Best Multi-Channel Marketplaces for Selling Internationally

Selling on an ecommerce platform like gives you the greatest degree of control over your store's online presence, advertising, positioning of your product, and other aspects of running a business.

What can you do to increase your global reach and connect with new markets with no other way to find your products? That's how selling your products on multiple marketplaces can help expand an online business- they give you access to more customers from more locations who will most likely not find your online store.

There are numerous leading online marketplaces with the potential to be globally renowned, and dependent on the needs of your company take a look at each one before you decide which one will best serve your business growth goals, while not compromising your freedom.

How to choose the right market

The top online marketplaces that support multi-channel sales are those everyone knows, like Amazon as well as eBay. But there are several others which have a comparable presence across the globe, and are even bigger at times. They include Alibaba, Walmart Marketplace, Etsy, Rakuten, and Newegg.

In this article, we'll look in depth into each one in order to provide you with a complete picture of what each marketplace can offer.

What regions of the globe are connected to each marketplace online? How many people visit these platforms, and how loyal are they?

If you want to reach new markets by selling your goods and are convinced that marketplaces on the internet offer the ideal way for this, it is important to take into consideration a number of key aspects:

• Features: how each online marketplace serves sellers, protects their autonomy, and generates more revenue without difficulty
• Price: what will you have to pay in order for access to each online marketplace
• Audience: What kinds of individuals each market attracts the most
• Reach: How many potential customers from specific geographical areas that are able to access a market

Let's examine each of these top seven multi-channel markets.

1. Amazon

Amazon has evolved a lot since its early days as a book seller online. It's now about the closest you could become an all-in-one retailer. But most of what's sold on Amazon is from other marketplace sellers, including online retailers who wish to expand their reach to new customers.

Features

Amazon has been operating this for quite a long time, and they've figured out how to make an eCommerce site work, so much so that the majority of e-commerce sites would like to utilize the same methods. With the many extensions to your advantage it is possible to do the majority of what Amazon does right with your own store.

Here are the best features that are available on Amazon Marketplace:

• Global access: open an account for almost any country that is on Earth
• Telephone support is available in all countries, as well as chat and email for the rest
• Ability to determine your own prices
• A platform to create your own offers and advertise them
• Simple review collection using a system people are familiar with
• Ability to create your product and store it around key words to appear in search engines
• Tracking performance metrics such as order defect rate and rates of fulfillment cancellation
• Fulfillment through Amazon (FBA) This gives you access to the Prime Badge as well as better shipping choices
• Layouts for product pages that are pre-set to eliminate the task of figuring out the layout

Fulfillment by Amazon essentially means you ship your products to Amazon as well as they store the items in their warehouses. The service is charged a fee, but then you can offer free two-day shipping to Amazon Prime members, and Amazon takes care of printing labels, packaging, as well as all other shipping tasks you would expect.

The shoppers are able to sort their search results so that they will only find products by sellers with the Prime Badge, giving you an air of quality and exclusivity.

Pricing

Amazon is one of the largest online marketplaces. There are a variety of costs, not only one.

First, you must choose from the Individual Plan and the Professional Plan. In the Individual Plan, you pay 99 cents per transaction that you sell. This approach is better for businesses with lower online sales volumes. The Professional Plan costs $39.99 per month, which includes an unlimited number of sales.

Next, there's a referral fee, which will be similar to the commission fee which every marketplace online charges. This is an amount of the total amount you spend which includes shipping charges. Fees vary depending on the product type. The majority are 8 to 15 percent, however they can be up to 45% and can be as low as percentage. Following that, there's the fulfillment cost, which is calculated on the size and weight of the product being shipped.

And, for use of Amazon's warehouses, there's a storage fee dependent on the dimensions of the items you're selling. The storage fees triple from October through December during the festive season.

Is that all? There could be higher fees in specific situations.

What is the reason someone would pay all these fees for the sole purpose of selling on Amazon?

Because there are some benefits built in and have a large number of customers. It is possible to have an online store, you won't have to pay most of these charges. But, then you have to control the inventory you have and your shipping.

