Module 4 of 8
Marketplaces and platforms
Reach you rent, and what renting costs.
A marketplace hands you demand that already exists. That is a real advantage, particularly at the start, and it comes with terms that are worth understanding before you build a business on top of them rather than after.
What you are renting: the customer relationship. In most cases the platform owns the contact, sets the rules, controls how visible you are, takes a percentage, and can change any of it. Ranking usually favours volume and reviews, which is hard when you are new; the fee is not only the headline commission but also payment charges, returns, and any advertising the platform sells you to be visible on it. And you are ranked beside every competitor on a page designed for comparison, which pushes towards competing on price — the exact position ENT-102 and ENT-106 exist to keep you out of.
So use it deliberately. It is a good place to get the first customers and the first reviews when you have neither, and a poor place to be permanently, because a business whose entire demand belongs to somebody else has no floor under it. If you do use one, work from the first day on the part you can keep: your own record of who bought, a reason for them to come back to you directly, and your own page from ENT-106. Renting reach while you build your own is a strategy. Renting reach forever is a dependency.
You are renting the customer relationship, and the true fee includes payment charges, returns and paid visibility. Good for the first customers; poor as a permanent floor.