Online auction websites are not particularly new, but have gained in popularity in recent years. An online auction website is where you buy or sell a product based on a bidding system. You can create your own auction website easily.

These sites are very popular among people because they don’t really have to do something special. It is a good way for seller to sell old things and buy cheaply for buyers. One major thing, there is no guarantee for the product that a person will buy from an online auction website.

Auction Business Model

The online auction business model consists of different types. Each auction business has its own model and method of determining the price and awarding the final buyer.

Basically, there are three parties to an auction. They are:

1. Seller: Product owner who put up his product for auction.
2. Buyer or Bidder: The person who bids an amount to buy the product.
3. Auctioneer: The person who conduct or oversees the auction.

About eBAY

eBAY is an online auction company. It was started by Pierre Omidyar in California on September 3, 1995.

According to the report by Statista, about 171 million people are actively using eBAY. According to investopedia, eBAY’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) was approximately $17.9 billion dollars in 2017 and through advertisements, eBAY made around $3 billion dollars.

In every 5 seconds a smartphone is sold in the US on eBay. 

According to the financial report, eBay Inc. received $9.6 billion in revenue in 2017 which is 7% more than in 2016. And now, the total number of their listings equals more than 1.9 billion with 179 million active buyers around the world.

As you can see, eBAY is very popular, easy to use, simple to set up, and, has a huge market. Do you want to know how to create your own auction site like eBAY?

In this article we’ll discuss, how to create an online marketplace like eBay.

Why to Create an Auction Website?

Online auction website is easier, faster, and does not require the person to physically be present. There are some more reasons why building an auction website is profitable:

• The main aim of this type of website is for others to sell and buy and not for you to set up a business model. Actually you are not the owner of any product.
• You are looking for quick ways to earn a huge revenues.
• You have a basic idea to create a website and you do not want to spend a huge amount of money.
• Customer loyalty.
• Expanding the site is easier because of modern platforms.

A WordPress auction website is a great choice for you if you want to:

• Run a site for personal use, profit work, event auctions, or have a niche auction site.
• Create a site that avoids the fees of other auction sites.
• Use WordPress, so you can easily find solutions to your problems, via the large community of developers.
• Full control over your site.
• Avoid the fees and lock-in of other platforms built for non-profits and event auctions sites other than eBay.

What Do You Need to Create a Multi-vendor site for Auction-able products Using WordPress?

You will need the following things to make your own online auction site like eBay using WordPress.

• A domain name
• Web hosting account
• SSL Certificate
• WordPress
• WooCommerce Simple Auctions plugin
• Dokan Multivendor
• Dokan Simple Auctions Plugin

What is Dokan?

Dokan multi-vendor plugin is the most popular marketplace solution for WordPress. It lets entrepreneur to create and manage their own online marketplace that caters to multiple vendors from around the world. Dokan has a separate dashboard for admins and vendors which is the best feature of this solution.

According to a statistics Dokan is becoming the tough competitor to the autonomous marketplaces like Magento, BigCommerce, Shopify etc.

With Dokan, users give online vendors a space on the internet where they can set up and run their own store, manage all aspects of their operations, and grow their business. It is the ideal plugin to built the multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon or eBay.

It comes with an intuitive front end that even vendors with limited to no e-commerce experience can create their own store and sell immediately. Vendors can leverage the power of professionally crafted storefront, ensuring their customers have the best marketplace experience whenever they visit.

Dokan is compatible with over a hundred WooCommerce themes, making it easy for online vendors to set up their store without having to start from scratch.

Till now, Dokan has created more than 10,000+ online marketplaces world-wide and has downloaded more than 173,000 times.

Download Dokan from here.

Why Dokan as Auction Website?

Powerful User-Friendly Dashboard

Dokan has the full WooCommerce options to frontend. Sellers can manage almost everything without touching WordPress backend. From editing their profile information to manage products, orders and all other features, vendors can do it directly from the frontend dashboard.

Advanced Product Options

With Dokan seller can customize advanced product options such as product variations, stock, discounted price, scheduling of discount, SKU, limit quantity per order, allow/disallow back orders, image gallery etc..

View orders/update order status

In Dokan, sellers can view all orders, filter orders by date or order status. They can update order status (such as processing, pending, shipped etc..)

Percentage based custom commission system

As admin you can set custom commission per sale, based on percentage system. You can add a specific commission for a specific seller.

Custom coupons for sellers

Dokan makes things easier by incorporating the coupon system for WooCommerce into frontend and sellers can feel free to create their own custom coupons.

Seller verification add-on

In Dokan, there is seller verification add-on. Seller verification add-on adds the verification option to your website. If you want to make your website more reliable, you can add a verification system. Verification add-on adds photo ID upload, phone verification and social media sites account verification like Twitter, Facebook.

Fund withdrawal options

Dokan has PayPal and Skrill as withdrawal options. There are also PayPal adaptive and Stripe options but as paid options.

Custom store options 

Sellers can add custom banner to their web store pages, contact form,  social media links, Google map etc..

Vacation mode for sellers

Vacation mode for sellers is one of the most important features for a marketplace. If seller wants to pause their store for some times, they can put their store on hold for a certain period of time. Vacation mode will avoid unwanted orders and their unfortunate cancellation after order placement. This mode helps sellers avoid negative customers feedback.

Sellers can edit customer reviews

As a site admin you can enable customer review options. After enabling this option sellers can manage their customer reviews.

Support system

Support system is available in Dokan as add-on. If site admin enable this add-on, sellers will have a support button on their web store page. Customers can generate support tickets which in turn should be be handled by sellers.

Tax Options

Dokan sellers now have options to customize tax on their own.

Turn Your Ecommerce Store into an Auctions Site Using Dokan

First, you need to install and activate the WooCommerce plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WooCommerce.

Then, you have to install Dokan multi-vendor plug-in. Here is the video to install the same.

Cost to Build an Auction Website?

The cost estimation to build an online auction website depends on the platform you choose.

It may cost $25 per month to create a website on your own using the WordPress platform. Gradually, it will take you up to $300 per month for more features, better design, added functionalities etc., it totally depends upon your needs.

You can see the different pricing plans of Dokan.

Note: Hiring a web development company will provide you with a more professional and experienced support team to take care of your auction website.

Conclusion

Setting up your very own auction website is much simpler than it used to be with the help of WordPress. We hope this article helped you to set up your own auction website like eBay using WordPress.