The Top Multi-Channel Marketplaces to Sell Worldwide
Selling through an online platform such as Amazon gives you the most level of control on your store's online presence, positioning your products, marketing as well as other facets of running an enterprise.
What can you do to expand your reach internationally and reach out to new customers with no other means to locate your goods? That's how selling your products through multiple platforms can grow an ecommerce business -it gives an opportunity for you to connect with customers in more places who would most likely not find your online shop.
There are numerous leading online marketplaces with the potential to be globally renowned, and depending on your business take a look at each one before you decide which ones can best advance your goals for growth but without jeopardizing your independence.
Which is the best marketplace
The best online marketplaces for multi-channel sales are those that everyone is familiar with, such as Amazon and eBay. However, there are many others which have a comparable presence across the globe, and even larger at times. This includes Alibaba, Walmart Marketplace, Etsy, Rakuten, and Newegg.
This article will take a closer look at all of them to give you a complete picture of what each marketplace has to offer.
What regions of the globe use each of the online marketplaces? What is the number of people who visit these platforms, and how loyal are these people?
If you want to reach new markets by selling your goods and believe online marketplaces offer the ideal way for doing this, think about a few key elements:
- The way each marketplace supports sellers, safeguards the seller's autonomy and boosts revenues without a hassle
- Pricing: how much you'll need to shell out for each marketplace online
- Audience: what sorts of customers each marketplace appeals to most
- Reach: What volume of potential clients from particular geographical areas that are able to access a market
Let's examine each of these top seven multi-channel markets.
1. Amazon
Amazon has evolved a lot since its beginnings as an online bookseller. It's now about the closest you could become an all-in-one retailer. However, the majority of merchandise sold through Amazon comes from other market sellers, which includes online retailers who wish to expand their reach to different audiences.
Features
Amazon has been operating this for a while, and they've come up with a way to make an online store function, to the point that e-commerce businesses want to be able to use many of the same strategies. Thanks to the numerous extensions available to your advantage, you can do most of what Amazon can do on your own online store.
Here are the best features of Amazon Marketplace:
- Global accessibility: create an account from just about any country that is on Earth
- Telephone support is available in all countries, chat and email in the rest
- You can set your own price
- An online platform that lets you create your own offers and advertise them
- Simple review collection using an approach that people are comfortable with
- It is possible to design your product and store it around key words to appear on search engines.
- Performance metric tracking including order defect rate and rates of fulfillment cancellation
- Fulfillment through Amazon (FBA) is a program that lets you access the Prime Badge and offers better delivery options
- Layouts for product pages that are pre-set to take out the task of figuring out the layout
Fulfillment through Amazon is basically the process of shipping your products to Amazon as well as they store your products in Amazon's warehouses. The service is charged a fee, but then you're able to provide free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members, and Amazon handles printing labels, packaging and all the other tasks associated with shipping that you'd think of.
The shoppers are able to narrow their search so that they only see products sold by sellers who have the Prime Badge which gives the impression of high-end and the exclusivity.
Pricing
Amazon is one of the largest online marketplaces. They have an array of costs, not only one.
First, you must choose between your Individual Plan and the Professional Plan. In the Individual Plan, you pay 99 cents per sale you make. This approach is better for businesses with lower numbers of online sales. Professional Plan: The Professional Plan costs $39.99 per month, and gives you the ability to sell unlimited quantities.
There's also an additional fee for referrals, which is similar to commissions that every online marketplace charges. It is a percent of your transaction total that includes shipping costs. Prices vary according to the product type. They typically range from 8-15 percentage, though they may go from 45% to as high as and as low as 3 percent. After that, there's an additional fee for fulfillment that is based on the size and weight of the item being delivered.
And, for use of Amazon's warehouses, the storage fees are determined by the size of your products. The storage fees triple from October through December during the holiday period.
Is that all? Actually, there may be additional charges for certain situations.
Why would someone want to be paying all of these costs just to sell on Amazon?
Because there are some inherent advantages, and an enormous market. However, it is also possible to have an eCommerce website, you do not be required to spend a lot of these costs. You will have control your inventory as well as the shipping.
