About Us

Main Street Fair® --The Online Clasifieds and Auctions Website that Benefits Everyone

Main Street Fair® is a classified ads and online auction site that offers some of the lowest listing and purchasing fees, while giving 10% of its revenue from listing fees to the school of your choice within the United States. In fact, items under $200 and books are FREE to listing in the classifieds. We have categories for just about everything that's legal. Buying and selling is simple, fast and fun. You'll have full charge of your own personal account including such benefits as messages, list of invited buyers, expired listings, favorites and feedback. And while schools make money from you using the site, it won't cost you a dime extra.

We want everyone to benefit--buyers, sellers and students. Our motto is: "You buy. You sell. We give."

Classified Ads vs. Auction

We offer four ways to list: Classified Ad, Bidding Auction, Buy Now Auction and Dutch Auction. If you have never participated in an online auction before, please read the Listing Guideline. When listing an item for Bidding Auction, always include a reserve price-the least amount you are willing to accept.

• Classifieds Ads - Individuals and businesses may list items within Main Street Fair's classified ads in which the buying transaction is negotiated between buyer and seller. Items selling for $200 or less and books are free to list as classified ads.

• Online Auctions -- where the seller offers one or more items for sale for a specified time period. Main Street Fair's online auctions always include a reserve price, which is the least amount the seller is willing to accept.

• Buy Now Online Auctions -- where the seller offers one or more items for sale at a fixed price and the buyer may purchase online using any of Main Street Fair's payment processing programs.

• Dutch Auctions -- where the seller offers in the same auction, two or more items that are identical. Unlike a standard online auction, a Dutch Auction may have more than one winning bidder. To win against another bidder, a bid must simply have a higher total bid price per item than the other bids, regardless of the number of items bid on.

Registration is free for everyone.

Payment Methods

• Google Checkout -- Allows buyers to pay for listing fees and purchasing items easily and track all orders and shipping in one place. It has a fraud protection policy to cover buyers against unauthorized purchases made through Google Checkout. Google Checkout does not share purchase history or full credit card numbers with sellers. The payment method controls commercial spam by keeping email addresses confidential and offers a function for easy-to-turn-off unwanted emails from stores
• Google Merchant -- Allows sellers to pay for listing fees and buyers to pay for items electronically, using this leading fraud protection program.

• PayPal – Allows sellers to pay for listing fees and buyers to pay items electronically. PayPal is a leading fraud protection payment method widely used for online auctions and classified ads payments.   

• Credit Cards - Main Street Fair accepts most major credit cards including American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Discover for listing fees.

Security

Main Street Fair is secured via a COMODO SSL Certificate. COMODO secures and authenticates the online transactions and communications.

Banner Ads Program

Main Street Fair also provides promotional opportunity for companies and schools via its banner ads program. The ads have linking capabilities. This in itself is designed to increase traffic to company's or school’s websites.  Additionally, advertisers will have access to a detailed statistical report to monitor banner and text ads using real-time information. This comprehensive report includes the number of impressions, clicks and click through rate (CTR) to keep ads performing at their maximum potential.

Storefront Program

Main Street Fair offers people and businesses a chance to operate their own storefronts, with a variety of templates to choose from, a unique online address and logo upload capabilities. The Storefront offers individuals, schools and business to have their own online auction and/or online classified ads site.

Feedback Ratings System

The feedback rating system allows the winning bidder and seller to rate each other on how well the seller represented and delivered his/her product, and the timeliness of the buyer's payment. At the auction's conclusion, the winning bidder and seller may log in to their My Account page and provide feedback on the transaction by rating it. Points are automatically totaled and a star icon will appear next to the seller's username indicating their status as a user of the site. A different color star will appear each time the seller passes to a different feedback rating level as indicated by the following chart: In addition to leaving a feedback rating, the winning bidder and seller may also leave a comment regarding the transaction. All comments are viewable by all site users. The feedback rating is intended to help future buyers and sellers feel confident in conducting business with a particular user.

Kudos Ads

Main Street Fair offers Kudos Ads so you can let someone know how proud you are of them and let the online work know about it. Check it out on our home page.

Better Business Bureau

Main Street Fair is a member of the Better Business Bureau.

About Our Founder

Main Street Fair® is the brainchild of Lisa Porter, a single mother of an 11-year old, who became frustrated by dismal education funding, and the financial strains put upon parents to continually make school donations.