Marketplace or your own shop? Both, but with a plan

01What the marketplace really costs

Getting started feels seductively easy: create an account, list products, the demand is already there. The bill arrives elsewhere. Sales fees often sit between 8 and 15 percent depending on the category, plus fulfilment programmes and, increasingly, advertising, because good placements have become rare without paid ads.

• Price pressure: your offer sits next to twenty comparable ones, and the decision is often made on price.
• No customer access: buyers are customers of the platform, and you may not contact them for marketing of your own.
• Suspension risk: an account can be restricted over a suspicion or a complaint, and with it your revenue, overnight.
• Rule changes: fees and requirements change constantly, and negotiating is not an option.

Since the P2B Regulation, platforms must justify suspensions and observe notice periods. That helps in a dispute, but it does not change the core problem: on a marketplace you are a guest, not the owner of the house. Plan so that a bad day for the platform does not become your worst quarter.

02What your own shop really costs

The honest counter-calculation: a shop of your own costs setup, maintenance and above all visibility. Nobody walks past by accident. Traffic has to be earned, through search engines, content, ads or a customer list, and that takes months, not weeks.

In numbers: a solid shop starts at a few thousand euros depending on ambition, plus hosting, maintenance and ongoing marketing. Treating the shop as a one-off project underestimates it. It is a channel that wants to be worked. Treat it like the marketplace, as a running cost, and the comparison becomes fair.

In return, everything that grows there is yours: the customer relationship, the data, the full margin after payment fees and the freedom to present products the way they need.

03Why the answer is usually both

The strongest setup I see with merchants: the marketplace does what it does best, bringing in new customers with concrete intent to buy. Your own shop handles the rest: margin, regulars, brand building. Every marketplace customer who orders directly from you the second time improves your numbers for good. Exactly this migration from the platform into your own channel is the actual plan.

What matters is the order of your attention: the marketplace brings revenue today, the shop builds the business of tomorrow. Perfecting both at once rarely works, doing it one after the other with a clear goal almost always does.

04The decision guide

• You start from zero and need first sales fast: marketplace first, the buyers are already there.
• Your products are interchangeable and price decides: careful, pure marketplace selling quickly becomes a margin trap here.
• You have a brand or products that need explaining: your own shop as the base, the marketplace as a supplement.
• More than half your revenue hangs on a single account: reduce that dependency before a suspension does it for you.
• Your business lives on repeat buyers: without a shop of your own with accounts and a newsletter, you give exactly these customers away.

Whatever the order: secure your domain and brand presence early. A marketplace account is rented, your brand is yours.