Audience

Amazon is biggest in the United States, having achieved almost total market saturation. 15 million Americans own Prime Memberships -- over 70% of the population.

The number of monthly user of their app, and Amazon accounts for 56.7% of all eCommerce sales for retail stores within the U.S. Therefore, if your customers are located in America, US, Amazon can reach the people they want to reach.

With the exception of including the U.S., they have around 310 million active app users around the world. You can also reach out to your mobile users, too.

Amazon's customers are from all walks of life in North America, and in several other countries. 66% of shoppers who shop online typically begin their search on Amazon.

Reach

After the acquisition of Souq in the year 2017 which was a Middle Eastern ecommerce marketplace, Amazon has become the biggest online retailer in the world. The majority of them are located in North America, Europe, Asia and in Asia and the Middle East.

Amazon delivers to over 130 countries in over 130 countries, and 2.7 billion people have shopped through Amazon. Amazon has 2.72 billion per month in unique customers.

So, as for size, you can reach the largest global audience through Amazon. But with huge size comes competition. Amazon is also home to the biggest quantity of online sellers. So it's not necessarily straightforward to get your items noticed.

2. eBay

eBay started out as a site to market used goods through bidding wars. Although they continue to offer this service, only 12% of the items sold on their site are open for bidding and the majority of items that are sold through eBay are new.

It's now an online marketplace with the most loyal consumers than Amazon. A greater number of shoppers might begin shopping through Amazon However, many end up their shopping on eBay.

Features

eBay is a real marketplace. It does not sell any products of their own, therefore your competition is from other sellers and not from the marketplace itself. Other characteristics of eBay include:

• Concierge services for larger ecommerce brands
• Seller Hub is the platform from which you run your online business through eBay, where you can make listings available and manage orders, run promotions and sales, etc.
• The ability to customize listings is greater than Amazon
• The ability to upload videos that are related to your product
• Coupons, discounts, and promotion capabilities, including coupon codes
• You can choose to use discount pricing based on volume
• An option for subscribers -- you can make marketing newsletters for subscribers, offer discounts to customers who subscribe as well as build greater customer loyalty than with Amazon
• It is possible to read reviews of the product
• Shipping label printing
• You can promote your products on Google Ads along with other websites for shopping, as well together using eBay Ads
• Advanced analytics
• Daily or weekly pay schedules

Pricing

The pricing system of eBay is more straightforward than Amazon's, however the charges are comparable in a few ways.

First, there's an insertion fee that's 35 cents for each listing However, the first 250 listings are free. If you create an eBay store, you get even more free listings.

You are then charged a percentage of the cost of sales, which is 10% for most types of products. However, the range is between 2-12percent. That includes charges for processing. If you are looking to reduce the cost of insertion it is possible to purchase a monthly subscription. If you are a seller with a higher volume it is an excellent choice. They have three choices, each of which come with advantages of selling on the platform, and each is less expensive if you pay annually as opposed to the monthly. The monthly costs are:

• Basic: $24.95 per month
• Premium: $74.95 per month
• Anchor: $349.95 per month

Audience

eBay attracts hobbyists and people who are "enthusiast buyers," and also to those who are looking to get a great deal. eBay is a great choice for electronics, their number one selling item at 16.4% of merchandise offered through the website.

eBay also sells a lot of accessories and clothing (16%), automobiles (11%) as well as health and beauty (9 percent), and sports and outdoor equipment. These categories comprise around 60% of the items that is sold on eBay. But, that still leaves plenty of space for additional products.

According to Edesk, 61% of the audience on eBay are aged 35 to 64, and 60% of them are men unlike Amazon's near fifty-to-50 divide. Your audience also includes baby boomers at the tail end of their lives, Gen-Xers, and some Millennials. eBay doesn't get as much volume of traffic from the Gen-Z.

Reach

If you're researching "reach," it's crucial to distinguish between buyers and site visitors. There are many sites reporting the reach of top known marketplaces for multi-channel selling does a good job of clarifying this. This is why you'll see wildly diverse numbers across different sites.

