Sella sees growth following Trade Me fee increase

Online auction and trading site Sella has seen a 160% increase in registrations over the past two weeks.

The site puts this squarely down to the recent success fee increase seen on Kiwi favourite, Trade Me.

"With their announcement we saw an incredible increase in registrations and activity throughout the Sella site," says Sella Co-founder Shane Bradley.

"Bids on Sella have increased by 120% since the broadcast of Trade Me's fee increase and we have seen a 300% increase in Sella message board activity. We realise what we haven't pushed enough over the past three years of operation is the fact that it's free to sell with us.

Bradley continued, "Kiwis are tired of everything increasing in cost. In the past few months we've had a GST increase, the price of petrol has soared again, food prices are constantly under the spotlight and we're still post-recession. And now we're being charged a premium to flog off our unwanted goods.

Sella has promised "never to charge New Zealanders for listing on Sella and promises to keep all sales commission free".

So how does that sit with Trade Me?

We dropped Trade Me spokesman Paul Ford a line to see if the site's seen any drop in activity since the changes were brought.

"No, since the success fee change on February 7th we've not seen any changes in activity levels on Trade Me. An average of 753,000 Kiwis visited Trade Me each day last week and the number of items listed on the site is up 35% on a year ago. We've been consistently hitting 50 million page impressions each day too.

Do you continue to use Trade Me or has the increase in fees out you off?