Does LetGo Charge a Fee

Most of us have a closet or a garage full of stuff that we no longer use. Letgo is an app that facilitates selling your belongings in your local community. All you have to do is take a picture or two of the item, write a brief description (optional), and publish your ad, and you could get responses in just minutes from people in your community who need what you have. It’s like a garage sale in your smartphone. So how much does all this cost you? In this age of freemium content and $5 apps, it’s difficult to believe that an app that let’s you buy and sell used items as easily as if you were actually at a garage sale would be totally free, but it is. Letgo is completely free to use, whether as a buyer or a seller. All you have to do is download the app and find something you want to sell or browse local listings for something worth buying.

Will Letgo Always Be Free?

That’s hard to say. App-based services, like any company, need to make money somehow to cover their costs and pay their employees. Right now, Letgo is ad-free, making it easier to browse listings and navigate the app. However, this may not always be the case. As Letgo becomes more popular, we may find ads becoming a regular part of the Letgo experience.

It’s also possible that Letgo could start putting limits on postings for sellers and contacts for buyers, allowing you to posd a certain number of listings for free and requiring an upgrade to a membership for additions. For example, you might be allowed to post 3 times in a month for free, but have to upgrade for a monthly fee if you want unlimited postings.

Letgo has made no mention of either ads or memberships. But these strategies are not unheard of among formerly free (and ad-free) apps.

How Does Letgo Make Money?

Letgo has obtained market capitalization of $375 million as of August 2018 by selling shares to the public and raising funds from investors. Those funds have been used to build the platform, run the infrastructure, and pay the company’s 90 or so employees.

To date, the company’s only income stream has been the sale of “bumps”. When someone posts an item to the site, they can elect to “bump it” to the top of the item feed for people in their area and people searching in the corresponding category. Sellers can bump items again at a later time if they wish to renew their item’s featured status. Bumps cost $1.99 a pop, so bump wisely.

How Does Bumping Work?

Basically, Letgo boosts your post as if it were freshly posted. Then as time goes by, it works its way down the feed, getting replaced by newer items. Bumping essentially makes your item “new” again. For this reason, it’s unwise to bump just after you’ve posted an item. Give it some time first.

Also know that bumping won’t last forever. Your item will descend in the feed just as a newer item would. Bumping also “features” your item for 24-hours, helping to attract even more buyers.

According to Letgo, bumping typically results in twice as many potential buyers. Of course, bumping won’t guarantee success. You’re taking a gamble when you pay for a bump. But you never know; you may just get lucky.

In the meantime, enjoy Letgo while it’s free. It may not be long before you have to pay up to put your stuff on the market. It’s time to get started.