Once you know you have an incredible product, getting it into the marketplace is the next challenge. Nowadays, you will want to look beyond the classical retail store and consider selling your product online, where more and more buyers are heading.

Your options for selling your product online include: either building your online store, approaching one of the big online stores, or doing both.

Online Shopping Growth

More people are going online to make their purchases, a trend that increased tremendously with the lockdowns. As a result, global eCommerce sales have increased from $3.4 trillion in 2019 to an expected $6.4 trillion in 2024. Furthermore, by 2023, 22% of all retail will consist of online shopping.

Interestingly, five retailers represent more than 50% of sales in the U.S. Amazon accounted for 39% of all sales in 2020, with Walmart and eBay following respectively with 5.8% and 4.9%. Sales at Apple accounted for 3.5%, and Home Depot for 2.1%. Moreover, approximately 1.3 million companies represented the other 44.7% of U.S. sales.

Considerations for Choosing a Store for Your Product

Some online stores cater to specific niches, but retailers like Amazon and Walmart carry a greater range of products. Therefore, you must consider which store is most suitable for your product.

Niche products may include handmade items, bespoke artwork, tech products, or video games. On the other hand, commoditized products include food, clothing, electronics, or toys.

The benefits of selling online include a growing market of shoppers and exposure of your products to a broader marketplace. However, it would help to consider factors such as the commissions and transaction fees charged by the various platforms before deciding.

Positives and Negatives of Starting Your Own Online Store

It is a rewarding venture to start your online business and to know that the profits are all yours. However, launching a new product on an online store takes quite a bit of marketing to build your brand, requiring time and money.

If you choose this option, several eCommerce platforms make it easy to create an online store, including Shopify.

Partnering With the Biggest Online Stores

Selling your product through an established online store makes it far easier and faster to recoup your investment.

Here is how to get the biggest online stores to sell your product:

Amazon

Thanks to its continued growth, Amazon has become a global eCommerce retailer carrying a vast range of products. As a result, it allows sellers to reach a broad audience globally, and reports say that it sells more than 400 products a minute to its active community of buyers.

Some advantages of selling on Amazon include their vetting policies for fake products, plenty of online deals, and faster delivery to Amazon Prime customers in some areas.

Your fees on Amazon will depend on several variables, including the plan, product category, and fulfillment strategy. The cheapest plan starts from $39.99 monthly for a Professional seller plan, and you can expect to have additional selling fees.

Amazon adds thousands of products daily and has the most prominent “shopfront” for your products.

eBay

eBay has been around for almost thirty years. The original online auction marketplace now has a wide range of goods and is the longest-running online store for selling products. Statistics from eBay indicate that it has close to 1.5 billion listings in some interesting product categories, 159 million active global users, and 19 million sellers. Like Amazon, eBay’s massive audience makes it an excellent online store for your products.

Its massive audience ensures that eBay remains one of the best online stores for selling your products. But, first, do your homework about the site’s selling fees before committing. There is a non-refundable listing fee for every product, and expect to also pay an insertion fee for listing an item in more than one category. eBay also levies a final value fee between 10%–12% of the total sale, including its shipping and handling charges.

Etsy

Etsy is the ideal online store for niche, vintage, and handcrafted offerings. Since 2015, Etsy has also included other manufactured goods on some accounts. Be prepared to pay 5% for each sale, plus shipping and gift wrapping and a flat fee of $0.20 per item listed. Once on Etsy, you have four months to sell your product, after which you renew it, or it becomes inactive. Etsy has a perfect reputation since 60% of its sales are from over 60 million repeat buyers.

Etsy is an excellent marketplace for new products because it gives you access to an active buyer network, a pop-up storefront, and various marketing tools.

Handshake

If you want to connect with retailers so that you can sell in bulk or wholesale, the Handshake is the ideal wholesale marketplace for a vast range of products. Here your products have exposure to many physical and online stores handpicked by Handshake’s team.

Integrate Wholesale with Shopify to make it easier to manage inventory, track sales, and fulfill orders from one dashboard.

Bottom Line

The above are just some of the most well-known online merchants. However, people who want to reach more international buyers also look to AilExpress, Rakuten, Taobao, and Mercado Libre. Consider which can best help get your business off the ground since these have vast numbers of audiences and buyers.

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