If you’re seeking more opportunities to reach a bigger market to sell your products, selling on online marketplaces could be your best answer.
How to select the best online marketplace for your products?
The Internet has become an extremely competitive place, and stores are struggling to be found online. In recent years the popularity of multi-vendor eCommerce marketplaces has increased significantly. They offer the opportunity of high exposure and marketing opportunities that are impossible to achieve alone for small stores. By joining a big online marketplace, you immediately get access to its massive audience.
Here are 3 important things to consider when choosing an online marketplace:
- Type of items to be sold are the unique or available in many retailers
- Volume-what is the sales amount per month you are expecting
- How long the products will be listed- for a year or change regularly, for example, seasonal
We will review the top 3 online marketplaces that sell to Canadian consumers. We will use an example of selling a $20 item to estimate all marketplace fees to be paid from your products gross margin.
Selling on Etsy
Average Monthly Ranking
Alexa Global Rank: 181
United States (No Canadian site): 56
Let’s use a sample of single product quantity 1 that cost $20. You will pay to list and sell a single item on Etsy:
- Listing Fee (per each item): $0.20
- Payment Processing Fee (3% + 0.25 CAD): $0.85
- Transaction Fee (5%): $1.00
Total Cost : $2.05
Good for you if sell
Known as the handmade marketplace of the Internet. If you are selling something truly unique and handmade this is the place for you.
Not good for if you sell
Popular items available in most retailers
Read more about Fees for Selling on Etsy and Pattern.
Selling on Amazon
Average Monthly Ranking
Alexa Global Rank: 9(.com) 279(.ca)
Canada: 7
Let’s use a sample of 1 product (not media)that cost $20. You will pay to have it listed and sold on Amazon:
- Referral Fee (we will use 15% as it seems to be the most popular): $3
- Per-item selling Fee: $1.49
- Closing Fee (per media item such as books, DVD, software $1): 0
Total Cost: $4.49
Good for you if you sell
Products in the low-medium commission bracket: below the 15% mark, unless you have enough profit left after the high commission fee.
Not good for if you sell
Not unique products that are available everywhere. You don’t want to compete with Amazon if it offers the same products.
Selling on eBay
Average Monthly Ranking:
Alexa Global Rank: 39(.com) 1473(.ca)
Canada: 29
Let’s use a sample of 1 product that cost $20. You will pay to have it sold on eBay:
- Transaction Fee (10% of the total amount of the sale up to $750): $2
Total Fee: $2
Good for you if sell
Second hand, used items, open box and one of a kind items
Not good for if you sell
If you are planning to have regular inventory and regular store, this is not for you.
Expensive items are also not as widespread there because eBay is more for people hunting for bargains.
Read about eBay fees structure.
Selling On Multiple Online Marketplaces
If you consider selling on more than one marketplaces you need a solution that allows managing your product catalog, data feeds and orders from one dashboard. Otherwise, time and cost of manually managing product catalog and orders in multiple marketplaces become unbearable. Your ecommerce platform may offer built-in support for selling in multiple channels, or you may need to subscribe to a third-party application to do that.
One of the best platform to manage multiple channels from one dashboard is BigCommerce. With BigCommerce Channel Manager feature, you can manage product listings for your online store, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google Shopping and Pinterest.
Shopify also recently released new applications for selling on Amazon, Facebook, Pinterest or you may find additional third-party applications for selling on eBay or other niche marketplaces.
Conclusions
The most expensive from 3 most popular online marketplaces is Amazon, but it also has the highest exposure and conversion. It is also the most generic marketplace, which is applicable for most product categories. The most important thing is to answer the three fundamental questions about your product offering: what, volume and how often. Answering those questions will help guide which marketplace s the right fit for your product.