Audience
Amazon is biggest in the United States, having achieved nearly total market saturation. 15 million Americans have Prime Memberships more than 70% of all adults.
There are 197 million monthly active users on their application, and Amazon accounts for 56.7 percent of online sales of retail in the U.S. So if your audience is located in America, US, Amazon can reach the people they want to reach.
Including those in the U.S., they have around 310 million active app users across the globe. So you can reach the mobile audience, too.
Amazon's customers are from all walks of life throughout North America, and in numerous other countries. 66% of online shoppers often begin their searching with Amazon.
Reach
Following the acquisition of Souq in 2017 and establishing an Middle Eastern ecommerce marketplace, Amazon became the largest online retailer in the world. They are concentrated in North America, Europe, Asia and in Asia and the Middle East.
Amazon has shipped to over 130 countries in over 130 countries, and 2.7 billion customers have made purchases on Amazon. The company has 2.72 billion unique monthly users.
In terms of dimensions, you will be able to reach the largest global audience through Amazon. But with huge size is great competition. Amazon also boasts the highest amount of sellers on the internet. So it's not necessarily simple to get your product seen.
2. eBay
eBay started out as a site to market used goods by bidding wars. Although they continue to offer this service, just 12% of the items sold on their site are open for bidding and 80percent of the items offered on eBay are new.
Thus, it's evolved into an online marketplace that has the most loyal consumers than Amazon. A greater number of shoppers might begin their online shopping experience with Amazon However, many end up on eBay.
Features
eBay is an authentic marketplace. They do not offer merchandise of their own therefore your competition is from other sellers and not from the marketplace itself. Additional features offered by eBay include:
- Concierge services for larger ecommerce brands
- Seller Hub is the platform from which you run your business's e-commerce on eBay It is where you are able to make listings available and manage orders, conduct promotions and sales, etc.
- Customization of listings -- more than Amazon
- The ability to upload videos related to your products
- Coupons, discounts, and promotion capabilities, including coupons
- The option to do volume-based pricing discounts
- A subscriber option -- you can create marketing newsletters to customers, give subscriber discounts and increase customer loyalty than with Amazon
- It is possible to read product reviews
- Shipping label printing
- You can promote your products on Google Ads and other online shopping sites, as well in conjunction through eBay Ads
- Advanced analytics
- Pay schedules for weekly or daily pay
Pricing
Pricing on eBay is less complicated than Amazon's, but the fees are similar in some ways.
In the beginning, you'll have to pay the insertion fee that's 35 cents for each listing However, the initial 250 listings are for free. If you set up your own eBay store, you get additional listings for free.
Then, you get paid a portion of the retail price. This is usually 10% for the majority of product categories, though it can range from 2 to 12%. That includes costs for processing. If you are looking to reduce the cost of insertion then you should consider the monthly service. If you are a seller with a higher volume that are looking to increase their sales, this is the best alternative. There are three options available, each of which come with the added benefits that selling through the platform. And each of which costs less if you are paying annually, as opposed to the monthly. Costs per month are:
- Basic: $24.95 per month
- Premium: $74.95 per month
- Anchor: $349.95 per month
Audience
eBay attracts hobbyists and what some call "enthusiast buyers" and also to those who are looking to get a great deal. The site is particularly successful with electronic items, which is their top selling item at 16.4 percent of the products sold on the online platform.
eBay is also a major seller of accessories and clothing (16 percent) and automobiles (11 percent) in addition to Beauty and health (9%), and outdoors and sports equipment. These five categories account for around 60% of the items that is sold on eBay. But, that still leaves a lot of room for additional products.
According to Edesk the 61% of eBay's audience is between 35-64 years old The majority of them are men in contrast to Amazon's close 50/50 split. So your audience includes the Baby Boomers who are at the tail end Gen-Xers, as well as Gen-Xers and Millennials. eBay isn't getting as much customers from Generation Z.
Reach
When researching 'reach,' it's important to distinguish between buyers and site visitors. Not every site reporting on the reach of the most established marketplaces for multi-channel selling does a good job of explaining this. That's why you'll see wildly various numbers on different websites.
