Selling on Marketplaces or Your Own Store: When Each Pays

Sell on both: lean on marketplaces while your site earns little from Google Ads, and shift weight to the site as that revenue grows. The first order is cheaper on a marketplace: Prom’s standard commission starts at 4.2% of the ordered product’s value. At the median ROAS, ads cost 34% of the revenue they bring for stores earning under $2,000 a month from Google Ads, and 9.6% for stores above $30,000 (GetProfit data, 114 stores, June 2025 – June 2026). Your own site keeps the buyer and the next order.

What is the difference between a marketplace and your own store?

An online marketplace is a platform where many independent sellers list their products. The platform runs the search and the order form, and charges a fee when an order goes through. Prom, Rozetka, Amazon and Etsy all work this way. Your own store is a site on your domain: you set the page, the price and the checkout, and the buyer becomes your customer.

Two other channels get confused with marketplaces. A comparison site only sends the shopper to your store and charges for the visit, as our guide to comparison shopping engines explains.

A large retailer buys stock and sells it under its own name, so for those goods it is the retailer. Amazon and Rozetka do both, and for an outside seller they work as marketplaces. The test is simple: whose name is on the order, and who sets the rules for reaching the buyer.

Choosing between the two is one decision in a bigger plan for growing a store with Google Ads.

How much does one order cost on a marketplace and on your own site?

On the first order, a marketplace usually costs you less than Google Ads. Each marketplace publishes its fees differently. Here is what the official pages said when we checked them on 2 October 2026.

To compare these fees with Google Ads, put ad cost in the same unit: ACoS. It is ad spend as a share of the revenue the ads bring, and it equals 1 ÷ ROAS. A ROAS of 500% means ads cost 20% of the revenue they bring. Set that beside the marketplace commission plus everything else the platform charges.

The percentages hide a few differences. Prom and Rozetka take their commission only on completed or successful orders; Prom charges per visit instead for services and goods mostly ordered by phone. Google Ads charges for clicks: for Shopping ads, Google says you pay when people click through to your site. So you pay cost per click before you know whether anyone buys.

A marketplace order still needs your stock, packing and delivery, just as an order on your site does.

An example: the same 300 orders through each channel

Example store, not client data.

A tableware shop with 3,000 products spends 40,000 a month on Google Ads and gets 180,000 in revenue from 300 orders. Its ROAS is 4.5, so ads cost 22% of revenue, or about 133 per order. Its gross margin is 35%, which leaves 63,000 of gross profit before advertising. Now suppose the same 300 orders came through a marketplace instead.

On the first order, the marketplace is cheaper in both cases. The site catches up only through repeat orders that need no new paid click. A buyer who returns from an email or types in your address costs neither a commission nor a click.

Against a 15% commission, that takes roughly one repeat order for every two buyers. Against 4.2%, it takes more than four per buyer, so a low-commission marketplace often stays cheaper on fees alone.

A full comparison for one order, including packages and the platform’s own promotion, is in marketplace fees vs Google Ads. To find the ad cost your margin can carry, start from your store’s unit economics.

Stores earning more from Google Ads spend a smaller share of it on ads: 34% against 9.6%

We grouped 114 stores by how much revenue Google Ads brought them in a typical month, from June 2025 to June 2026. Each store had at least 8 months with 100 or more clicks. We converted amounts in five currencies to US dollars at fixed rates. ROAS and orders are the figures Google Ads reports.

Read the last column against the marketplace commissions. Below $2,000 a month, at the median ROAS, ads cost 34 for every 100 of ad revenue. That is more than any headline commission in the marketplace fee table except Amazon’s 45% category. For a shop with a 35% gross margin, that leaves almost nothing.

From $2,000 to $30,000, ads cost 18–19, above the 8–15% Amazon charges in most categories. Above $30,000 they cost 9.6: inside Amazon’s usual range, still above Prom’s standard rate, which starts at 4.2%, and the buyer stays with you.

This is an observation, not an experiment. Stores with better returns may be the ones that could afford to grow, so growing doesn’t by itself lower your ad cost. Our ROAS is based on revenue, not profit, because ad accounts hold no purchase prices.

