How to build a two sided marketplace for free: Complete 2024 Guide

Getting Started

Geting Started

In this segment you will read what are the steps to Install a Rental Marketplace in Dittofi for Free and Create your first Listing.

Install a marketplace template (for free)

Learn how to build your marketplace, by using one of Dittofi’s open source marketplace templates.

Create your first marketplace listing

Learn how to create a series of onboarding forms for your customers to upload relevant details about their listing.

Complete User Accounts

Learn about the multiple types of users on your Two Sided Marketplace.

Setup single sign on with Google

Learn how to streamline user acquisition using Google's Sign on feature.

Setup single sign on with Facebook

Learn how to streamline user acquisition using Facebook's Sign on feature.
Finance

Finance

In this segment you will read what are the steps to accept marketplace payments and how to choose your marketplace model and what is the two sided marketplace transaction flow.

Activate your Stripe account to accept marketplace payments

Learn how to activate your Stripe account and accept payments on your Two Sided Marketplace.

Choose your marketplace business model

Learn about commission models and how to configure it within Dittofi's Marketplace Dashboard.

How to make money off your first listing

Learn how to set up your listings and start earning from your Two Sided Marketplace.

What is the two sided marketplace transaction flow

Learn more about understanding the Marketplace Transaction Flow on your Two Sided Marketplace.
Customizing

Customizing

In this segment you will read how to customize your Two Sided Marketplace, brand your marketplace, publish it to a custom url and build a landing page.

Brand your two sided marketplace

Learn how to change the default colours to your own brand colours and add your company name & logo.

Publish your marketplace to live on a custom URL

Learn how to publish your marketplace and add a custom URL to your website.

Build a two sided marketplace landing page

Learn how to build a landing page that has a layout optimized for conversions.
Marketing

Marketing

In this segment you will read how to use marketing tools to nurture and engage your customers and users on your Two Sided Marketplace.

How to automate email communications with users

Learn how to implement marketing tools to automate email communications with users and onboard them on your Two Sided Marketplace.

How to implement Google Analytics

Learn how to connect Google's Analytics Dashboard to your Two Sided Marketplace and understand the key metrics it provides.

How to build a two sided marketplace for free: Complete 2024 Guide

Step-by-step guide on how to build a two sided marketplace for free (with a free URL). Onboard buyers and sellers and immediately start promoting your marketplace (no design or technical skills required).

This article is a step by step guide on how to build a two sided marketplace for free. It is aimed at both aspiring marketplace creators and established businesses looking to build a two sided marketplace.

Here is a live example of what your marketplace will look like. The marketplace is fully responsive and can run on either mobile, tablet or web. It uses the latest technology to make it fast and responsive for your users. The marketplace is also entirely customizable from within Dittofi’s visual development studio. From within here you can customize your marketplace 10x faster than traditional coding.

To build your marketplace, we will use one of Dittofi’s open source marketplace templates. Each marketplace template in Dittofi has been designed by professional peer to peer marketplace developers and includes all of the essential features that you need to build a two sided marketplace.

Moreover, each template has been built using Dittofi’s visual development studio. This means that you can customize your two sided marketplace 10x faster than coding and without the need to write any code.

To help demonstrate how to build a two sided marketplace, I will build a two sided marketplace for car rentals. The final marketplace will be a fully functional peer to peer rental marketplace that will allow car owners to list their cars on the website. Individuals and companies can then visit the site, browse car listings, choose a car they want to rent and then click to rent out that car.

This example marketplace can be changed to anything that you want. So whether you want to build an Airbnb clone, an Amazon clone or an Upwork clone; you can follow the same steps.

To build a two sided marketplace for free, take the following steps.

Step 1. Install a marketplace template (for free)
Step 2. Create your first marketplace listing
Step 3. Complete user accounts
Step 4. Setup single sign on with Google or Facebook
Step 5. Activate your Stripe account to accept marketplace payments
Step 6. Choose your marketplace business model
Step 7. How to make money off your first listing
Step 8. What is the two sided marketplace transaction flow
Step 9. Brand your two sided marketplace
Step 10. Publish your marketplace to live on a custom URL
Step 11. Build a two sided marketplace landing page

For more information about how to build a two sided marketplace, check out some of our founder stories of how Airbnb, Turo, Uber, PeerSpace etc. each built a two sided marketplace.