Additionally, the online sales numbers have drastically changed after 2020, so all data that was available prior to 2020 has been deemed outdated.
eBay currently gets about 885 million unique monthly visitors. Each year, around 135 million customers actually buy items on eBay.
eBay is third-most downloaded online shopping app across the US, behind Walmart and Amazon with 60% of the buyers on eBay are from the UK as well as the U.S., with Germany accounting for 15 percent. That means that about 34% of eBay's audience is from these three countries.
In terms of sellers the situation is quite different picture. The majority of eBay sellers are located in their native U.S., and 25% are in the UK. 17% are from China as well as 16% of Germany, and 3% from Australia. So you can sell through eBay from almost anywhere, as long as you keep an eye on where most of the buyers reside.
3. Alibaba
Most marketers in western countries aren't familiar with this e-commerce company that is based in China which was founded by Jack Ma. But it owns more than 60 percent percent Chinese ecommerce market, which means that any ecommerce company that is looking to expand into China as well as the nearby Asian markets must think about joining Alibaba or one of its subsidiary platforms such as AliExpress, Taobao, Lazada and Tokopedia. Each of these serves different nations in the region.
Features
The presentation of the capabilities of Alibaba isn't easy because it offers a variety of platforms within its broad umbrella, and each has its own unique aspects. To simplify things this article will focus on Alibaba as well as AliExpress. If you're trying to broaden your reach into particular Asian countries, you'll want to look into their other platforms, which we'll discuss shortly.
Alibaba is among the most popular B2B E-commerce marketplaces. You can purchase and sell wholesale goods from and to other businesses. Alibaba lets you: Alibaba you can:
- You own your customers' data, unlike on Amazon
- Make use of communication tools in order to connect with your buyers directly
- Get access to CRM tools and analysis
- Translate in more than 18 languages
- Create customisations with an API integration
- International freight logistics coordination
- Support for onboarding is available to new sellers.
- Access product inspection and monitoring
Alibaba uses an RFQ (Request for Quote) method to enable customers to submit orders since businesses make use of Alibaba to purchase bulk quantities from both suppliers and manufacturers. Thus, prices do not have a fixed price. The amount depends on the quantity of shipping and other variables.
Sellers are also able to earn three ratings, including Verified, Gold, along with Trade Assurance, which assure buyers they are getting products from reputable sellers.
AliExpress
AliExpress is one of the B2C E-commerce sites that Alibaba has in its worldwide marketplace. As with Amazon sellers, AliExpress allows sellers to sell specific products and then ship them directly to consumers. It is also possible to make use of AliExpress to dropship. Like Alibaba AliExpress, it is able to be translated into 18 languages.
Some more features:
- Promotion to boost exposure of products
- Rectify and convert 51 various currencies
- 38 local payment channels will allow secure transactions
- Storefronts that can be customized online
- AliExpress University, an onboarding service to help the new sellers.
- Numerous shipping options
- Buyer protection policy for defective, damaged, or undelivered items
Pricing
Alibaba offers a greater volume than B2C online marketplaces, which means its prices are higher also. There are no sales commissions paid by the website -just a monthly fee, the lowest of which is the Gold Supplier Basic with a price of $1899 per year.
AliExpress takes the approach closer than other B2C ecommerce platforms. The company does not charge a fee per year, but instead charges 5-8% commissions for each transaction.
Audience
If you're looking to sell on the internet in bulk to businesses of other kinds, Alibaba is one of the top online marketplaces for your needs. Over 10 million customers from more than 200 countries have purchased wholesale products via Alibaba. It is possible to deal directly with manufacturers, and there are also traders, exporters, and agents. firms, as well as wholesalers.
The buyers may be other wholesalers and manufacturers using your products to make various other products. They could also be sourcing agents, or B2C retailers. You can use Alibaba to build private label brands.
AliExpress
AliExpress caters to the public at large as does Amazon, sells just about anything from clothes appliances to tools from electronics to cosmetics.
