Marketplace or your own site? An honest answer from a manufacturer

This is the question I'm asked most. The short answer is “both”, but that answer alone is useless, because the real issue is which one you invest in first, and how much.

What the marketplace is genuinely good at

A marketplace has ready-made traffic. Even if nobody knows you, you can appear in front of someone searching for your product. Payment, trust and shipping infrastructure are in place. It is the shortest path to a first sale, and it would be wrong to look down on it.

It is valuable for cash flow too: while your own site grows, the marketplace keeps the machine running.

What the marketplace doesn't tell you

Commission is the figure everyone looks at. But the real cost isn't the commission.

• The customer isn't yours. You don't know who bought, you can't reach them again, they don't join your email list.
• The price race. Among identical products lined up side by side, the only way to stand out is cutting the price, and that race has no end.
• The rules aren't yours. Campaign participation, return policy, ranking algorithm — all of it can change, and nobody asks you.
• The brand doesn't accumulate. If you sell on a marketplace for five years, at the end of the fifth year you are still effectively starting from zero.

What your own site is genuinely good at

On your own site the customer is yours. You get their email address, you know what they bought, you can sell to them again. You set the price. You describe the product the way you want — without being squeezed into the marketplace's template.

And most importantly: you create value that accumulates over the years. Visitors from search, an email list, repeat customers. These are an asset you could one day sell.

The painful side of your own site

Traffic doesn't come by itself. On the day you open the site your visitor count is zero, and it stays that way — unless you advertise or create content.

That is why the idea “I'll open my own site and get away from the marketplace” usually ends in disappointment. Your own site doesn't replace the marketplace; over time it sits beside it and grows its share.

A practical order

1. If your product is new and demand is untested: start on a marketplace. That is where you find out fastest whether it sells.
2. If sales have started: build your own site, but don't close the marketplace. At launch a site doesn't bring revenue, it brings a future.
3. At the same time: start collecting emails. You can't reach the marketplace customer, but you can put a leaflet in the box.
4. Once the site starts getting regular monthly orders: shift the ad budget to the site, because the customer you win there stays.

What I do

At ART IST I run both together: my own site carries the brand, Trendyol/Hepsiburada/n11 carry the volume. Stock and product information are managed in one place and flow to both sides automatically. I even linked the colour videos to the marketplace listings — because there too, describing the product properly is cheaper than cutting the price.

The decision isn't “one or the other”. The decision is how much effort and advertising you put into which channel — and that depends on what stage your business is at.