It seems like selling your startup Web 2.0 businesses on auction sites such as eBay, is an increasing trend. This comes after another MySpace-type clone, Shout Central, is now available on eBay. The starting bid is only $100 and it seems incredibly cheap, considering the site has in excess of 1000 registered visitors. The interface also looks good and in our opinion, this should be a good buy if you pay less than $2500.

There has been 12 bids to date and the current highest bid is at $2000, so it looks like the “good-buy” at less than $2500 will not happen! So it is not bad going for an auction listing that has only been online for a day or two.

I would however like to question whether this method of selling your business is really successfull ie. do you get a better selling price through eBay compared to selling through more conventional ways? Obviously an auction place, brings a lot of buyers together, which is obviously to your benefit (and it makes finding buyers a lot easier), and it is online as well, which means that the sale is open to a global market and not just limited to the seller’s area. Although this all makes sense in theory, I’m still not convinced though…

Maybe I should stick Cool Crowd up there and see what happens? But for now anyway, check out the progress of the ShoutCentral sale here - it ends on 12 January.