In countries that AliExpress as well as the other Alibaba B2C ecommerce platforms operate Your target customers include just about everyone who shops online. There are buyers who could be re-sellers who are setting dropping-shipping business.
AliExpress sellers are required to be in China, Russia, Spain, Italy, France, or Turkey.
Reach
Alibaba reaches dozens of countries, and more than a billion users.
AliExpress along with the other B2C platforms connect millions of customers from more than 220 nations. They're the most popular in Asian countries. In China, the platform is Taobao. Lazada operates that operates in Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Tokopedia serves as the online platform for Indonesia.
4. Walmart Marketplace
Walmart started out as a brick and mortar department store, not an ecommerce marketplace. But around 2010, they started selling on the internet, and because they have so much capital from their stores, Walmart has been able to quickly ramp up its online selling platform so that it is able to compete effectively with the most prominent brands like Amazon.
But, Walmart Marketplace has fewer sellers and for now, that means lower competition in order to get your products noticed. So you are likely to get better publicity for your items through Walmart Marketplace than Amazon.
Features
While Walmart's ecommerce platform has many similarities to Amazon, the differences are significant. Here are the key features:
- A stricter qualification process for sellers. Not just anyone who wants to open the store
- Ability to offer the free shipping service for two days
- Advanced listing and analytics tools
- Secure checkout
- Market report
- Customer review options
- Walmart advertisements that give more visibility for the product
- An existing supply chain network is established
- Walmart Fulfillment Services, which can help you store, wrap and deliver your items
Walmart Fulfillment Services operates similar to Fulfillment through Amazon. Send your items into Walmart's stores. When orders are received, they package and ship your products for you.
The stricter process for obtaining qualifications is a good reason to think about Walmart. The company only allows sellers who are able to demonstrate previous ecommerce success. They ensure that their sellers are trustworthy and sell quality products.
Pricing
In contrast to Amazon, Walmart charges no costs for the setup, listings or subscriptions. There is a charge per transaction, and this is similar to other online stores and is different by product. It ranges from 6 to%, but the great majority or product fees can be 8% or 15 percent.
Audience
Walmart benefits from having an abundance of shoppers in their stores as well as the ability to offer their marketplace online as an alternative to all of them. Walmart sells just about everything they can in their stores, but their ecommerce counterpart does even more. The target market is anybody who shops online.
Reach
Walmart Marketplace gets about 410 million monthly unique visitors according an estimate It also attracts customers from Africa, Canada, Central America, Mexico, India, China, and Chile and parts of the U.S. and parts of Europe.
The Walmart loyalty program has more than 10 million members. So these are people who get a special incentive to shop online at Walmart on the internet.
5. Etsy
Etsy began as a platform that allowed people to market original and unique items that were hand-crafted and not products made by mass production. And for the most part the company continues to fulfill that goal to this day. For ecommerce sellers, Etsy is the place for unique items as well as special products.
If you are selling a collection of goods and you want to draw people to your online store on Etsy you can use it to sell unique items, and then follow up with a follow-up to bring them to your primary store founded on .
Features
Etsy offers some functions similar to other platforms, including safe transactions, applications for email, some telephone assistance, as well as the capability to customize the appearance of your Etsy shop. Additionally, Etsy includes:
- Automatic transfers directly into your account
- Postage discounts are available.
- A Etsy advertisements platform that you can pay to boost the visibility of your ads.
- Direct communication with buyers through the Seller App
- Seller protections
- An affiliate program you can utilize to motivate other individuals to market your products
- A seller newsletter and handbook
- A connection to a group of sellers
Etsy is known for its image of being more difficult to rank in search for specific items and this motivates some to buy Etsy advertisements. It is essential to be careful when creating product pages, including your language, and the keywords used to describe your items.
Pricing
Etsy offers a simple pricing system. The company charges 20 cents per listing, and that listings are active for four months. For each sale, you pay a 9.5% transaction and processing fee, which includes everything.
Additionally, Etsy runs ads for your items all over the internet, mostly using displays that feature images of your items. You don't have control over this, and there is no cost for you unless your ad produces a sale. In the event that ads result in a sale produce a sale there will be an additional charge per sale.
