Many websites and business have tried to challenge eBay’s dominance in the online auction market in recent years.  None have succeeded, most have completely failed and a few are still hanging on, or so I thought.

One of these websites, iBootSale, has been around for years. I did sign up a while back with the intention of buying and selling but like every other online marketplace other than it never felt like it reached critical mass.

By this I mean the point where it becomes a viable proposition to sell on their marketplace instead of eBay. The truth, while you could make sales on sites like iBootSale or eBid you will never make as many as you could on eBay.

Why? Eyeballs. None of the rival sites have any near the number of visitors as sites like eBay, so you have less people eyes on your product, and less sales as a result.

While there’s nothing wrong listing on eBay and other marketplaces the average car boot sale business doesn’t have the resources or time for a multi-platform operation. Like me, you’re probably struggling listing everything on one marketplace, never mind two.

Anyway, I check out some of the smaller sites from time to time to see what they are up to.  So I search for iBootSale on Google only to find that it has down at the moment, and has been for at least 2 weeks – Have they given up the ghost? Does anyone out there know?