How to build a two sided marketplace (for free)

To build your marketplace, we will use one of Dittofi’s open source marketplace templates.

To build a two sided marketplace for free, you first need to sign up to Dittofi. The account is free for 14 days and does not require a credit card to sign up.

Once you’ve signed up, the first step that you should take to build a two sided marketplace is to choose one of Dittofi’s marketplace templates. There are several marketplace templates for different product, service and rental marketplaces. For the purpose of this article, I am going to choose the rental marketplace template.

To do this, click the “View template” button below the rental marketplace template. This will pull you through to a page which showcases some details on the template such as the top features that are included in the template.

To use the template click “Install”. This will bring up the following popup. Use the popup to give your marketplace a name, choose the workspace that you want to install the template into and then click “Install”.

At this point, Dittofi will start to set up the marketplace template. This includes generating all of the lines of code for your two sided marketplace.

Dittofi also generates an enterprise grade hosting environment for your marketplace and deploys the code into the hosting environment. This process takes about 10 minutes to complete, but it saves you months of development work and $50,000 to $100,000 in development cost, so it’s definitely worth the wait.

Once Dittofi has finished creating your marketplace, you will see the following screen. The next step to build a two sided marketplace is to click the preview button, as highlighted below.

This will pull you through to a set of onboarding forms. These forms are used to collect some essential information that Dittofi will use to set up your marketplace. You only need to fill in these forms once. So, let’s begin by clicking “Get Started” and then “Next”.

You will be asked to create a name and description for your marketplace.

I am going to call my two sided marketplace “DittoRide”, since my marketplace is going to be a car rental marketplace and write the description, “DittoRide is a p2p marketplace for car rentals targeted at the city of Mumbai”.

Click “Next” and then enter in the email and password for the administrator of your marketplace. This is the person that is going to manage the marketplace.

Once you’ve done this, Dittofi is going to ask you to upload a logo for your marketplace.

Next, you are going to give your marketplace a primary currency – in my case I am going to choose USD. And then click publish to publish your marketplace.

After clicking “Publish” you will be pulled through to your Marketplace Dashboard. The Marketplace Dashboard is a place for you to administer and configure certain aspects of your marketplace.

For example, from inside your marketplace dashboard you are able to manage your customers, marketplace listings, transactions and marketplace reviews within your live marketplace. You are also able to manage certain aspects of how your marketplace has been built, for example, setting your marketplace Brand colours, what data you want to capture from your Users, data required for your Listings, Integrations, such as API connections to different payment gateways and configure your transactions.

From inside your marketplace dashboard, you can also click the “View Marketplace” button, to view your marketplace as it currently is.

Clicking “View Marketplace” will launch your marketplace on a test URL.

On your live marketplace, as you can see your logo in the top left and the name of your marketplace in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Right now the marketplace is empty because we have no providers listing their products or services on the marketplace.

So, let’s take a look at how providers can upload their listings to our marketplace.

Create your first marketplace listing

To build your marketplace, we will use one of Dittofi’s open source marketplace templates.

Listings are anything that is listed for sale or rental on the two sided marketplace such as books, cars, vacation homes, tour guides, freelancers, jobs and so on.

Listings are created by your marketplace sellers (also known as providers). To do this your marketplace providers need to complete a series of onboarding forms to upload relevant details about their listing. Details may include descriptions of the product or service, terms of use, images and so on.

A provider can create a new listing by first creating an account on the marketplace and then clicking on the “Become a Seller” button in the top right corner of the screen.

This will take the provider through to the Provider’s Listing Dashboard. From in here the Provider can click the button marked “Create a listing”. to create their first listing.

This brings up a set of forms that walk the provider through the process of creating a new listing.

The provider can begin uploading their listing by clicking “Get started” and then “Next”. The first details the provider will need to enter is the Listing Type.

The first step that a Provider goes through in order to create a listing is to choose a Listing Type. The Listing Type controls how the purchase of the listing will work on the marketplace.

For example, you may wish to offer providers the chance to list items for free, one off purchases or for renting.

By default there is a “Free” listing type which allows providers to list their products for free. This means that no actual money will be transacted on the marketplace when someone comes to buy or rent out a listing. Instead a buyer will just make an inquiry about a listing and then probably make a payment off the platform.