Audience
Etsy's customers are distinct from the other top marketplaces on the internet. Etsy shoppers are looking for products that they cannot find other than Etsy. They want stuff no one would ever own. It's a form of treasure hunter.
This is the place to sell unique items that can be a source of fame as an innovator, artist, or a brilliant creator of products who invests an effort and dedication into each product.
The vast majority of shoppers on Etsy are females, typically between ages 18 and 40.
The top categories of their products are home and living, jewelry crafting supplies, as well as tools. They have a wide selection of merchandise for weddings and bridal parties.
Reach
Etsy has a narrower reach as compared to other marketplaces. While they do reach over 200 countries and have an active user base of 86 million approximately half of their online sales go directly to U.S., and almost every other sale goes to the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, and France.
Etsy also has a base of loyal shoppers, with 81% of all purchases made by repeat buyers. If the audience on Etsy is aligned with your offerings and services, you'll be able to win the trust of the trust of customers faster through this online marketplace in comparison to other less generic options on this list.
6. Rakuten
If you're interested in emphasizing affiliate selling, Rakuten is the top market on the internet for this.
Not sure about affiliate selling? Instead of spending money on ads or tripping over online marketing for your products rather, you partner with other businesses and individuals, and they market and sell your products to their audiences instead. As a result, you offer them a percentage of the profit. It's an opportunity to reach greater audiences as you might otherwise. Affiliate marketers with the best reputations have a strong influence over thousands, or even millions, of followers.
Features
Rakuten helps you set up affiliate deals. A few of the key benefits of the program are:
- The weekly pay of merchants
- A custom reporting system
- The most appropriate methods to monetize your online store
- Dynamic coupons, as well as related tools
- Great customer support seller account management and partnership teams.
- Ability to create automated workflows as well as automate
- Help in selecting influencers and affiliates who are best aligned with your products
- The system tracks Affiliates and influencers
Pricing
Similar to other top markets, Rakuten charges a listing fee, a per-month fee along with a fee according to product categories.
They charge 99 cents per listing and $39 per month. The commissions vary from 8 to 15 percent.
Audience
A little preferred by males, however typically very wide young people between 25 and 34 years old make up Rakuten's most prolific age group. In general, however, Rakuten's audience is harder to specify since it depends upon which affiliates and influencers you end up working with.
The software is intended to help you connect with affiliates who have audiences that are compatible to your product. So in theory, your audience will be the one that you'd want to be the largest.
Reach
Rakuten businesses are based in 30 countries, across the two Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. And their shoppers and affiliates are found in more than the globe in 190 nations. This is therefore a global marketplace that uses the affiliate marketing model to form its basis.
7. Newegg
Newegg was initially a technology-focused ecommerce marketplace, and it is still the market leader in this sector. It has broadened its offerings to other sectors and has become one of the best online marketplaces that allow businesses to offer their merchandise.
Features
Newegg provides real benefits to its most popular sellersusers who subscribe to an annual membership. The features for this marketplace depend very much on which membership you select from their three membership options: professional, free or Enterprise.
As with Walmart, Newegg requires sellers to get approved before they can access their e-commerce marketplace, so this ensures a level of quality for their products. Some of their key features include:
- An educated and targeted audience
- It is possible to sell secondhand and refurbished items
- Ability to advertise the products they sell on their website such as Sponsored Videos Ads
- Affirmed support
- API integration
- Advanced product listing that could contain video or touchpoint images to help customers make good choices
- You have access to Newegg Studios -- they'll create videos and images to promote your product
- Unlimited product listings with the Enterprise membership
- Automated email post-purchase with the Enterprise membership
- Discounts when you make use of Newegg Fulfillment as well as using the Newegg Shipping Label service
- Reward for sellers who price competitively
- A Premium Seller Program that grants you access to the largest buyers
- Advertising on the Newegg social media accounts as well as promotional emails
Similar to Amazon as well as Walmart, Newegg has a shipping and fulfillment service as well, and if you've the inventory for it you can use it because it will cut your costs.