Additionally, the online sales numbers have drastically changed following 2020. So all data that was available prior to 2020 has been deemed outdated.

eBay currently gets about 885 million users per month. Every year, approximately 135 million of these customers actually buy items through eBay.

eBay has the third most downloaded eCommerce application across the US just behind Walmart and Amazon, and 60% of eBay's buyers are in the UK and U.S., with Germany being the largest contributor with 15%. So, about three fourths of its users are within these three regions.

For sellers there's a slightly different story. The majority of eBay sellers reside in The U.S., and 25 percent are located in the UK. 17% come from China, 16% from Germany as well as 3% from Australia. Therefore, you are able to sell your products on eBay virtually anywhere so long as you keep an eye on where most of the buyers reside.

3. Alibaba

Many marketers in the west do not know about this ecommerce giant of China which was founded by Jack Ma. But it owns over 60 percent percent Chinese marketplace for e-commerce, which means that any ecommerce company seeking to expand its business into China and nearby Asian markets should consider jumping on Alibaba or any of its subsidiaries platforms like AliExpress, Taobao, Lazada or Tokopedia. They all serve different countries in the region.

Features

Announcing the functions of Alibaba isn't easy because it is a multitude of different platforms under its overall umbrella, and each has distinct features. In order to simplify, we're going to focus specifically on Alibaba as well as AliExpress. If you're trying to increase your reach in specific Asian regions, you'll need to explore the other platforms they offer, and will be discussed later.

Alibaba is one of the most popular B2B online marketplaces. Alibaba lets you purchase and sell wholesale goods from and to other businesses. With Alibaba it is possible to:

• Own your customers' information in a different way than Amazon
• Use communication tools to interact directly with buyers
• Get access to CRM tools and analysis
• Translate to over 18 languages
• Customize your application using an API integration
• Coordinate international freight logistics
• Get onboarding assistance for brand new sellers.
• Inspection and monitoring of the product access

Alibaba uses an RFP (Request for Quote) procedure to allow customers to submit orders since businesses make use of Alibaba to purchase bulk quantities from both suppliers and manufacturers. Thus, prices do not have a fixed price. They are based on quantity of shipping and other factors.

Sellers are also able to earn three different ratings: Gold, Verified, along with Trade Assurance, which assure consumers that they're purchasing products from reputable suppliers.

AliExpress
AliExpress is one of the B2C ecommerce platforms under Alibaba's worldwide marketplace. Similar to Amazon, sellers can sell individual products and ship them directly to consumers. Also, you can utilize AliExpress to dropship. And like Alibaba, it can be translated into over 18 languages.

Additional features:

• Marketing to increase exposure for products
• Convert and accept 51 of the currencies
• 38 local payment channels will allow secure transactions
• Customizable online storefronts
• AliExpress University, an onboarding service that assists new sellers
• Multiple shipping options
• The buyer's protection policy covers damaged, defective, or undeliverable items

Pricing

Alibaba is a marketplace that operates in a higher volumes as compared to B2C ecommerce marketplaces, so the prices for its products are more expensive as well. No sales commissions are that are charged by Alibaba and there is only an annual fee, the lowest of which is the Gold Supplier Basic, with a price of $1899 per year.

AliExpress adopts a similar approach than other B2C eCommerce platforms. It charges no annual fee however, it charges between 5-8% commissions for each transaction.

Audience

If you're looking to sell on the internet in bulk for other companies, Alibaba is one of the most popular online marketplaces available to those who want to sell online in bulk. There are more than 10 million customers from over 190 countries purchase wholesale from businesses on Alibaba. You can deal directly with manufacturers, and there are also exporters, agents, trading businesses, and wholesalers.

The buyers may be other manufacturer and wholesalers who are who use your product to create other products. They may include sourcing agents as well as B2C retailers. Alibaba can be used Alibaba to build private brand names.

 AliExpress

AliExpress targets the general public and, like Amazon it sells almost everything from clothes to equipment to products for home improvement from electronics to cosmetics.

Within the nations that AliExpress and others Alibaba B2C ecommerce platforms operate Your target customers include almost everyone who buys on the internet. There are buyers who could be re-sellers who are setting up dropshipping businesses.

