Treat a marketplace as a channel for discovery and your own site as the place you own the relationship, the data, and the terms. Convert marketplace buyers into direct ones where the rules allow.

What each one is actually for

A marketplace supplies demand. People are already there looking for what you sell, and you are borrowing that traffic in exchange for a share of the sale.

Your own site supplies control. You set the terms, keep the customer record, present the brand as you want it, and pay only your processing costs.

Neither replaces the other, and businesses that treat this as an either-or decision usually pick badly.

The useful framing is that the marketplace is where you are found and your own site is where you build something that keeps working when the marketplace changes its mind.

Who owns the customer

The question that decides how much of your future is yours.

On most marketplaces, you do not get the customer's email address for marketing, you cannot contact them outside the platform's messaging, and the buyer often remembers the marketplace rather than your name.

You are renting access to somebody else's relationship.

That is a legitimate arrangement, and it becomes a problem when it is the only arrangement, because everything you have built sits inside a system whose rules, fees, and ranking you do not control and which can change without notice.

Businesses that have had a marketplace account suspended, for a reason they could not immediately establish, tend to describe it as the worst week they have had.

The costs are not comparable line by line

The third and fourth are why a per-order comparison misleads. Marketplace fees look large until you price what it costs to bring a stranger to your own site and persuade them.

The realistic split

For most small sellers, the marketplace does the finding and the site does the keeping.

New customers arrive through the marketplace, where they were already looking and where trust is supplied by the platform rather than by you.

Repeat customers, and anybody who came to you by referral, reputation, or search for your name, buy direct.

That split is stable, and it means the fee is being paid for what it is genuinely worth: introductions, rather than the whole lifetime of the relationship.

The work is making the second half actually happen rather than assuming it will.

Converting marketplace buyers, within the rules

Every marketplace prohibits diverting buyers off-platform, and the prohibitions are taken seriously.

What is generally acceptable is that the goods you send carry your identity: a branded packing slip, a card in the box, packaging that says who you are, and a leaflet about your range.

The customer who wants to find you next time then can.

What is not acceptable, and risks an account, is messaging buyers to redirect them, undercutting the marketplace price on your own site, or including anything that reads as instructing them to buy elsewhere.

Read the rules for the platform you are on rather than assuming, since they differ and they change.

A worked example

A maker sold entirely through one marketplace for three years, at a comfortable volume.

The platform changed how listings were ranked and their orders fell by roughly half in a month, for reasons nobody could explain and which no amount of adjustment recovered.

They had no customer list, because the platform held the relationship, and no site worth sending anybody to.

Rebuilding took about eighteen months: a proper site, a card in every marketplace parcel, and an email list started from scratch.

Three years later the split is roughly sixty percent direct and forty through the marketplace, with the direct half considerably more profitable.

Their assessment was that the marketplace had been a good business and a bad foundation, and that both things had been true the whole time.

Keep the prices aligned

A practical rule that avoids several problems at once.

Most marketplaces have terms about not offering the same item cheaper elsewhere, and some enforce it.

Beyond the rules, a customer who finds your item cheaper on your own site after buying on the marketplace feels they were overcharged, which damages the relationship you were trying to build.

Price the same, and compete on what you can legitimately offer direct: a wider range, better information, a relationship, and things that never appear on the marketplace at all.

Exclusive products on your own site are the cleanest version of this, since there is nothing to compare.

Stock across two channels

The operational problem that arrives immediately and is underestimated.

Selling the same physical stock in two places means overselling is possible, and overselling on a marketplace has consequences beyond the customer: cancellation rates affect your standing, and a poor standing affects your visibility.

Either connect the two so stock decrements in both, which most platforms support through an integration, or hold a deliberate buffer for each channel and accept the inefficiency.

The buffer approach is fine at low volume and stops working as soon as anything sells quickly.

Whichever you choose, decide it before listing rather than after the first oversell.

The counter-case

Marketplace-only is a defensible position for some businesses.

Where the product is genuinely commodity, where buyers search by item rather than by seller, and where nobody would ever seek you out by name, a direct site may attract almost nobody and the effort is better spent on the listings.

Equally, site-only makes sense where you have an existing audience, a distinctive product, or a trade customer base that would never look on a marketplace.

The position that is hard to defend is marketplace-only by default, without having tested whether anyone would come direct, which is the situation most sellers are in and have not examined.

Running both

  1. Decide what each channel is for and write it down.
  2. Put your identity in every parcel you send.
  3. Read the platform rules on off-platform contact.
  4. Keep prices aligned across channels.
  5. Connect stock, or hold deliberate buffers.
  6. Start an email list from direct customers.
  7. Track the split and watch which way it moves.

Step six is the one that matters in five years, and it is the easiest to postpone.

Depending on a platform you do not own is covered in a Facebook page is not enough.

Frequently asked questions

Should I sell on a marketplace or my own site?

Both, usually. A marketplace supplies demand you could not reach; your own site supplies control over terms, data, and the relationship. Treating it as either-or leads to a bad choice.

Who owns the customer on a marketplace?

The platform, in practice. You usually cannot contact buyers for marketing outside its messaging, and the buyer often remembers the marketplace rather than your name.

Are marketplace fees expensive?

They look large per order until you price what it costs to bring a stranger to your own site and persuade them. The fee buys introductions rather than the whole relationship.

Can I move marketplace buyers to my own site?

Within the rules. Branded packaging, a packing slip, and a card in the box are generally fine. Messaging buyers to redirect them risks your account, and rules differ by platform.

Should prices match across channels?

Yes. Many marketplaces require it, and a customer who later finds the item cheaper direct feels overcharged. Compete on range and relationship instead.

How do I avoid overselling?

Connect stock between channels so it decrements in both, or hold a deliberate buffer for each. Buffers work at low volume and fail as soon as something sells quickly.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Selling on a marketplace only?

Put your identity in every parcel and start an email list. In five years that is the difference.

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