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MenuAre there any alternate marketplaces with customers similar to Amazon where I could sell my product?
I have a unique design premium product that has been patented and have been suspended from selling on Amazon. Are there any alternate marketplaces with customers similar to Amazon where I could sell my product?
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there is many alternative for you to advertise your product in absential of Amazon.... you can make use of Alibaba, Wish for fast service
“Electronic commerce, commonly written as E-Commerce, is the trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction’s life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such as E-Mail.
E-Commerce businesses may employ some or all the following:
1. Online shopping websites for retail sales direct to consumers,
2. Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer sales,
3. Business-to-business buying and selling,
4. Gathering and using demographic data through Web contacts and social media,
5. Business-to-business electronic data interchange,
6. Marketing to prospective and established customers by E-Mail or fax (for example, with newsletters),
7. Engaging in pretail for launching new products and services.
Pretail (also referred to as pre-retail, or pre-commerce) is a sub-category of E-Commerce and online retail for introducing new products, services, and brands to market by pre-launching online, sometimes as reservations in limited quantity before release, realization, or commercial availability. Pretail includes pre-sale commerce, pre-order retailers, incubation marketplaces, and crowdfunding communities.” (Wikipedia 2015)
Selling products on e-commerce platform is common practice these days and there are many platforms globally that sell and buy products. To understand the selling process, we must investigate 5-C-model (Zwass 2014) of e-commerce. It defines E-Commerce by five activity domains whose denominations start with the letter “C”:
1. Commerce:
1. In the electronic marketplaces there is a matching of customers and suppliers, an establishing of the transaction terms, and the facilitation of exchange transactions.
2. With the broad move to the Web-enabled enterprise systems with relatively uniform capabilities as compared to the legacy systems, a universal supply-chain linkage has been created.
2. Collaboration:
1. The Web is a vast nexus, or network, of relationships among firms and individuals.
2. More or fewer formal collaborations are created or emerge on the Web to bring together individuals engaged in knowledge work in a manner that limits the constraints of space, time, national boundaries, and organizational affiliation.
3. Communication:
1. As an interactive medium, the Web has given rise to a multiplicity of media products.
2. This universal medium has become a forum for self-expression (as in blogs) and self-presentation (as, for an example, in Polyvore.
3. The rapidly growing M-Commerce enables connectivity in context, with location-sensitive products and advertising.
4. In the communications domain, the Web also serves as a distribution channel for digital products.
4. Connection:
1. Common software development platforms, many of them in the open-source domain, enable a wide spectrum of firms to avail themselves of the benefits of the already developed software, which is, moreover, compatible with that of their trading and collaborating partners.
2. The Internet, as a network of networks that is easy to join and out of which it is relatively easy to carve out virtual private networks, is the universal telecommunications network, now widely expanding in the mobile domain.
5. Computation:
1. Internet infrastructure enables large-scale sharing of computational and storage resources, thus leading to the implementation of the decades-old idea of utility computing.
Alternatives to Amazon are as follows:
1. Google Shopping: Google Shopping is a subset of the Google Search Network that is reserved exclusively for products. Every month, roughly 100 million US consumers use it. Although Amazon is more popular among consumers for making an initial product search, the average Google Shopping conversion window is almost a full week shorter than the average Amazon conversion window. There are two ways to get your products in front of the millions of consumers who turn to Google Shopping every day: by adding structured data mark-up to your ecommerce website or by uploading a product data feed to Google Merchant Centre (GMC).
2. Walmart Marketplace: Walmart, the world’s largest retailer and the largest employer in the US, is most commonly known for its immense brick-and-mortar presence—bolstered by more than 5,000 physical store locations in the US alone. Recently, though, they have been seriously stepping up their digital game. 100 million organic visitors land on Walmart’s website every month. Plus, thanks to a 43% increase in online sales in 2018, Walmart commands just under 5% of the American ecommerce market—making it the third-largest online retailer in the US behind Amazon and eBay.
3. Bonanza: Bonanza, boasting over 300,000 organic monthly visitors, is built around the idea that marketplaces should help sellers build relationships with loyal customers—rather than render sellers virtually anonymous while simply helping customers find the lowest prices possible. With a customer marketing tool that allows you to store and filter data regarding past buyers—thus enabling you to segment them into groups and remarket to them—and a seller stats dashboard that gives you a high-level perspective of product performance, Bonanza empowers you with the insights and resources you need to succeed over time.
4. Newegg (electronics): Founded in 2000 as a first-party seller website and re-launched in 2010 as a third-party marketplace, Newegg is a one-stop shop for consumer electronics and computer hardware. It connects you to over 10 million organic monthly visitors across dozens of countries, and although it now sells stuff like fitness gear and car seats, Newegg remains a go-to marketplace for tech-related products. If that is your speciality, Newegg is an ideal alternative to Amazon. One of their unique value propositions is that they facilitate both B2C and B2B. With Newegg Business, you can sell products in bulk to tens of thousands of businesses the world over. Plus, in step with Amazon, they offer an order fulfilment service called Shipped by Newegg (SBN). If you lack the time, resources, or physical space to ship orders to customers yourself, you can send products to a Newegg fulfilment centre and let their team take care of the picking, packing, and shipping processes for you.
5. Zibbet (art): If you create original pieces art (or sell online on behalf of artists), Zibbet—with an admittedly small organic monthly audience of about 13,000—is a great option. The awesome thing about Zibbet is that it doubles as both a third-party marketplace and a centralized platform that enables you to sell on your own website as well as Etsy. Every time you make a sale on Zibbet Marketplace, your inventory is automatically updated in real time across your website and Etsy. Plus, you can manage and fulfil orders from all channels within the centralized Zibbet platform.
6. Reverb (music equipment): You can list as many products as you want for Reverb’s 3 million organic monthly visitors to peruse—you will not be charged for any of those listings. In fact, the only fees Reverb sellers ever need to cough up are the 3.5% sales commission fee and the 2.7% transaction fee. Plus, that commission fee caps at $350. So, even if you sell something for over $10,000, you will only owe $350 in commission. Nonetheless, Reverb is committed to helping sellers get what they are owed. Although Reverb does not run on an auction system—whenever you list a product for sale, you ask for a set price—prospective buyers have the option to name their own price. You, of course, can make as many counter offers as you would like.
Besides if you do have any questions contact me: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
Walmarte
eBay.
Etsy.
Jet.
Newegg.
Rakuten.
Cratejoy.
Related Questions
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I'm looking to get off the Yahoo platform. Shopify seems to be nice, and BigCommerce just looks like a slightly better Yahoo. Thoughts?
Shopify is best use case for $0 to $1M ish, depending on product line, how many transactions that makes up, and if their are some custom things that are not possible on Shopify that realistically lead to huge gains that would cover more costs of a custom solution with something like magento. I recommend Shopify to everyone starting out. That's what we used at Diamond Candles up until about a $5M run rate. We were/are growing quickly so we hit a point where payoff of customizing checkout flow, add of social sign on, etc. that could not be done because of Shopify, would cover and surpass costs of a more custom option. Best to think about this simplistic example. View the ecom platform market in about 3 buckets. 1. Starting out: $0-$1M ish 2. Wow looks like you have a business: $1M-$20 or 50ish 3. You are/could be publicly traded: $50M+ Take a look at usage #'s for market share size from independent third party analytics tools from Builtwith: http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Shopify/Market-Share http://trends.builtwith.com/shop http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/hosted-solution Just because something is found on the web more isn't the full picture. Ie. I could make a blogging platform and have a bunch of scripts and bots install it on millions of domains and I would have majority of the market for blogging platforms (ya that would take a while and isn't a realistic scenario but you can get the point). Providers dominating the different categories by companies in those areas actually doing volume and being succsessful? 1. Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, Magento GO, 2. Magento (varying editions), Yahoo Stores, Symphony Commerce 3. Demand Ware, GSI Commerce, Magento (varying editions) At the end of the day a good illustration goes like this. A truck and a moped are two different things. A truck is not trying to out 'moped' a moped and a moped not trying to out 'truck' a truck. They are both perfectly suited to different applications, situations, needs, and circumstances. The same goes with who you choose to handle your ecom platform. For 2-3 search for internet retailers first 500 and second 500 lists. Pull off all ecommerce companies doing between $10-$50M as an example. Use the builtwith.com chrome toolbar to tell you what platform they are using. Hire someone for $2 an hour via odesk to make a spreadsheet of everything and the make a pretty little pie chart. Now you know what each revenue volume level chooses as 1, 2, 3 preferred platforms. Option 3 as a side note but very important one, is primarily a platform and commerce as a service model with companies like Demand Ware and GSI Commerce leading the market with platform and services including but not limited to customer service for the