Our data covers Google Ads accounts only. Google Ads counts revenue from the conversion value your site sends, so marketplace sales never appear in it. We can tell you what the own-site channel costs at each level of ad revenue, not how much a marketplace sold for the same store.

Which mix of channels fits your stage?

Before moving volume between channels, check that the own-site channel is healthy. The portal’s account score adds up the state of your advertising across four areas: products, campaign structure, changes and analytics. If it points to a weak area, fix that first: the site’s ad cost is the number you are comparing with the commission.

Who owns the buyer and the next order?

On your own site, the buyer leaves an email and a phone number in your checkout. With their consent, you can write to them, offer the next product and bring them back without paying for another click. Those repeat orders are how a site catches up with a marketplace on cost.

On a marketplace, the platform sets those rules, and each platform writes its own, so read them before you plan to reach marketplace buyers. Amazon’s Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions Policy bans marketing messages and calls to action that encourage Amazon buyers to leave Amazon. It also bans links in seller emails or listings that steer buyers away from its sales process. Amazon allows marketing emails to its customers only within privacy law, including the customer’s consent.

We can’t measure repeat purchases in our data: ad accounts don’t show which buyer came back. Our guide to customer retention covers what a store can do to bring buyers back, and when spending on past buyers is worth it.

How do marketplaces and your own store meet inside Google?

Marketplaces can bring their sellers’ products to Google from their own accounts. Google’s Merchant API documentation describes the setup: a marketplace runs one advanced Merchant Center account per domain and creates accounts for its sellers inside it. The marketplace claims the domain once, at its own level, and the seller accounts inherit it. So when a marketplace shows your listing in Google this way, it appears under the marketplace’s domain, through the marketplace’s account.

Some platforms charge you for that advertising: Etsy’s Offsite Ads promote listings on sites such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Bing. You pay a fee on each sale that comes from those ads; Etsy’s selling page lists it at 15%. Etsy says Offsite Ads are optional for most sellers but may be required depending on 12 months of sales. For the fee details, Etsy points to its Help Center.

That raises three questions for a store that also runs its own campaigns:

1. Do you pay twice for one buyer? Your site, your marketplace listings and a second shop can all show for the same product. To check the overlap, see competing with yourself in one auction.
2. Where should the next advertising money go? Prom and Etsy, for example, sell their own promotion. Our comparison of marketplace advertising vs Google Shopping puts the options side by side.
3. What happens when a giant enters or leaves your auctions? That has its own guide: Amazon, Temu and Allegro in Shopping.

Your own store gets something a marketplace listing can’t give you: your own presence in Google. Google’s Search Central documentation says Product markup can make your pages eligible for merchant listing experiences, including popular product results and product snippets. Only pages where a shopper can buy the product are eligible, not pages with links to other sites that sell it. So a page with a “buy it on the marketplace” button doesn’t qualify.

The Shopping tab works through Merchant Center: Google’s documentation says participation is required to appear there. Shopping ads need the same base. Before you create them, you submit product data to Merchant Center and link it to your Google Ads account. Our guide to free listings on Google covers how products get shown there at no cost.

What changes when one catalogue sells in several places?

Multichannel selling means one catalogue goes to your site, a few marketplaces and the Google feed at the same time. Each channel keeps its own copy of stock and price, and several common mistakes come from those copies drifting apart. Here are seven to check for.

Products differ in where they sell best. Some do better where shoppers compare offers side by side, others where you control the page and the price. Our guide to which products to sell on marketplaces covers how to split the catalogue by role.

Markets differ too. In Ukraine, see how selling on Rozetka and Prom affects your own campaigns. For Czech, Slovak and Polish stores, there is a separate guide on Allegro, Kaufland and local marketplaces.

Questions owners ask before they choose

These come from our calls and meetings with store owners, reworded without names.

I sell on a marketplace and my own site has no traffic. Where do I start?

Keep the marketplace running while the site builds history. Your site needs product pages where people can buy and conversion tracking that reports real orders. It also needs a Merchant Center account with your product data, linked to Google Ads. Our guide to launching Google Ads after a marketplace covers what to expect in the first months.