You can create new listing types from inside your Marketplace Dashboard. To do this, go to your Marketplace Dashboard, then “Listings” and then “Listing Types”.

From inside this view click on “Add listing type” to create a new Listing Type.

Next, give your listing type a name such as “Rental listing type”, give your listing type a label, in my case I am going to type “Rental listing” (this will be your public facing listing type) and choose the default transaction process that you want your listing type to use.

The default options are Default Purchase, Default Booking, Default Inquiry.

The Default Purchase option allows your users to create a listing that will be a one off purchase. For example, if you’re building a product marketplace like Amazon and you want to allow users to create a one off listing that can be sold on the marketplace.
The Default Booking option allows you to create a listing that can be rented on the marketplace. For example, if you’re building a marketplace like Airbnb or Turo, where you want to allow users to rent items on a short term basis.
The Default Inquiry option allows your users to create a listing that will be listed for free. Buyers or renters can then initiate an inquiry about a listing, most likely the transaction will then take place off the platform.

You can create your own custom transaction processes from inside Dittofi’s visual development studio. For example, if you wanted to create a Request for Quote marketplace or request Providers to pay a listing fee. You can also create multiple listing types for your marketplace.

All that being said, remember that having a narrow focus for your marketplace in the early days is normally the best approach. So beginning with just one listing type is normally the best way to start and starting with one of the default listing types is normally more than enough.

In my case I am going to choose the Default Booking type, since I am building a car rental marketplace. Click “Submit” to create the Listing Type.

Once you’ve created a new Listing Type, you can use the delete button to delete any of the old listing types by clicking the delete button to the right of the listing type.

If you go back to your marketplace and click the refresh button, you will see that your new listing type is displayed on your provider onboarding forms.

Next up, we are going to finish creating our listing.

To begin with here, start with a free listing type since the Rental listing type is going to require us to configure online payments which we will do later on.

After this, give a title to your listing. For example here, I can type in “Tesla Model Y 2022”.

Next there is then the option to choose where the listing is located. You can either enter in an exact address or a general area.

Once you’ve given the listing a title and a location click next.

At this point your Provider will be prompted to enter some information about their listing. This defaults to the number of Beds, Baths, Guests and Rooms that are available in the listing. The options here are known as Listing Fields and, depending on what your listing is, you will likely need to customize this page.

To do this, go back to your Marketplace Dashboard, go to “Listings” and then “Listing Fields”.

You will see here that under Listing Fields there are the options for the number of Beds, Baths, Guests and Rooms. If these fields are not relevant to your marketplace, you can just click the delete button here to remove the fields from your marketplace.

To add a new Listing Field, click “Add a new field”.

This will bring up a modal window from where you can add new fields that are relevant to your listing.

For example, as I am building a car rental marketplace, I am going to ask for the “Number of Seats”, so that the provider can choose the number of seats that their car has.

When choosing a field, you can choose the Field Type, for example if it is a number or text field. In my case, I am going to choose a number field.

At the bottom of the form you have the option to choose the section on the page where your field will be displayed. We will come back to this later on and for now I am going to choose “Top”. Lastly, click “Submit” to create your new Listing Field.

If you go back to your live marketplace and click to refresh your page, you are going to see that the page has updated. There is now the number field that shows that will allow the provider to enter in the number of seats that the car has.

Pro Tip: Read how to choose your listing fields for version 1 of your marketplace

After creating your Listing Fields click next.

After clicking “Next” your Provider will be asked to add photos of their marketplace listing. The provider can upload five pictures by default, however this number can be increased or decreased as needed.

You will need to learn over time which pictures inspire people to make the most transactions on your marketplace.

Once you’ve created your listing click “Next”.

At this point your providers will be asked to choose a category that best describes their listing.

The default categories are home, hotel, apartment and so on. These are not going to be relevant to everyone.

At this point your providers will be asked to choose a category that best describes their listing.

The default categories are home, hotel, apartment and so on. These are not going to be relevant to everyone.

You can customize these fields from inside your Marketplace Dashboard. To do this, go to your marketplace dashboard, Listings and then Listing Categories.

You will see that the categories home, hotel, apartment and so on, are pulled into your marketplace from here. You can use the delete button to delete categories that you don’t need and add new categories for the marketplace by clicking on the “Add Category”. There is also the option to upload categories from a CSV file.

In my case I am going to create car categories such as “Tesla”, “Volkswagen”, “Porsche” and “BMW”.

There is then the option to add an icon to each of your product categories, these icons are taken from an icon library called font awesome. You can click the link to explore font awesome for an icon that you would like to associate with the listing. Finally, you have the option to choose a parent category, which allows you to create subcategories for your listings.

Finally, click “Submit” to create your new Listing Category.

To see your new Listing Categories in your live marketplace, go back to your live marketplace and click the refresh button at the top of the page. You will then see your new Listing Categories displayed as below.

Once you’ve done that, the next step is to create a description for the listing.

The Provider can then set a price for their listing and click “Next”

Finally the Provider can click publish to publish their listing.

Once the listing has been published the Provider will be able to see the listing published on the Provider Listing Dashboard page of the live marketplace, as shown below.

Other providers and customers will also be able to see the listing published on the homepage of the marketplace.

At this stage your listing is ready for possible buyers to purchase or rent.

To do this providers and customers can click on the listing to bring up the Listing Details page and then click “Send an inquiry” to connect with the provider who has posted the listing.

Notice:

The reason there is the option to “Send an inquiry” is that I set the “Listing Type” to Free.

If I had set the Listing Type to “Default Booking” then the button would say “Reserve”.

If I had set it to “Default Purchase” it would say “Buy Now”.

Complete User Accounts

To build your marketplace, we will use one of Dittofi’s open source marketplace templates.

There are three primary types of users on a marketplace:

The marketplace administrator
Providers (or sellers)
Customers (or buyers)

The marketplace administrator was created when we first set up the marketplace. The marketplace administrator has certain privileges that Providers and Customers do not have.

Both Providers and Customer sign up to the marketplace the same way. This is by clicking on the hamburger menu in the top right of the marketplace and then clicking “sign up”. The marketplace administrator can also sign up in the same way.

From here, buyers and sellers are able to create accounts by entering their first name, last name, email and password.

Once the user has created an account, they will automatically be logged into the marketplace. Each user can manage their user account by clicking on the “Account” button in the top right corner of the screen.

This will pull the user through to their Account Dashboard where the user can input personal information about themselves and manage their passwords and payment and payout methods.

The more complete an account is the better, since accounts with accurate personal information increases trust in your marketplace which increases the likelihood transactions taking place on your marketplace. Furthermore, having payouts setup, makes the management of the marketplace easier. Below is an example of a completed user profile.

To help remind people to set up their user profile you can trigger email reminders to new users to complete their marketplace profile.

Setup single sign on with Google or Facebook

It’s one thing to have users signing up to your marketplace however, to help streamline user acquisition it can be a great idea to offer users social media logins.

These can help reduce the friction for new users thinking about signing up to your marketplace.

In this section we take a look at:

*Click on a button to go to the desired section

Setup single sign on with Google

It’s one thing to have users signing up to your marketplace however, to help streamline user acquisition it can be a great idea to offer users social media logins.

1. Setting up single sign on with Google

Please note, the Google interface may change. If you run into any issues or inconsistencies please reach out to the Dittofi Support Team and we will be happy to assist.

There are two steps you need to take to set up Google single sign on:

Step 1. Configure the Google login project from within your Google account.
Step 2. Add your Google login keys to your Marketplace Dashboard.

Step 1. Configure the Google Login Project

First of all, visit the Google Developers Console and login with your google account.

Next click, “Select A Project” in the top bar and then click New Project.

Next give your project a name and click “Create”.

Next, ensure you have your new project selected in the top bar and go to the “OAuth consent screen” in the sidebar.

Select “External” and then click “Create”.

This brings up the following form. Enter in the required fields on the and then click “Save” and “Continue”. Whilst you can safely ignore all non-required fields, the screenshots below show you examples of the data you can input.

Notice that the application domains are taken from your live marketplace and the authorized domain is set to dittofi.link. Once you’re done, click “Save and continue”.

You can then skip the option to set “Scopes“, “Test Users” and “Summary“.

Once you’ve done this, go to the “Credential“ tab in the sidebar, click “Create Credentials” and select “OAuth Client ID” from the dropdown.

Select Web Application from the application dropdown and enter any name.

Below this and Uuder “Authorised redirect URIs” click Add URI and add the full URL of your marketplace with /iapi/v1/google/callback on the end.

