One way to generate income on your site is to add a marketplace that allows users to buy, sell, and trade goods relevant to your niche. Some sites have been extremely successful with this monetization method (sitepoint.com comes immediately to mind), while others have found it to be a little more difficult to pull off. Like most methods, it all depends on your niche and your site’s place within the niche.

The Concept

The concept behind this scenario is that you either charge a small listing fee for users to list the items they have for sale, or you get a small cut of the sale price of each item. Some sites charge both a listing fee and get a cut of the sale price. Essentially, you create a mini-ebay or mini-craigslist just for your niche, and your users.

This type of marketplace can work for both real and digital goods, so whether your niche is classic cars or web templates, you can open a marketplace on your site to help visitors buy, sell, and trade related items in an ebay-style online auction or a simple classified ad style system.

Your Mileage May Vary

Marketplaces seem to work best on well-trafficked sites that have some “status” within their niche, but if you think your users would participate, it may still work well for smaller sites. As with many monetization methods, sometimes the only way to know if it will work for you is to try it and see. Before jumping in, however, why don’t you actually throw the idea out to your visitors? Ask them if they would be interested in this. You could create a poll or simply ask them within a blog post to share their opinions within the comments. Does your site have a forum attached? If so, that’s another place that’s perfect for gauging interest. You may not get a complete picture of how well a marketplace would work on your site, but it would be a better barometer than just flat out guessing.

I don’t recommend making your marketplace the key focus of your site, in most cases, but it can be a nice addition to one. It’s certainly worth considering as one way of adding to your online income basket.