The marketplace takes 5–6%. Will ads cost more than that?

On the first order, usually yes. Even stores in our data earning over $30,000 a month from Google Ads spend 9.6 per 100 of ad revenue at the median ROAS. The site pays back through repeat orders, your buyer list and prices you control. That works only if your margin carries the ad cost along the way.

Is Etsy a marketplace? And a big retailer that also hosts sellers?

Yes, Etsy is a marketplace: independent sellers list there, and Etsy charges listing, transaction and payment processing fees. A big retailer is a retailer for the goods it buys and sells under its own name. If it also opens its catalogue to outside sellers, that part works as a marketplace. For your ads, the difference that matters is who owns the order and the buyer.

We list one catalogue on several marketplaces. Where does Google Ads fit?

As one channel, measured on its own terms. Set your Google Ads target from your margin and its own ACoS, not from total company revenue. Then compare channels by cost per order and by how many buyers each one brings back.

What to do this month

1. Put every channel in one unit. For each marketplace, add up the commission, packages and paid promotion as a share of revenue. For your site, take ACoS from Google Ads. Compare them side by side.
2. Find your revenue group. Take your typical monthly revenue from Google Ads and compare your ACoS with stores in the same group in our data on 114 stores.
3. Check your margin line. If your ACoS is at or above your gross margin, the site loses money on first orders. Fix that before you move volume to it.
4. Check the health of your own channel. The account score in the portal rates your account out of 100, with a letter from A to F. The portal computes it on a fixed 90-day window and splits it into four areas.
5. Split the catalogue by role. Decide which products go to marketplaces, which to your site, and which to both.
6. Align your business details and prices. List every domain and marketplace profile that sells under your brand. Make sure the company name, contacts and prices match on all your domains.
7. Sync stock everywhere. Keep one stock count for the site, the marketplaces and the Google feed.
8. Start building a buyer list on your site. Ask for consent at checkout, so a second order can come without a paid click.

What state your ad account is in. One score instead of a dozen tabs of figures, plus a breakdown of exactly where the money leaks. The portal changes nothing without your consent.

Get your account score →

Sources

• Як продавати на Prom.ua (Пром.юа). Тарифні плани. Пром пакети. — Prom’s commission from 4.2% by category, the “Economy” mode from 2.1%, higher commission for “More sales” and “Turbo”, commission only on completed orders, a per-visit commission for goods mostly ordered by phone, the 1,900 UAH a year starter offer (7 August – 31 October 2026). Checked 2 October 2026.
• Тарифи — Rozetka’s seller help centre: commission by category and price range, charged on successful orders, rates shown after registration. Checked 2 October 2026.
• How much does it cost to sell on Amazon? | Sell on Amazon — Amazon US selling plans and referral fees by category. Checked 2 October 2026.
• How to sell on Etsy — Etsy’s listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee, payment processing fee by bank country, the Offsite Ads fee listed at 15% and the advertising sites. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions Policy (PDF) — Amazon’s rules on diverting buyers and on marketing emails; an undated PDF on Amazon’s own site. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Google Shopping Campaigns: Boost Product Visibility — Google: with Shopping ads you pay when people click through to your site or view your inventory. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Overview of Accounts sub-API | Merchant API — how marketplaces structure Merchant Center accounts and claim their domain. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Merchant listing (Product, Offer) structured data — which pages are eligible for merchant listing experiences in Google Search. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Share Your Product Data With Google — Merchant Center participation is required for the Google Shopping tab. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Shopping Ads | Google Ads API — Shopping ads need product data in Merchant Center and a linked Google Ads account. Checked 2 October 2026.
• GetProfit data: 114 stores with Google Ads, June 2025 – June 2026 — stores by monthly revenue from Google Ads, median orders and median ROAS by group.
• GetProfit Merchant Center checklist — business identity across domains and marketplace profiles, documented origin of goods.
• GetProfit calls and meetings with store owners — the questions in the section above, reworded without names.