brand, fulfillment, marketing services, website product photography etc. Their pricing models are based on gross revenue share. ie. SportsAuthority.com does $100M online this year, GSI takes 30% of that to cover everything. (I am not sure who Sports Authority uses, just an example) You can almost pick any traditional brick and mortar retailer and if they have a website where they sell things, they all do, GSI or DW are the people behind the scenes running the call centers, shipping etc. Diamond Candles, my company, who started on Shopify decided to not go with a the market dominating option of Magento for a few reasons. One of which being upfront cost for an agency or on staff magento CTO type. We decided to partner with a newer entrant, Symphony Commerce, which blends the 3rd category model of platform plus service. Rev. cut is significantly smaller than providers in category 3, but still get benefits of volume savings on shipping volume, scalable customer support that can handle rapid growth and occasional spikes without us having to worry about scaling or implementing best practices, and a fully customizable platform as a service so to speak that doesn't require us to have in house tech but where we are essentially renting part time ecommerce engineers from with resumes that list Google, FB, Twitter, Magento, Amazon, etc. So in summary. If you are <$1M in revenue just roll with Shopify. Greater than that but less than $50M ish then I would recommend looking into Symphony. If Symphony is interested in letting you in then you won't have to incur the upfront costs of an agency or implementation and you will have an ongoing partner equally incentivized i your long term success financially which I prefer as opposed to an agency model which economically is incentivized to offer a one time finished product and their revenue is not tied to my financial success. It is the closest thing to an equity partner while returning our full equity.JW
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Holding funds in a 2-sided marketplace?
Check out https://www.balancedpayments.com/ They are made for marketplaces. Airbnb CEO among others invested in them and they have some of the best pricing/payout fees. Also some good info on http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/2013/10/08/online-marketplaces-are-hard/ One of Balanced Payments co-founders is writing this blog series on marketplaces.MA
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What is the best pricing (business model) to apply to a marketplace?
I like to separate your question into 2 sub-questions: #1 How do we determine which side to charge? #2 How much is the right amount to charge? On #1, my answer is that you can charge the side(s) for whom you add the most value. In your examples, Uber really solves a big problem for drivers, it's that they sit idle for a good part of the day, so are willing to pay a lot for new leads. (their alternative is no work) Consumers are charged more for the convenience of a private car but they are probably not so much willing to pay more for a taxi, even if they can hail one from their phones. For AirBnB, it's a mix, it's a way for landlords to monetize idle capacity which they are willing to pay for, but it's also a way for a renter to pay less than they would normally pay for a hotel. On #2 (how much), I like to triangulate a number of factors: - What's the maximum amount I can charge one side, while still being a good deal for them. - How much do I need to charge so that I can become profitable? (the economics are quite different if you charge 3% vs. 12%) - What are comparable services charging for substitutes/competitive offerings? I will just add that there is no formulaic way to determine pricing strategies (curated vs. open), and it's a lot more about what's the comparable and what the value delivered is. That's how I approached the question while deciding the business model at ProBueno.com (my startup)MR
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Why don't small business retailers have e-commerce stores on their websites? How do I show small business owners the benefits of e-commerce?
I live in Brooklyn, NY, which is a really fertile ground for small business retailers. My experience speaking with a lot of the shop owners is that they simply don't have the resources to maintain an online presence. Just keeping the brick and mortar operation running consumes most, if not all of their time, especially if the are also creating and producing their own products. For many that I do see take a shot at e-commerce retailing, they may get Shopify/Squarespace site set-up, then just run out of steam to keep it going. One innovative, in-between approach that I've seen one of my favorite shops take, is to actually focus on using a single social media channel, Instagram, and maintain an e-commerce function through it. (See @peopleof2morrow on Instagram)CR
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When creating a marketplace, does it make more sense to focus on stimulating demand first or supply?
Focus on the more difficult side of the marketplace. For instance, if you think it'll be easier to get suppliers, then focus first on getting buyers - always be working on your toughest problem (aka your biggest risk). You'll find some great blogging on Marketplace and Platform topics here http://platformed.info (read the ebook too!)CM
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