Having multiple online storefronts is a good thing
When I first started The GreenTech Shop I wanted to test sell on eBay before building my website. After a couple of months I realized that it would be a good idea to go ahead and keep the eBay storefront. I figured that having a storefront on eBay would be beneficial in that I could use the storefront to drive traffic to thegreentechshop.com, have another source of revenue, and to gauge interest in products that I sell. Plus it just made sense to tap into such a huge customer base, since eBay is one of the largest marketplaces in the world.
Afterwards, I decided to expand my business onto Amazon for the same reasons that I sold products on eBay. So currently, I have three storefronts that I use, eBay Amazon, and thegreentechshop.com.
In the last couple of months I have been slowly concentrating more on my website than outside storefronts. The great part about selling on your own website is that it is so much easier to process orders. You don’t have to comply with any eBay or Amazon methods or protocols. Plus you get to keep a bigger portion of the revenue. The bad part is that you are pretty much on your own in terms of marketing and developing a brand can be a slow process.
In my opinion, the strategy that makes the most sense is to have a mixture of selling on your website and to have storefronts on popular marketplaces. That way you can leverage the power of their established brands to help you build your own brand.