Even if you haven’t read the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo from cover to cover, you’ll probably agree that being surrounded by clutter and old, useless stuff can be suffocating. Why not get rid of your old junk with the help of the best buying and selling apps for Android? They’re free, easy-to-use, and are a fantastic way how to earn a few extra bucks on the side while making your home feel more hospitable at the same time.
Best Buying and Selling Apps for Getting Bargains and Getting Rid of Stuff
1) eBay
Since it was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, eBay has become the largest online marketplace, with sellers from all around the world offering both used and new products in countless different categories. Items can be posted either as auction-style sales or as “Buy It Now” products. The latter option turns the auction model on its head, letting anyone instantly purchase the product like they would from an online store.
This the best buy and sell app makes it possible to sell truly anything from cars and automotive gear, fashion and outfits, home and garden products, to collectibles, video games, vintage items, and even some truly bizarre things, including a single cornflake, partially eaten sandwich, ghosts, and others.
The Android application place most of eBay’s functionality in the palm of your hand, but its user experience can’t rival that of letgo or OfferUp. Why? Because eBay is a multi-purpose behemoth that is as far from being lightweight and streamlined as you can get. Placing a small item on the site can take a while, not to mention that it may get buried under the sheer volume of goods that are sold on the site every single day.
Download it now: here
2) letgo
With $100 million in Series A funding from the South African media company and tech investor Naspers Limited, letgo has been able to enter the mobile market with an aggressive marketing campaign that promotes its mobile-first approach and sleek, user-friendly interface.
letgo founder, Alec Oxenford, explained, “letgo is perfectly tailored for the typical American consumer. It’s a fun, easy to use, and highly visual mobile marketplace that allows users to post, buy, sell and communicate with each other instantly and for free.”
“There has been a lack of innovation in the U.S. classifieds space, particularly when it comes to mobile. We think letgo’s mobile first design, which is streamlined to make buying and selling locally easier and faster than ever, is a key advantage for our platform,” he concluded when interviewed by TechCrunch.
So far, it’s not clear how the app plans to generate revenue. Users don’t have to pay fees, nor does the app take a percentage of the sales, a common practice in the industry. One explanation is that the app will try to live entirely on money generated from advertising; the other could involve a gradual introduction of premium features.
As it is, letgo seems like the perfect platform for selling anything from books and music to fashion, electronics, vehicles, vintage items, and much more. Users who are versed in modern social networks will instantly feel right at home, with letgo’s built-in chat feature and easy registration. The experience is visually-oriented, making it instantly appealing to new users and digital window shoppers.
Download it now: here
3) Wallapop
Wallapop and letgo are now actually a single company. The two merged earlier this year to increase their odds at beating the incumbent players, mainly Craigslist, and newly emerging startups wanting to compete in the same space.
Before the merger, Wallapop was actually the larger company, valued at over $570 million (over €500 million), according to TechCrunch. Its investors include Insight Venture Partners, an American private equity and venture capital firm based in New York, and Accel, another American venture capital firm.
It was decided that Wallapop will continue operating as a separate platform, possibly to allow the management to selectively test new features. While you can use the app everywhere, the focus is on large metropolitan hubs, including New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Miami, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Austin, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.
Wallapop works in a very similar manner to letgo, making it simple to snap a picture of the item you want to sell, display it online, and communicate with the buyer. The nearly instantaneous nature of selling through Wallapop gives it an advantage over Craigslist, which feels like it’s still stuck in the last decade.
Download it now: here
4) OfferUp
With the copious amount of advertising time that letgo and Wallapop occupy, it may seem there isn’t any other competition. Wrong. OfferUp is a highly rated mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers, currently enjoying a very high rating of 4.6 stars given to it by almost 300,000 happy users.
The premise is the same: using your smartphone camera, you quickly snap a picture of the thing you want to sell, display it online, and then wait until somebody who wants to buy it from you contacts you. OfferUp has a built-in real-time chat functionality through which you can instantly negotiate the final price and agree on the time of exchange.
Thousands new items are being displayed by sellers from all across the country every single day. The community is steadily growing as more happy customers leave raving online reviews and tell their friends and co-workers how they used OfferUp to declutter their garages on this the best buy and sell app.
Download it now: here
5) Craigslist
Craigslist is much more than an online marketplace. It’s the most popular classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, personals, services, gigs, and many other things. The service was founded by a single guy, Craig Newmark, and despite its immense success, it still employs just 30 some people.
Craigslist probably would have already dominated the mobile space, if it wasn’t for their lack of innovation. They still don’t even have their own mobile app, relying solely on third-party developers to fill in the black spot.
The most popular such app is cPro+. Its modern user interface is somewhat reminiscent of letgo’s design, and the quite complete set of features helps to leave the web version behind. Among the features is an integrated map browser, multi-city search, favorite listings, rapid alerts, PIN code lock protection, and others.
If, for some reason, cPro+ doesn’t tickle your fancy, Postings and Mokriya are good alternatives. Both are free, easy-to-use, and come with modern user interface, that makes shopping and selling as easy as breathing. Well, maybe not quite as easy, but you get the idea about how to use this the best buy and sell app.