Selling only on Ozon is the worst thing you can do for business resilience. Based on my observations and a study of more than 400 stores run by clients and students, in 68% of cases sales above $50,000 a month come from sellers who trade on more than one platform.
A single platform, even the best one, will always deliver less than two or three together. So marketplaces should be treated as a tool, not as property.
Why one platform is a risk
When you sell on a marketplace, you are selling on someone else's territory with their rules and their imperfections. Because of those imperfections, seller stores get blocked, and a seller can lose an entire income level overnight and see their quality of life drop.
There is a second point: by growing a store on Ozon or Wildberries, you are growing not only your own business but the platform's business too. By putting effort and time into product card SEO, you attract a new audience from Yandex and Google search not only to your products but also to the platform you sell on.
Profit could be many times higher if you invested part of the money you earn not only in growing the marketplace store but also in testing and launching additional sales channels outside the platform.
Rented traffic versus ownership
Marketplace sales are easy to mistake for independence. From the outside everything looks the same: revenue, turnover, staff, warehouses, reports, plans. It seems you have your own business. But ask yourself a couple of questions:
- Who decides whose product cards are shown today and whose are not?
- Who can double your ad spend with one move of a slider in their dashboard?
- Who chooses whom to promote: you or a Chinese supplier with a lower price?
The answer is always the same: an algorithm that does not belong to you. I am not against marketplaces; they are a great tool. But a tool stays a tool only while you have an alternative and your own points of control.
Marketplaces are rented traffic. Your own channels are property. And every day you need to shift the balance toward your own channels, even by a millimeter.
Which channels to test
Beyond the platforms you already know, it is worth trying:
- your own YouTube channel;
- growing your own online store;
- selling through social networks;
- advertising with bloggers and creators.
This does not mean you should abandon the marketplaces. My focus is to stop confusing rent with ownership and to widen the geography and reach of your product promotion.
What to do
- Enter 2-3 marketplaces instead of one: together they will deliver more sales than one, even the best one.
- Direct part of your marketplace profit into testing and launching channels outside the platform.
- Build your own brand and production, not just product cards on someone else's site.
- Check where your real points of control are and where you depend on someone else's algorithm.
- Every day, shift the balance a little more toward your own channels.