AliExpress sellers must be located within China, Russia, Spain, Italy, France, or Turkey.

Reach

Alibaba is used by a variety of countries and nearly a billion people.

AliExpress as well as those other B2C platforms connect millions of customers from more than 220 countries. The biggest growth is in Asian nations. In China there is a platform called Taobao. Lazada is the marketplace that operates in Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Tokopedia serves as the online platform that covers Indonesia.

4. Walmart Marketplace

Walmart started out as an brick-and-mortar department store and not as an online marketplace. But around 2010, they began selling online with the help of massive cash from their stores Walmart was able to quickly ramp up its selling platforms online so that it is able to compete effectively with major brands, like Amazon.

But, Walmart Marketplace has fewer sellers and for now it means there's lower competition in order to get your product recognized. So you are likely to get better publicity for your items through Walmart Marketplace than Amazon.

Features

While Walmart's eCommerce platform bears several similarities with Amazon However, the differences between them are substantial. These are the most important features:

• A stricter qualification process for sellers, not only anyone who wants to open an online store.
• Ability to offer the free shipping service for two days
• Analytics tools and Advanced Listings
• Secure payment
• Market reports
• Options for customer reviews
• Walmart ads which provide greater brand exposure
• An existing supply chain network already in place
• Walmart Fulfillment Services, which can help you store, wrap and deliver your items

Walmart Fulfillment Services works very exactly like Fulfillment from Amazon. You send your products to Walmart's warehouses. When orders are placed, they pack and ship your products for you.

The stricter process for obtaining qualifications can be a reason to think about Walmart. They will only consider sellers that have a record of prior success in e-commerce. They ensure that their sellers are reputable and sell quality products.

Pricing

Unlike Amazon, Walmart charges no fees for setup, listings or subscriptions. There is a charge per transaction, and this like other ecommerce sites varies by product category. It ranges from 6 to percent, however the vast most of their fees range from 8% to 15 percent.

Audience

Walmart is a great retailer because they have thousands of customers in the store They also have their marketplace online as an alternative to all of them. Walmart sells just about everything they can in their stores, but their ecommerce counterpart does even more. The target market is anybody shopping on the internet.

Reach

Walmart Marketplace gets about 410 million unique monthly visitors, according to one estimate, and it engages shoppers who are from Africa, Canada, Central America, Mexico, India, China, and Chile and parts of the U.S. and parts of Europe.

Walmart's loyalty program currently has more than 10 million members. This means that these customers have extra incentive to shop at Walmart on the internet.

5. Etsy

Etsy was founded as a marketplace for individuals to sell their own unique and handcrafted items and not products made by mass production. In the majority of cases the company continues to fulfill that goal to this day. If you are an e-commerce seller, Etsy is the place to sell one-of-a-kind items and specific products.

If you offer a range of goods and you want to attract customers to your store's e-commerce site using Etsy make use of the platform to offer unique products followed by a follow-up by bringing them back into your main store that you have that is built upon .

Features

Etsy includes some features that are like other platforms, such as secure transactions, apps as well as email and phone support, and the ability to customize your Etsy shop. In addition, Etsy includes:

• Automatic deposits straight to your account
• Options for discounted postage
• A Etsy advertising platform on which you can pay to boost the visibility of your ads.
• The Seller App allows direct communication with buyers via the Seller App
• Seller protections
• You can use an affiliate program to utilize to motivate other individuals to promote your product
• The newsletter for sellers and the handbook
• Access to a community of sellers

Etsy has a bad reputation for being more difficult to rank in search of specific products, and this motivates some to make purchases from Etsy advertisements. It is essential to be deliberate in how you create product pages, including the words and phrases you use to describe your products.

Pricing

Etsy has a very simple pricing system. They charge 20 cents per post, and each is active for 4 months. Then, for each purchase, you'll pay 9.5 percentage transaction and processing fee that includes everything.

Furthermore, Etsy runs ads for your items all over the internet. They mostly use advertisements that display images of your items. It is not your responsibility to control the ads and they cost nothing to you, unless the advertisement results in sales. In the event that ads do bring in sales and you're charged an additional fee per sale.

