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online marketplaces
You may want to open a shop on an online marketplace such Etsy, eBay, Amazon etc.to sell your products, as well as or instead of your own website. There is a certain amount of work involved in setting this up, in particular preparing appropriate entries for each individual item with good descriptions (involving key words to help your search engine optimisation), pricing, delivery charges etc. However, once done, a lot of this can be replicated for your website, or perhaps replicated from your website to your new marketplace shop.
There are advantages and disadvantages of an online marketplace shop compared to running your own website that you may want to consider:
PROS
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All the site set-up is done on a stable, user-friendly platform
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You can reach customers globally
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All standard sales terms and conditions provided
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Simple privacy policy usually available for free
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Networking with shop-owner community and possibly even face-to-face events/markets
CONS
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You pay a listing fee for each product and a % commission on each sale
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Global reach increases chance of people copying your creations
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More shops and more products means more competition: hard to ensure you rank highly on searches for you products
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Harder to promote and strengthen your brand: the dominant brand is the marketplace's own.
You will be asked to comply with the 'house rules' of the relevant online marketplace. These are usually prepared to be in line with statutory consumer-protection requirements in countries where the marketplace is available. However, bear in mind that ultimately you will need to make sure you comply with these requirements yourself, for example offering the cancellation period of 14 days etc. See our infographic for more information:
Selling Online
All the major online marketplaces also have their own complaints processes to deal with claims that particular products being sold constitute infringement of copyright or other intellectual property rights. See our infographic for more information: