rounds out their business is normally a marketing department. In a C2C world, that is replaced with Social Media. The ability to share their purchase with their social media, link out to your Social accounts, rate, and share their product reviews. It's all built into the marketplace for you. Do a good job, selling good products and you can create a successful revenue stream without all the overhead of creating a full business.

Clarity Can Help

Well, now that we've answered that question, what's next? Is your business looking for business suggestions to help facilitate a consumer-to-consumer eCommerce marketplace? Easily design and build a C2C e commerce business model with a proven C2C marketplace with Clarity Ventures. If you are looking to make money in your marketplace from your C2C transactions with taking credit cards to process payments, Clarity has the solution you need. Whether it is from an online auction, goods or services, and even items for sale, you can see better returns with us. With more than 14 years and 350+ combined years of experience, our team has built more than 1,300 custom websites for every need. You can see examples of our C2C websites and how our solution can add revenue while cutting expenses. To find out more about how Clarity can deliver your marketplace, request a free quote.

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