To get your marketplace URL you can go to your live marketplace and copy and paste the url from the browser toolbar up to the first slash. For example, in the attached screenshot of my marketplace my URL is https://app7877.prod.dittofi.link/#/ so I would enter https://app7877.prod.dittofi.link/iapi/v1/google/callback. Once you’ve done this click create.

Finally click “Create” at the bottom of the page.

This will bring up a popup. Copy the “Client ID” and “Client Secret” from the popup.

Step 2. Add your Google Keys to inside your marketplace dashboard.

Step 2. is to add your Google Keys to inside your marketplace dashboard.

To do this, go back over to your Marketplace Dashboard, look under “Integrations” and then “Social Logins” and paste in your “Client ID” and your “Client Secret”.

Finally, go to your live marketplace and refresh the screen. Make sure you’re logged out and then try refreshing the page. You will now be prompted to “Continue with Google”.

Setup single sign on with Facebook

It’s one thing to have users signing up to your marketplace however, to help streamline user acquisition it can be a great idea to offer users social media logins.

Please note, the Facebook interface may change. If you run into any issues or inconsistencies please reach out to the Dittofi Support Team and we will be happy to assist.

There are two steps required to setup the Facebook single sign on:

Step 1. Configure the Facebook login project from within your Facebook account
Step 2. Add your Facebook login keys to your Marketplace Dashboard

Step 1. Configure the Facebook login project from within your Facebook account

To start configuring single sign on with Facebook, you need a Meta developer account. To set this up, go Meta for Developers (make sure you’re logged into Facebook) and click on “Get Started” in the top right hand corner of the screen.

This will pull you through to the Meta Developer registration page, click “Continue” and then choose “Developer” and click “Complete registration”.

Once you’ve created your Meta Developer account, you will be redirected to your “Apps” dashboard. From inside here, you can click “Create App”.

On the following page you will be asked: “What do you want your app to do?” select “Other”:

On the next page you will be asked to select an “app type”. Select “Consumer”.

On the next page give your app a name, choose the email for the “App Contact” email and click “Create App”.

Once your app is created go to the “App settings” and select “Basic” under the drop down.

Copy the “App ID” and the “App secret”. In the next step we will paste these into your Marketplace Dashboard.

Step 2. Add your Facebook login keys to your Marketplace Dashboard

The second step to adding Facebook single sign on to your two sided marketplace is to copy your Facebook login keys into your Marketplace Dashboard.

To do this, go back to your Marketplace Dashboard and go to “Integrations” and then “Social Logins” . Then click into the Login with Facebook tab and paste the App ID and App secret here.

The second step to adding Facebook single sign on to your two sided marketplace is to copy your Facebook login keys into your Marketplace Dashboard.

Lastly, click “Save Changes”.

The final step is to go back to the Meta Developer account navigate to “App settings” and then “Advanced”.

On this page scroll down to the section “Share Redirect Allow List”.

Here you need to enter the URL of your marketplace app with /iapi/v1/facebook/callback on the end.

To get your marketplace URL you can go to your live marketplace and copy and paste the url from the browser toolbar up to the first slash.

For example, in the attached screenshot of my marketplace my URL is:

https://app7474.prod.dittofi.link/#/

So I would enter:

https://app7877.prod.dittofi.link/iapi/v1/facebook/callback

And then click save changes.

If you refresh your live two sided marketplace, you will see that there is now the option to “Continue with Facebook”, as shown below.

How to activate your Stripe account to accept marketplace payments?

In order to start taking payments on your marketplace, you need to first have a Stripe account with Stripe Connect configured. To do this, please complete the following steps.

Step 1. Create your free Stripe account

Creating a Stripe account is free, and you can delete it anytime. To create your free Stripe account go to https://dashboard.stripe.com/register and fill in the required fields and create your Stripe account.

You will need to register with a valid email since Stripe will ask you to verify your email address.

Step 2. Activate your Stripe account

Since you will receive payments from your users through your Stripe account, you need to provide details such as your business type, industry, address, website URL, and bank account information. Stripe secures this data and does not share it with anyone. This procedure is known as “Activating” your account.

New Stripe accounts can be activated from two places.

At sign up, you will get presented with a set of forms that you can use to activate your Stripe account.
If you choose to dismiss the onboarding forms at sign up, Stripe gives you the option to activate your account from your dashboard.