Audience

The audience of Etsy is distinct from the other top marketplaces online. Shoppers on Etsy want things they won't get else. They want stuff no one would ever own. This is a type of treasure searching.

It is the best place to offer unique products that will be a source of fame as a creator, an artist, and an imaginative product designer who puts an effort and dedication into each product.

The vast majority of shoppers on Etsy are women, usually aged between 18 and 40.

Their most popular product categories include homes and living, jewellery, craft supplies, and tools. They have a wide selection of merchandise to help you plan your wedding and bridal party.

Reach

Etsy is a smaller market that other popular marketplaces. Although they are able to reach more than 200 countries and have more than 86 million users however, only about half of their sales online are shipped towards the U.S., and almost all the rest go to the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, and France.

Etsy is also home to a number of loyal shoppers, with 81% of all purchases purchased by regular buyers. So if Etsy's audience aligns with your products, you can win the trust of customers faster on this online marketplace in comparison to other general ones in this list.

6. Rakuten

If you're looking to emphasize the importance of affiliate sales, Rakuten is the top online marketplace to do this.

Are you unsure of what affiliate selling is? Instead of buying advertisements and diving deep into digital marketing your products rather, you partner with other businesses and individuals, and they offer your goods and services for their customers instead. In exchange, you give you a portion of profits. It's an opportunity to reach more people as you might otherwise. The most effective affiliate marketers hold a strong influence over thousands or millions of their followers.

Features

Rakuten helps you set up affiliate deals. Some key features of the program are:

• Pay for the week of retailers
• A custom reporting system
• The most appropriate methods to monetize your store's e-commerce
• Dynamic coupons and related tools
• Good customer support -- seller account management and partnership teams
• The ability to set up automated workflows as well as automate
• Help in selecting influencers and affiliates that align with your product
• The system tracks influencers and affiliates

Pricing

Similar to other top market places, Rakuten charges a listing cost, a monthly charge along with a fee based on product categories.
The cost is 99 cents for each listing and $39 per month. The commissions vary from 8 to 15 percent.

Audience

Men are slightly more favored, but generally broad in scope young people between 25 and 34 years old make up Rakuten's most prolific audience. But in general, Rakuten's audience is harder to specify due to the fact that it is contingent on which affiliates and influencers you end up working with.

The system they use is designed to help you connect with affiliates that have audiences that align to your product. Therefore, in theory, your target audience is the one you would want most.

Reach

Rakuten business operations are located in over 30 countries, across the two Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The company's affiliates and customers are found in more than 180 countries. This is therefore a global marketplace that uses the affiliate marketing model as the basis.

7. Newegg

Newegg began as a tech-focused ecommerce marketplace, and it is still the market leader in this category. However, it has expanded to several other categories and has become one of the most popular platforms for businesses using e-commerce to sell their products.

Features

Newegg offers real advantages to its best sellers -customers who sign up for an annual membership. The benefits of this market depend very much on which membership you select from their three membership options: professional, free or Enterprise.

As with Walmart, Newegg requires sellers to be approved prior to when they can use their ecommerce marketplace. This ensures an excellent quality level for the items they offer. Some of their key features are as follows:

• A knowledgeable and focused group of people
• The option to sell used and refurbished items
• Ability to advertise the products they sell on their website, including Sponsored Video Ads
• Support that is devoted
• API integration
• Advanced product descriptions that contain video or touchpoint images to help customers make good choices
• Access to Newegg Studios -- they'll make videos and photographs to promote your product
• Product listings are unlimited with the Enterprise membership
• Automated email post-purchase with the Enterprise membership
• Discounts when you make use of Newegg Fulfillment as well as Newegg Shipping Label. Newegg Shipping Label service
• Benefits for sellers who set prices in a way that is competitive
• A Premium Seller Program that grants you access to the biggest spenders
• You can advertise on the Newegg social media accounts as well as promotional emails

Like Amazon as well as Walmart, Newegg has a shipping and fulfillment service, and if you have an inventory of it, that's a good option because it will cut your cost.