Pricing
The free version is available however the Professional version priced at $29.95 per month, and the Enterprise membership at $99.95 per month give you access to the best features.
Audience
Newegg's customers are mainly technologically-oriented and well-informed. There are many early adopters than other sites and generally, a wealthier audience. In contrast to Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba those who buy at Newegg typically have a salary at least $75k or higher. And their audience is about 72% male, and mainly between 18-44.
Other than a wealth of electronic and other accessories, Newegg also does well in the kitchen and home appliances, and is growing to include sporting goods.
The Newegg customers love looking at specifications for products, which is why this is not the platform to go light on the details. Make sure to add lots of detail on the product page Also, seriously think about adding videos. 32 percent of the customers are returning customers.
Reach
Newegg is home to more than four million users who have active accounts throughout Europe, South and North America, in the Middle East, and Asia Pacific.
So it's a smaller audience however one who spends more and is looking for certain kinds of items. Similar to Etsy, you can gain a larger and more committed fan base here than in the large marketplaces.
What are the benefits of selling on as a part of your strategy for the whole world?
Online marketplaces can be excellent ways to get into online sales. They're also an excellent way to meet your audience wherever they are and at the places where they're purchasing.
However, when it comes down to it, the best method to expand your online company and keep full control is to create your own store with . We'll look at a few reasons why this is true:
1. Marketplaces promote competitor products
Third-party marketplaces want all of their customers to achieve success Your business isn't their primary focus. Therefore, when buyers are scrolling through or searching for goods, they will not only find items of competitors alongside yours, but they could also be exposed to ads related to the items they're looking for.
Through a marketplace, it's much more convenient for consumers to select an alternative business to yours. However, with tools like , you can create an online store that allows shoppers to discover what they're seeking and then make purchases seamlessly, without distractions from other stores.
2. Marketplaces provide limited options for design and functionality
When you sell your products on marketplaces online, you have to adapt your product listings to meet their requirements for formatting, images, design as well as categorization and description length. This means you might not be able include all of the information you'd like.
If you're working from an established design template you might not be able to modify it to reflect your branding. The items you create will appear like the other ones.
With , however, you can create the exact sort of store and product listing you'd like. Include lots of images and videos, including dimensions charts and lists of ingredients to customize the look and feel to fit your company's image.
3. Marketplaces make up a portion of the sales
Third-party marketplaces take a cut of the sales made online in exchange for using their services. As you grow, this can add up more and more. The website doesn't charge costs for selling your products online.
4. Marketplaces limit your control
If you're selling your products on a third-party marketplace, you're subject to the rules and regulations of that marketplace. If they decide that your store is in violation of those rules then they're able to shut off your shop, often without notice. That means that you'll suddenly lose your revenue stream as well as the content you've created.
With Jetpack, you'll enjoy total control over and complete ownership of your website. It is also possible to make backups that will protect everything on your website including customer and sales details. If something goes wrong, you can quickly recover and get your business back on track.
5. Marketplaces complicate marketing
Although some marketplaces offer built-in marketing tools, these can become limiting when you expand. It is possible that you won't be able to integrate the tools that you're looking for in advertising, marketing via email and customer relationship management SEO for search engines, and much more. It may also be trickier to compile customer data and efficiently engage those clients.
6. Marketplaces can make it harder to adjust
As you grow your business, you'll likely need to make important adjustments to make room for more sales. For example, you might be required to change your delivery or marketing strategies, take various currencies, change your content to several languages, or incorporate it with fulfillment or inventory software for managing inventory or fulfillment.
Third-party marketplaces make it difficult to make such modifications. They may not integrate with the software you wish to use. They might not allow you to make the modifications you need to sell globally.
With , you can accept many different currencies, set up shipping in a variety of ways, integrate with lots of software, and design the store in whatever way you'd like to as your business grows. Additionally, you can pick any hosting service that is required for the tools, resources tools, and support needed to accommodate an increase in customers.
In the end, it, the best option to create and expand an online store that's successful. You benefit from a system that's easy to operate (no code required! ), ultimate flexibility, excellent support, and total control.