Each of these options is shown below.

You need to go through Stripe’s onboarding, filling all the fields as instructed.

Note tow things:

When asked for your Your website, you can use the URL of your marketplace or another website (you can change this later on).
It’s OK to activate your account as an individual, you don’t need a company ID.

Once completed click “Agree” and “Submit”.

Step 3. Configure Stripe Connect

The marketplace template utilizes Stripe Connect features with Express Accounts. This allows your sellers to process payments through your marketplace, enabling you to earn a commission on their sales. The following steps outline how to set up Stripe Connect.

Note. For different two sided marketplace business models, you may need to utilize different Stripe products.

Next, click “Get started”.

Click “Continue”.

Select the option “Buyers will purchase from you” and click “Continue”.

As a two sided marketplace, you will be considered a merchant of record. This means that you will be liable for refunds and chargebacks from buyers who purchase off your marketplace. This is the standard setup for two-sided marketplaces and it highlights the importance of validating the quality of your suppliers.

To review the terms click “Review”.

After reading the terms and conditions for your marketplace, click to acknowledge that you have reviewed and agreed to your responsibilities as a two sided marketplace and then “Continue”.

Next, select “Sellers will be paid out individually”, and click on “Continue”.

Select the industry that best matches your business (note this is for Stripe to better understand your business) and click “Continue” to complete the “Funds Flow” setup and move to the “Account Creation” setup.

Select “Onboarding hosted by Stripe” and click on “Continue”,

Choose the option “API”.

Check the box to mark your acceptance of ongoing seller compliance and then click “Continue”.

On the Review step click “Continue”.

At this point you should be directed back to the Set up Connect page and should see a green tick next to “Tell us about your platform”, you should also see “Connect” added in the left sidebar. You can now click on this to get to the Connect dashboard.

To finish the setup you need to configure your marketplace branding. To do this click “Add your branding”.

From the popup add a logo, icon and business name and click “Save”.

At this point you should be directed back to the Set up Connect page and should see a green tick next to “Add your branding”.

Finally, to complete the setup you need to verify your identity with Stripe.

To do this from the “Set up Connect” page, click on “Get Started” next to “Verify an identity document”.

In this step, Stripe will ask you to provide a valid ID document to verify your identity. Click “Agree and continue”.

This step can take a bit of time as Stripe will need to verify your identity before you can progress. Once you’ve successfully uploaded your identification documents, you will see a green check mark next to “Verify an identity document”.

After completing your platform profile, adding your branding, and verifying your identity with a document, you can finalize the Connect setup. Click “Get Started” next to “Review and finish,” then click “Continue” once you have confirmed all your configurations.

Step 4. Get your API keys from Stripe and add them to your Dittofi Dashboard

API keys are text strings that connect your two sided marketplace to your Stripe account, allowing you to manage payments within your marketplace.

To get your API keys, click “Developers” and then “API Keys” in the top bar menu. You should see a “Publishable Key” and a “Secret Key”. You want to copy the Secret Key.

Note. In the top right of your Stripe account, you have a toggle for “Test mode” and “live mode”. Stripe gives you a test mode to test transactions while your marketplace is being developed. Your API keys will change depending on whether you are using “Test mode” or not. If you want to test transactions toggle test mode on and copy the updated key.

Now head back to your Dittofi Marketplace Dashboard and go to “Integrations”, “Payments” and enter your Secret Key in the section marked “Secret Key” and click “Save Changes”.

How to choose a marketplace business model?

Marketplaces are great because they have highly scalable business models.

For a complete guide on the best marketplace business models, read our article on The Top Marketplace Business Models.

The most common two sided marketplace business model is the commission model. The two sided marketplace commission model is when the marketplace charges a fee whenever a transaction takes place on the marketplace.

To see how this works, think about the following example.

Let’s suppose you have a product listing worth $100. As a marketplace it would be normal for you to charge a commission of between 15% and 25% for facilitating the transaction. In this case, you only need to facilitate 1000 transactions to make $25,000 for your marketplace. This is a highly interesting business model for users since there is no charge for buyers or sellers to join the marketplace. This makes it far easier to onboard the initial users.

Then, once the marketplace has listing providers showcasing their products or services, the only thing that the marketplace needs to focus on is to increase the number of transactions that take place on the marketplace. Although $25 per matched deal seems small, you only need to get to 1000 transactions to make $25k.

