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MenuHow do I start a liquidation marketplace business?
It's where retailers can list their surplus inventory and get biddings/offers from other businesses or individuals. How do I get started and is a shopify website good enough to build this?
Answers
Two sided marketplaces are a very common type of MVP to build. Using no code (shopify, wordpress, bubble) can get you some traction and gets you some amount of painted doors (someone knocks on the door, but it's not real, at least you know how many people knocked).
This can work for a month or two, but it is not technically defensible, and if your idea succeeds, most of this work will have to be discarded. You want to validate cheaply, but you can do this with a MVP that is hyper focused.
Check out some more of my thoughts on no code platforms:
https://mvpengineer.com/no-code-platforms-worth-it/
and minimizing your MVP:
https://mvpengineer.com/building-tech-demos-for-micro-components-not-a-full-user-experience/
1- Start with a small capital to understand the market
2- Find your customers' needs
3- Shopify is an excellent website for sale and it is very easy for you, but you must know how to work on it
4- Choose a main product and the rest of the products are additional and expand into the main product, for example (clothing).
5- Make a small profit margin and rely on expanding the customer base
Rather than shopify, you can use wordpress as you will have control over full source code:
- Go to http://wordpress.org/ and download the WordPress Marketplace plugin.
- Install the plugin and activate it.
- Click on "Add New" in the marketplace menu and input the following details:
- Name: Your marketplace name
- Category: Mobile apps
- Subcategory: Apps
- Upload a .zip file of your app.
- Click on "Create My Store Now!"
If you know shopify, then yes. Use whatever can get you there fastest to present something to your first users. Once you build the traction you're after, look towards setting up a better tech solution that serves user needs with a clean user experience.
B2B marketplaces are inherently different, but not more complex to market. To start, you might look into buying some of that inventory yourself or doing things manually for a bit to evaluate demand.
Related Questions
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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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Broad niche or Targeted niche which way to go?
I always suggest going "uncomfortably narrow" initially so that you can really dial in the user experience and build liquidity first. Going broad will be tougher as there's too much noise to signal. Also, it's best to fake the supply side initially of you can to improve the buyers side first, then figure out supply & quality afterwards if customers are buying and you've proven out a demand strategy that will work.DM
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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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How to solve a chicken and egg problems for a marketplace like Uber? What is the best way to acquire demand side?
The best way to solve chicken and egg problems for marketplaces is to prove market need on each side independently first with a low-cost MVP-type test. Once you've proven the market on both sides with metrics it is much easier to leg in supply and demand with a strategic or enough funding to match a market on a local or niche level to ensure liquidity. For a deeper analysis, here is a post on medium that I wrote... http://bit.ly/1k2vYbY Also, feel free to schedule a call with me if you'd like to dig deeper.DK
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What's the best platform to build a e-bookstore?
I think a natural choice is large provides like Amazon. However, if you want to sell eBooks on your own and maintain all of the revenue, then WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads would make excellent options. Both software packages are WordPress plugins and they make it very easy to deploy an e-commerce store for digital goods. Both plugins have strong development teams behind them and they have a slew of independent freelancers who can offer assistance if needed. I've used WooCommerce myself for multiple years and we've deployed many WordPress websites that use it. It has hundreds of extensions you can add on to it for maximizing the potential.RG
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