Online auction site CQout Ltd said it hosted over half a million items for sale this month on www.CQout.com for the first time, and boasted in a press release that the figure makes it the UK's second largest Internet auction site.

CQout was set up by three London Business School graduates in late 1999 and has users in over 50 countries. CQout co-founder and Managing Director Siamak Bashi said, "It took the best part of seven years to reach the quarter million mark, which we did in December 2006, but it's only taken eight months to double that figure to over half a million items live at any one time. At the moment we are up to 600,000 auctions."

CQout said it has a rigorous validation policy to ensure users are genuine and offers customer service. The auction site charges every new user a one-off registration fee of £2.00. It does not charge listing fees for standard listings, but does have fees for optional features. The site offers sellers tools including an Excel based up-loader that can import listings from a range of formats, automatic re-listing of unsold items, and search statistics.

http://www.cqout.com