To configure the commission model in Dittofi, go to your Marketplace Dashboard and look under transactions and then commission.

Here you can decide how much commission to charge and to whom to charge commission to. You can charge the commission to the Customer, the Provider or both. Normally it is best practice to charge the commission on the side of the marketplace that is the easiest to find. For example, if it’s easier to find Providers compared to Customers, you can consider charging commission on the Provider side.

To charge commission on the Provider side, enter the percentage amount you want to charge into the box marked Provider Commission (required).

To charge commission on the Customer side, enter the percentage into the box marked Customer Commission (required).

To charge the commission to both the Customer and Provider enter the amount you want to charge each user type, as shown below.

Once you’ve decided who and what to charge, click the “Save changes” button at the bottom of the screen. This will update the commission rate the you’re charging.

How to make money off your first listing

Now that payments are set up, you are able to make money off your first marketplace listing.

To do this, you need Providers to list their products or services on your marketplace. When these Providers sign up, they need to set the Listing Type on their products or services as either available to rent or purchase.

As we have already seen, this means you will need to use either the Default Booking or the Default Purchase Listing Type.

To see an example of how this works, let’s suppose that I login as a new provider on my marketplace and create a new car listing by clicking “Become a seller” and then “Create listing“.

I will then choose to allow renters the chance to Rent out my car by setting the Listing Type to Rental and completing the rest of the onboarding steps.

Once the listing has been created the Provider will click “Publish” however, at this point the Provider will be prompted to enter in their payout details. This is because real money is going to be transacted when someone rents out the listing and this money will need to be transferred by the marketplace to the Provider.

The Provider can dismiss this popup and complete the onboarding later however, they will need to compete the onboarding before they can start accepting payouts.

To set themselves up to start accepting payouts, the provider will need to complete a set of forms which are automatically created by Stripe. These screens can be branded from within your Stripe dashboard.

Once the Provider has configured their payout options, they are able to activate their marketplace listing from inside their Manage Listings Dashboard.

Now, if I sign up to my marketplace as a renter, you can see that buyers is able to check out the marketplace listing, select a date range to reserve the product for and click to reserve the listing. At this point, money is transferred to the marketplace which deducts a commission before transferring the money to the car owner.

This interaction between the buyers and sellers on a two sided marketplace is known as a two sided marketplace transaction flow.

Congratulations you’re now set up to start making money via your two sided marketplace! Let’s dig in a bit deeper to understand the two sided marketplace transaction flow in more detail.

Understand the two sided marketplace transaction flow

Now that payments are set up, you are able to make money off your first marketplace listing.

A two sided marketplace transaction flow describes how the buyers and sellers on the marketplace transact.

The transaction flow covers every step in the transaction process from when the buyer or renter first inquires about a product or service on the marketplace right through to when both sides finally review each other. The diagram below shows a more low level look at how a typical transaction flow works.

For a complete guide on how the marketplace transaction flow works, read our article on How to design a two sided marketplace transaction flow.

Customizing your two sided marketplace transaction flow works is beyond the scope of this article. However, you can schedule a call with one of Dittofi’s marketplace consultants and they can tell you the best way to do this.

How to Brand and Customize your Two Sided Marketplace?

You can change everything about your marketplace from inside Dittofi’s visual development studio however for version 1 of your marketplace the goal is to launch fast and start to collect up customer feedback.

The default colours for things like buttons and headings are purple and white. These are the colours that everyone starts with. However, if you want to use your own brand colours instead, you can do that too.

To change the default colours to your own brand colours, you need to follow these steps: First, go to the Marketplace dashboard. Then, navigate to the page called “Branding”.

Once you’re in the branding tab, you will see that you are able to change the name, primary colour and logo for your marketplace. This is important because it will allow you to start building your corporate brand.

Remember you’re not limited to just the options here! You can change everything about your marketplace from inside Dittofi’s visual development studio however for version 1 of your marketplace the goal is to launch fast and start to collect up customer feedback. Therefore try to change as little as possible to start with.

After making the relevant edits click “Save” and then return to your live marketplace and click refresh to see the changes live.

Publish your marketplace to live on a custom URL

Once you’re ready to go live, you can publish your marketplace to a custom URL.

