Acquisition Channels

Is It Worth Selling on a Marketplace as a Small Business?

On a Friday night, one email paused all of Arnie's sales. It lasted nine days. A colleague went through the same thing a year earlier and barely felt it. Here's why.

Luiz Philipe (LP)

Updated October 24, 2026

The email arrived on a Friday, at 6:47 p.m. It was four lines long.

"Your account is under review. Your listings have been paused until the verification is complete. You will be notified of the outcome."

Arnie read it in the garage that had turned into a stockroom, among boxes of bicycle accessories. Ten days to Father's Day, the best week of the year in his line of business. Six hundred pieces had arrived from the supplier on Tuesday, bought on credit terms.

He refreshed the page. Then refreshed it again. By nine that night, he knew the four lines by heart.

Is It Worth Selling on a Marketplace?

It is, as long as the marketplace is one of your acquisition channels, not the only one. It delivers something valuable to a small business: people who are already searching to buy, trust at the moment of payment and logistics you wouldn't have on your own. But the rules — commission, algorithm, suspension criteria — belong to the platform and change without asking permission. Used as a storefront that feeds your own channels, the marketplace accelerates you. Used as your only door, it becomes a lease with a contract only one side signs.

Arnie lived the second case. Vanessa, who shows up on day four, the first.

Day 1: The Silence

On Saturday morning, Arnie opened a support ticket. The automatic reply promised a response within five business days.

He realized something he'd never thought about: there was no one to call. In four years and more than eleven thousand orders, he had never spoken to a single person at the platform. It was a system that sold for him. And it had stopped selling.

His competitors were still there, with the same product, on the first page that used to be his.

Day 3: The Math Nobody Does

On Monday, the first invoice from the supplier arrived. The inventory was half paid for; the other half depended on sales that weren't happening.

That's when he thought about notifying his customers. "I'll send a message to everyone who's bought from me, telling them I'm selling elsewhere."

That's when the real shock hit.

He didn't have the customers. He had orders. Eleven thousand orders, and no list of his own: no email, no profile people followed, no store where someone could search for his name. Whoever bought from him bought on the platform. For most of them, Arnie's brand was just a small line beneath the listing title.

Four years of work, and the customer base was in another company's name.

Day 4: The Call to Vanessa

On Wednesday night, Arnie remembered Vanessa. The two had started on the same marketplace the same year, and met at a course for new sellers. She sold kids' costumes. She had been through a similar suspension the year before.

"Six days," she said. "It was awful. But the store didn't stop."

In her second year, Vanessa had decided the marketplace would be the storefront, not the house. She started building, slowly, other doors:

A brand name people could remember, on the packaging, the label and a thank-you card — always checking first what the platform's rules allowed her to include.

An Instagram profile where moms showed off their kids in costume, and where she announced new arrivals.

Her own online store, simple, which started selling little and grew with people who searched for the brand by name.

A Google business profile, for people searching for kids' costumes in her city.

Partnerships with three dance schools and two kids' party venues, which ordered batches for recitals and parties.

A second, smaller marketplace, where she also listed.

"When the account went down, I kept selling through the store, the schools and the other marketplace. It was a slow month. It wasn't the end."

Arnie hung up and stared at the boxes for a while.

They had started in the same place, the same year. She used the platform to become known. He used the platform so he wouldn't have to be.

Day 9: The Account Comes Back

On the ninth day, another four-line email arrived. The account was cleared. The review found no problem.

The listings came back, but not to the same place: nine days offline had pushed the product to the third page. Father's Day had already passed. The six hundred pieces, nearly all of them, were still in the garage.

None of it was Arnie's fault. That was the problem: the business depended on decisions that weren't his.

What the Marketplace Gives and What It Charges

There's no villain here. The marketplace delivers what it promises, but it charges more than what shows up in the fee schedule.

What it gives:

Ready-made demand: people who came in to buy.

Trust: the buyer doesn't need to know you to pay.

Payment and, often, logistics taken care of.

What it charges, besides money:

The customer belongs to the platform, not to you. You deliver, but you don't keep the relationship.

The rules change: commission, shipping, listing criteria, ranking.

Your product appears right next to a competitor's, which pushes the conversation toward price.

A suspension, fair or not, shuts off your revenue overnight.

The risk isn't in selling on a marketplace. It's in depending only on it.

How to Use the Marketplace as a Storefront, Not a Landlord

If you sell on a marketplace today, you don't need to leave. You need to stop living there. A path, in order:

1. Find out the size of your risk. Add up your revenue for the last six months and see how much came from each channel. If a single door accounts for nearly all of it, that's the size of your exposure.

2. Read the rules before anything else. Many platforms forbid steering the buyer off-platform through messages or listings. Work with what's allowed: a strong brand, careful packaging, a name the person can search for later.

3. Open a second marketplace. It's the fastest step to take the weight off a single door, because the operation is similar.

4. Create an address of your own. A simple online store or a catalog, plus a Google business profile. Start small; the goal is to exist outside the platform.

5. Open a channel for businesses or partners. Schools, gyms, physical stores, resellers, other brands with the same audience. A good partner buys in volume and doesn't depend on an algorithm.

6. Build a base that's yours. Followers, an email list, customers of your own store and of your partners. That's what carries the month when everything goes wrong.

If your online store still lives on ads, also read how to sell more in your online store without relying on ads.

The Question That Matters for You

Imagine that tomorrow, at 6:47 p.m., a four-line email arrives for your company. From the marketplace, from the social network or from your biggest customer.

How many days can your cash flow hold?

If the answer gave you a pit in your stomach, you already know which side you're on. And the good news is the same one Vanessa found in her second year: nobody has to build six doors at once. She opened one, measured, then opened the next.

The hard part isn't the will. It's knowing which doors exist and which to start with. That's what The 100 Acquisition Channels Guide is for: 100 ways to win customers, in 10 parts. One of them is entirely about platforms and marketplaces — product and service marketplaces, comparison sites, directories, coupon sites, a waitlist with referrals. The other nine show the doors that don't depend on any platform: partnerships, resellers, content and Google search, packaging inserts, direct sales to businesses. For each channel, you see what it is, a practical example, the first step to test it, who it works best for and what it costs to try. And you also get the spreadsheet to score channels and choose your first three, and the 30-day, day-by-day plan to launch the first new channel.

Next step

Don't depend on a single way to win customers

Everything in this article works better when new customers arrive every month. Most businesses depend on two or three channels and suffer when one of them slows down. The 100 Acquisition Channels Guide shows 100 ways to win customers, a practical example of each one and the first step to test it spending little or nothing.

✓The 100 channels, one by one, from the best known to the ones almost nobody uses
✓A practical example and a low-cost first step for each channel
✓A simple way to choose the channels that fit your business now
✓Bonus: Channel scorecard
✓Bonus: 30-day test plan

Get the 100 acquisition channels guide for $49

One-time payment · Instant access · 7-day guarantee

The guide costs less than a day of sponsored ads inside the marketplace. Access is immediate, by email, and the guarantee is 7 days through Hotmart. If it doesn't show you at least one new channel that makes sense for your business, you ask for a refund.

Arnie still sells on the marketplace. But since that ninth day, he doesn't keep the whole company inside it anymore.