Selling online is better and easier than ever today thanks to the sheer number of marketplace options available to you. Naturally, most sellers already know many of the large companies through which they can sell, including Amazon and eBay. Those sites are able to provide great opportunities for sellers of all sizes, and it helps to level the playing field between the large companies and the smaller businesses out there. However, these are not the only options . You will find quite a few other options depending on what you have to sell. Let’s look at some of the best options.
Etsy.com
For those who are creating and selling handmade items, this really is the best site out there today. It is highly popular and it has a large customer base. It also gets plenty of media attention, which helps to bring even more customers to it. One of the best things about this site is that it can expose you to people who have a real interest in handmade items.
Of course, it is important to remember that with Etsy, you can currently only sell handmade items or items involved in handcrafting. However, things are changing on the site, and it will be interesting to see just what else they will be allowing in the future, and to see how it affects the site’s base.
Rakuten.com
While you might not recognize the name, this company has been around for fifteen years now. In the beginning, it was primarily a Japanese site, but it has grown over the years and is starting to catch on all around the world. The customer base is growing, and when you sell on the site now, you are able to reach customers that you might not have been able to find otherwise.
One of the other nice things about the site is that you aren’t competing with them as a seller, as you are on Amazon. When you are selling on Amazon, they could offer products for less than you can sell them, for example. With Rakuten though, they are only hosting the space for the merchants and they are not selling anything of their own. The only people you are competing against are the other sellers. As such, it generally means the sellers are able to ask for higher prices and get them.
Sears.com
Many people think of Sears only as a department store, not realizing that they have a strong online presence and that the online site has a place specifically for third party online retailers. It is a great option that offers some nice benefits for the sellers. They offer a shipping and packing service, so you do not have to worry about that when you sell through them, unless you opt to ship on your own rather than have them hold your products in their warehouses.
You will find that the customers who go through the site have an expectation of quality since it is Sears. This gives you more credibility instantly. However, it does come with a bit more pressure. You need to make sure that you are able to live up to those expectations with the products you are selling.
These are just three of the other options you have in addition to Amazon and eBay. Instead of choosing just one or two marketplaces online, work with as many as you can so you can find more customers that you might not have found otherwise. For example, since the majority of customers using Rakuten are still from Japan, there is a very good chance they would not have found you if you weren’t on the site selling.