Pricing

The free version is available however the Professional version priced at $29.95 per month and the Enterprise membership at $99.95 per month provide you with access to all the features you want.

Audience

Newegg's customers are mainly focused on technology and is knowledgeable. You'll find many early adopters than other sites as well as, generally speaking it's a more affluent audience. Contrary to Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba, people who shop on Newegg generally have a net income at least $75k or higher. The customer base of Newegg is 72% male and mostly aged between 18 and 44.

In addition to a wide array of electronics and accessories, Newegg also does well when it comes to home cookware and appliances. The company is expanding to include sporting goods.

Newegg shoppers love to look at the specifications of products, and this is not the platform for focusing on specifics. You want to include lots of detail on the product page Consider seriously adding videos. 32 percent of customers have been returning customers.

Reach

Newegg has about four million users who have active accounts all over Europe, South and North America, in the Middle East, and Asia Pacific.

This means it's a smaller market, but one that spends more money and seeks particular types of products. Like Etsy it is possible to gain a stronger and more devoted audience here than you can on big broad marketplaces.

Why should you sell it as part of your strategy for the whole world?

Marketplaces on the internet can be great entry points into online sales. They're also a great method to reach your customers at the exact location they're in, and also on the same places that they're currently shopping.

However, when it comes down on it, the most effective way to grow your online company and keep full control is to start your own store with . Let's take a review of a few arguments for this to be true.

1. Marketplaces promote competitor products

Third-party marketplaces want all of their customers to achieve success Your business isn't the primary goal. When potential customers are browsing or looking for goods, they will not only find items of competitors in the same category as yours. They might also see ads for those items.

Through a marketplace, it's much easier for shoppers to choose one of your competitors over the other. However, with tools such as, you can build an online store that allows shoppers to discover what they're seeking and make an easy purchase and without the distractions of different stores.

2. Marketplaces offer a limited selection of both design and functions

When you sell your products on marketplaces online need to be able to alter your listings for products to satisfy their specifications for designs, layouts, photos, categorization, and description length. This means you might not be able to include all of the information you'd like.

If you're working from an established design template you may not have the ability to alter the design to fit your company's style. Your products will appear identical to the rest of your competitors.

You can design the type of product and store listing you'd like. Add lots of photos and videos, as well as size charts and ingredient lists, and customize the entire look and feel to fit your company's image.

3. Marketplaces make up a portion of the sales

Third-party marketplaces take a cut of the online sales you make in exchange for using their platforms. As you grow, this can add up over time. However, there are no costs for selling your products online.

4. Marketplaces limit your control

If you're selling on a third-party marketplace they'll enforce their rules and regulations. If they find that you're not complying with their regulations and regulations, they may take the store down, at times without prior notice. It means you'll lose your revenue stream as well as the content you've made.

With Jetpack, you'll enjoy complete control and responsibility over your website. Additionally, you can set up backups that save absolutely all of the information on your site including customer and sales information. If something goes wrong, you can quickly restore your store.

5. Marketplaces complicate marketing

While some third-party marketplaces provide integrated marketing tools, they aren't always the best when you increase. There may be no way to connect the programs you're seeking for advertising, marketing via email, customer relationship management, SEO for search engines, and many more. It may also be trickier to collect customer information and effectively engage with those clients.

6. The marketplaces may make it more difficult to change

If you expand your business and expand your business, you'll have to implement significant changes to accommodate more sales. For example, you might want to update your shipping or marketing strategy, accept a variety of currencies, translate your content to several languages, or incorporate it your inventory or fulfillment management software.

Marketplaces that are third party can hinder the ability to implement such changes. They could not work with the platforms you'd like to use. Perhaps they don't permit you to make the modifications that you require to make in order to market globally.

Through this, you'll be able to accept hundreds of currencies, arrange shipping in a variety of methods, incorporate with plenty of tools, and customize your store any way that you'd like over time as you expand. You can also choose any hosting provider necessary to provide the resources, tools, and support required to handle growth in traffic.

In the end, it, the best method to start and build a successful online store. You benefit from a system that's easy to operate (no code required! ) with the ultimate flexibility, excellent support, and total control.