You sell on Amazon, eBay or Etsy, revenue is growing, but every month you feel more strongly that you’re working for someone else’s platform? That’s the most common moment business owners write to me. And they usually start with the wrong assumption: that moving sales from a marketplace to your own store means jumping in at the deep end. Close the account overnight and pray customers follow you.
Not at all. A well-run migration happens on two tracks: the marketplace stays a channel for finding new customers, while your own store gradually takes over a growing share of revenue, with a higher margin. Here’s the plan I’ve worked through with clients in practice.
Step 1: Work out how much you really give the platform
Before you decide anything, do a simple calculation. Marketplace fees vary by platform and category, but roughly speaking: Amazon’s referral fees are often somewhere around 8–15% in popular categories, eBay’s final value fees are commonly around 10–15%, and Etsy combines a transaction fee, payment processing and listing fees. On top of that come advertising (Amazon Ads, eBay promoted listings, Etsy Ads), fulfillment fees and paid promotions. All of these are approximate and change regularly, so check your own statements.
An example from practice: a store with a turnover of around €10,000 / $10,000 a month can easily leave €750–1,250 / $750–1,250 on the platform every month. That’s €9,000–15,000 / $9,000–15,000 a year: several times the cost of building your own store, handed over every year without building anything of your own. This figure is your reference point for every decision that follows.
Step 2: Build the store before you move anything
The order matters: first a working, polished store, then moving sales. The store has to be ready for customers who are used to a marketplace, which means offering what the platform has taught them to expect: fast checkout with Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Klarna, card payments via Stripe, reliable shipping with DHL, UPS or parcel lockers, a clear returns policy and a smooth buying process.
I recommend a WooCommerce store that you own: no subscriptions and no commission on sales, fully integrated with the payment providers and carriers your customers use. Why this system in particular? I explain it in my comparison WooCommerce vs Shopify for a small business, and I’ve broken down the ongoing costs in my post on the monthly cost of running an online store.
Step 3: Move your product range wisely – one stock, two channels
Don’t copy products over by hand. Multichannel integration tools can connect your marketplace account and WooCommerce into one system: shared stock levels, orders from both channels in one panel, automatic listing. That way running two channels in parallel doesn’t double your workload.
One thing you must not do: don’t copy your marketplace descriptions 1:1 to your store. Duplicate content shoots your SEO in the foot. Google has no reason to show your store when it sees identical text on a far more powerful domain. Write fresh descriptions for your own store: longer, answering customers’ questions and targeting the phrases people actually type into search.
Step 4: Build a brand people can find outside the marketplace
A marketplace customer buys “on Amazon”, not “from you”, and that’s the problem to solve. Your goal is for them to remember your brand and be able to find it on Google:
- use a consistent brand name on your marketplace account, in your store and on social media,
- set up a Google Business Profile and social profiles under the same name,
- invest in branded packaging and professional communication: this builds recognition legitimately and effectively.
Step 5: Give customers a concrete reason to buy direct
Since you don’t pay marketplace fees on your own store, you have a margin you can share with customers. Use it:
- a better price or a lower free-shipping threshold than on the marketplace,
- a discount code for the next purchase for newsletter subscribers,
- a loyalty program: points and discounts available only in your store,
- your full range in your own store, with only bestsellers on the platform.
Step 6: Build your own traffic sources
A store without traffic won’t take over your sales. You need to replace the marketplace’s search with channels of your own:
- SEO: category and product descriptions written for real search queries, plus a blog with guides, bring traffic that costs less month after month. It’s a long game, but with the best return (how SEO for online stores works),
- Google Ads: start with Shopping campaigns and campaigns on your brand name, so a customer who looks you up from your packaging lands in your store, not back on the marketplace,
- newsletter and remarketing: every customer who has bought directly once should have a reason to come back; automated email marketing does this for you.
Step 7: Measure the split and shift the weight
Once a month, compare: your own store’s share of sales vs the marketplace, the margin on each channel and the cost of acquiring a customer. For most of my clients, a realistic, healthy scenario looks like this: after a few months your own store takes over 20–30% of revenue, after a year up to half, with a clearly higher margin. At that point, deciding how much to keep on the marketplace stops being emotional and becomes pure math.
What not to do – three mistakes I see most often
- Closing your marketplace account overnight. You lose revenue before your own channel has had time to take it over. Migration takes months, not a weekend.
- A half-hearted store. A customer spoiled by Amazon won’t forgive a slow site, missing payment options or a chaotic cart. Your store has to be at least as convenient as the platform, or the whole plan falls apart.
- No budget for traffic. In the first phase, invest the fees you no longer pay into SEO and ads. It’s not a saving to pocket; it’s the fuel for taking over your sales.
Where to start?
If you sell on a marketplace regularly, you’ve already taken the first step: you know how to sell and you have a proven product. All you’re missing is your own channel. Wondering whether your own online store is worth it at all? With regular sales on a platform, the answer is almost always yes, and sooner than you expect.
Write or call me and we’ll work out your case with real numbers: how much you pay in fees, what a store would cost and when the migration starts paying for itself. The consultation is free.
