Getting Started the Easy Way--Online Marketplaces

Building your own website from scratch is great, but what if you don't have quite that much ambition or what if you don't really want to put in that much time and money right away? I've got good news for you--there is an easier way! You can set up shop with any number of already established online marketplaces.

An online marketplace offers several advantages including ease of starting out, simple payments systems, raising awareness, and ability to collect customer ratings. Some disadvantages include fees that online marketplaces charge, difficulty in gaining customer loyalty, and lack of personalization options for online "storefronts."

An online marketplace is a website where numerous sellers can post their individual items for sale by setting up their own “store” within the website. There are numerous online marketplaces out there—some are created for specific types of businesses, while others are open to anyone. They also vary in the amount of personalization each “store” can have. For example, Amazon.com is not for people with original items, it is primarily a “reselling” website. The store pages do not have customization features for users. Half.Ebay.com is a very similar site, though they have an emphasis on media such as books, music, and media. On the other end of the spectrum are websites like Etsy.com which is limited to only handmade or vintage items. On Etsy, sellers can customize their store page with a personal banner, avatar, and even a blog. Other sites, such as Asos Marketplace, are solely clothing and apparel vendors.
Online marketplaces offer numerous advantages to start-up online businesses. These are just a few that I came up with:

1.Ease: Sellers don’t need to worry about how to actually set up a website.

2.A "Transactional Template:" A February 21 article in the New York Times describes the “transactional template” that online marketplaces have set in place to walk sellers through how to post your items, complete payments, and even shipping items.

3.Promotion: By being part of a known online marketplace, sellers automatically have a step above others in getting their name out there. Built in social media features also help this--the previously mentioned New York Times article reports that “sellers [on Asos Marketplace] may never be able to expose themselves to the traffic that we can put in front of them” through blogs, twitter, and facebook integratation on the site.

4.Customer Ratings: On nearly all online marketplaces, customers can “rate” buyers on how smoothly transactions went. This helps sellers to prove themselves as reliable and trustworthy online.

But of course, there are disadvantages to online marketplaces as well. These are some of the drawbacks that I've encountered through my own experience with online marketplaces:

1.Fees: Sellers have to pay the marketplace operator fees for using its services; it could be a set cost or percentage per item or per month. Etsy.com charges $0.20 per listing and a 3.5% sales fee, while Asos Marketplace does not have listing fees, but claims a 10-15% commission on all sales.

2.Customer Loyalty: It is more difficult to distinguish yourself from others; buyers often develop loyalty to the marketplace, not individual sellers.

3.Freedom/Personalization: Online marketplaces offer varying amounts of personalization on seller’s pages. Participating in online marketplaces also means that you must adhere to the “rules” of the marketplace.

For many people, online marketplaces just make sense. In a February 22 article, The New York Times recently reported the success story of a shop called Madam Popoff Vintage, run by Deborah Ellis. Deborah owned an actual vintage clothing shop in England and joined Asos Marketplace to boost her sales. She reported that many unsold items in her shop sold immediately upon posting on Asos. She claims that “joining the Marketplace saved me from going under."

I personally feel that the pros for online marketplaces outweigh the cons; online marketplaces offer an easy way for online businesses to start out with out quite as much pressure as building everything from scratch

Starting From Scratch

You’ve seen the benefits and you’ve heard the drawbacks, assuming you have a product to sell and solid business plan, you’re ready for the next step!! So here it is— getting your online business, well, online!

First and foremost, you have to know what you want to accomplish with your site. Think about how you want to present your products, the information you’ll need to include, and how to organize your site. Looking around at other similar websites is a great way to gather ideas. Peggy McCollan internationally recognized expert in the field of Internet marketing, wrote an article about web design for the Huffington Post, a news website run by AOL. In the article, McColl suggests making a list of website names, what you like about them, and what you don’t like about them, then using your list to create an outline of your ideal website. Once you know how you want your site to be, it’s time to find the best option for creating it.

To begin with, you have to decide if you’re willing to pay money for this website to become a reality or if you want to go the free route. There are many perfectly satisfactory web design services that you can take advantage of for free, such as Intuit’s Homestead or BabyGigs. These sites are template based, which means that while you add your own content, it makes use of ready-made layouts and designs. If you’re beginner, this may be helpful to you. But if you want your site to look a very specific way, you may have to pay a bit more to hire an actual web developer, whether locally or online on sites like Core Interactive. A web developer can take care of all the logistics of creating a website and you can work with them to get exactly the site you imagined!

Using Intuit's Homestead to create a website

There is, of course, the do-it-yourself option as well—instead of piggy backing on other websites, you can manage the whole process from the beginning. This includes going out and finding an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that suits your needs and registering for a domain name and URL. According to an archived entry on Reuters, world's largest international multimedia news agency, your ISP will charge a monthly fee, but will provide you with the necessary server space for your Web site. After securing server space, you will need to register for a domain name. Network Solutions, Inc. is one website that offers registration services and instructions on how to do this.

It’s important to note that with any of the above options you can do as little or as much as you would like to do on your own. For example, you could pay someone to secure a good ISP and domain name for you, and then do the web designing yourself. Or, you could do the domain name yourself, and hire a professional for the designing. The choices you make will need to depend on your level of expertise and the amount of time and money you are willing to invest.

Beyond the creation of your site, the previously mentioned Reuters article also suggests registering your site with search engines, informing others about your site, and of course, maintaining your site so that it’s always up to date.

In a "March 19 Huffington Post article called "Your 10 Point Website Checkup," Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., offers more great advice on fine-tuning websites including content, design, and marketing.

Starting a website can be a complicated process. The purpose of this entry has been to provide online entrepreneurs with only a very brief overview of the available methods of starting a website.