Marketplaces are the Most Valuable Shops and it’s Not Close
Alright so you just read the title and you’re probably questioning if I’m and idiot or if I know something you don’t. Fair question but the answer is neither, although to be fair I probably can’t comment on the first. You know the value of marketplaces over traditional stores you just don’t know it. I’ll go into my reasons for this but marketplaces are the present and the future for the time being.
Marketplaces are relatively new to the scene in the way that we know them but not new as a concept, they have been with us since the dawn of time but have simply gained traction with the invention of the internet. Online shops have been a thing for quite a while now and with Shopify just about everyone and their brother has an online e-commerce shop. These shops can reach thousands of customers but that requires a lot of marketing and a lot of work. Why not just use a marketplace? Online marketplaces have thousands of sellers and access to large marketing budgets to bring in millions of eyes to your shop. Additionally if you want more eyes just on you, you can market yourself on these marketplaces using any number of external or internal marketing sources. There are virtually no downsides to placing your products on a marketplace as there is no real upkeep and plenty of money to grow your brand up for grabs. Take Amazon for example, the obvious example of marketplace success, they take care of letting you sell on their site, they take care of shipping and fulfillment with FBA, and they take care of bringing literal billions of eyes onto their site. If you were just running your own shop do you think you could match that? I think not.
Yet another advantage to marketplaces is that they are not one or the other. You can run a successful e-commerce shop and market that brand on a marketplace. This provides much more exposure for your brand and is a great way to add eyes to your products and bring SEO to your site with minimal work. Next let us examine some the best ways to get your name out there on some marketplaces.
Amazon
Amazon provides you with a lot of benefits as compared with just your website but what it is truly best for is sheer volume of clients. According to digitalcommerce360 there are 200 million prime members worldwide, and that’s not even including customers who don’t have prime! It simply provides you with millions of opportunities each week to sell your product that simply wouldn’t exist no matter how much marketing you do.
The popularity of Amazon is indisputable. Amazon leads the ranking of the most popular shopping apps in the United States. 150.6 million mobile users accessed the Amazon app in September 2019 (Statista, 2019). It’s also interesting to note that Amazon is way ahead of its competition. The second-ranking shopping app, Walmart, had a monthly mobile app audience of only 76.45 million users.
This was stated on Oberlo.ca and shows the massive opportunity involved in selling on Amazon. It should be noted that the process to sign up is fairly arduous and generally takes quite a bit of time however, as you can imagine it is well worth it.
eBay
Rated by gross merchandise volume eBay is the fifth largest marketplace in the world in 2021 therefore, it has pretty similar values to Amazon. There are some important differences however.
eBay is largely focused on products that you just own somewhere in your house or you acquired from some store. This is super powerful as there is no upkeep needed, no brand standards to uphold, and no pressure to sell. You sell at your own pace and still have access to millions of buyers.
The biggest thing for me on eBay is that there is just zero stress from it. On Amazon your products are constantly going out the door and you are constantly trying to keep up with it and yet not overstock for when it is slow. Ebay simply does not have this issue and is more a sell at your own pace if you feel like it type marketplace.
Walmart
Walmart seems to some to be fairly new to the scene when it comes to being a marketplace as many just know them as the popular grocery chain that gives them low cost food. In 2009 Walmart launched their own marketplace and it has been soaring as of late as more and more sellers are added. The benefits to Walmart are that you get access to a growing site and thus you get the impression of a high quality and cutting edge brand. It should be noted it is harder to get approved to sell on Walmart, which is a good thing as when you are approved you are seen as being reputable and I hope that you actually are!
Ventrity
Ventri-what?? I know, I know but I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about my own company on here as it is the reason I love marketplaces. It is just started and is in the process of getting sellers, but it is a marketplace for you to sell or buy inventions, innovative products, and just plain the cutting edge of all we have to offer. No we don’t have the hundreds of millions of customers Amazon boasts but we have a mission to make your life better with all the coolest gadgets and tools there are. Sign up is next to instant and unlike other marketplaces there are no reoccurring fees as it is commission only, so if you have a product feel free to sign up to Ventrity. It would mean a lot to me!
I hope this shed some light on the growing industry of marketplaces and I hope you instantly run to all of these companies to help yourself make an absolute fortune with very minimal effort.