To publish your marketplace to a custom URL you need to buy a domain from a domain registrar. Some of the most popular domain registars are Go Daddy, Google Domains and Blue Host.

We recommend choosing a mainstream domain registar since these platforms have the best support.

Once you have your domain, you can copy and paste this into the Dittofi platform, as shown below.

Customize your two sided marketplace website

This web page has a layout optimized for conversions. This means that it has been setup to promote new customers to purchase or rent marketplace listings and for marketplace providers to quickly and easily sign up to “Become a seller”.

All you have to do is to do is to change the images and add some marketing copy, and your two sided marketplace will be ready in minutes!

In this section, we will show you how to:

How to change images in your marketplace
How to update copywriting
Add new sections to different pages of your marketplace website

Note, you can use Dittofi’s visual development studio and auto code generation to build an entirely custom two sided marketplace. However, for the best results, we recommend that you customize very little at the start. You goal should be to launch your marketplace fast and tailor it based on user feedback. If it takes longer than two weeks to launch, you should reassess your approach.

If you would like any support in customizing your marketplace, schedule a call with one of Dittofi’s marketplace specialists who will be able to guide you through the process of customizing your marketplace.

How to change images in your marketplace

By clicking on the “Edit” button on the top menu, you can open up your marketplace inside Dittofi’s visual development studio.

There are two types of data (images, text and numbers) that are displayed on the screen. These are:

Static data
Variable data

In development, static data means information that stays the same and doesn’t update automatically when you use a website. It’s like a picture on a wall – it doesn’t change unless someone physically changes it.

In a two sided marketplace, static data might include things like the layout of the website, general information about the marketplace (like its mission or policies), or fixed content such as banner images, slogons, images of the team and so on.

Dynamic data, on the other hand, refers to information that changes frequently based on user interactions or updates from the database. This will include things like user profiles, listings of available products or services, pricing information, transaction history, and real-time notifications about new listings or messages between users.

There is no point changing the dynamic data on the frontend of your marketplace since, this information is pulled out of the database.

To update your static images, click on an image that you would like to update, such as the banner image. This will bring up a list of options that you can use to change the image, as shown below.

How to update the copywriting for your marketplace

The text on your marketplace can be either static or dynamic. To change the static text, double click on the text that you would like to edit and start typing, as shown below.

Add new sections to different pages of your marketplace website

To add new sections to your marketplace, click on the “Elements” button at the top of the page as shown below.

From here you can select any of the elements and add them to your two sided marketplace using drag and drop.

How to build a two sided marketplace for free?

Now – to answer the question, how to build a two sided marketplace for free?

The Dittofi.com platform allows you to create a fully functional two sided marketplace platform in no time.

All you need is:

A Stripe account
Some branded images for your homepage
Marketing text for your homepage

You can use all of the features of Dittofi using the free trial to get started and start onboarding supply and demand to your marketplace today!

More than a platform, we want to also give you all the information that you need to succeed in your two sided marketplace creation journey.

Do you want to build a two-sided marketplace?

Schedule a call with our marketplace specialists and learn how to build a two sided marketplace today!

Build a two sided marketplace for free

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Setup single sign on with Google

Setup single sign on with Facebook

How to build a two sided marketplace for free: Complete 2024 Guide

How to build a two sided marketplace (for free)

Create your first marketplace listing

Complete User Accounts

Setup single sign on with Google or Facebook

Setup single sign on with Google

1. Setting up single sign on with Google

Step 1. Configure the Google Login Project

Step 2. Add your Google Keys to inside your marketplace dashboard.

Setup single sign on with Facebook

Step 1. Configure the Facebook login project from within your Facebook account

Step 2. Add your Facebook login keys to your Marketplace Dashboard

How to activate your Stripe account to accept marketplace payments?

Step 1. Create your free Stripe account

Step 2. Activate your Stripe account

Step 3. Configure Stripe Connect

Step 4. Get your API keys from Stripe and add them to your Dittofi Dashboard

How to choose a marketplace business model?

How to make money off your first listing

Understand the two sided marketplace transaction flow

How to Brand and Customize your Two Sided Marketplace?

Publish your marketplace to live on a custom URL

Customize your two sided marketplace website

How to change images in your marketplace

How to update the copywriting for your marketplace

Add new sections to different pages of your marketplace website

How to build a two sided marketplace for free?

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