In this article, we consider a selection of strategies that you can implement to monetize your marketplace. We will discuss how each approach can make you money, and look at how other marketplaces are already using these strategies successfully. Let’s get started…

Vendor Membership Fees

Charging your vendors a membership fee to sell on your marketplace can be an effective way to monetize your website. This could involve a one-off fee for joining your site as a vendor, or a monthly subscription.

If you opt for a recurring monthly fee, consider providing a number of membership packages to cater for the needs of all your vendors. Plans could differ based on factors like the number of listings a vendor can publish. Or higher priced plans may provide additional benefits like prominent listing space, or priority support.

UK based marketplace OnBuy offers two seller membership packages to vendors who would like to sell products on their site. Let’s take a look at the features these packages provide…

• Standard Seller Package (£19 a month) – Unlimited product listings, support and PayPal seller protection.
• Partner Seller Package (£39 a month) – All the features from the Standard Package, as well as prominent listing positions in search results, homepage deal slots, newsletter featured deals, and more.

By providing a basic and an advance plan, vendors can choose the features and pricing structure that best suits their needs.

This model of monetization will work best if your marketplace is already an established brand with high levels of traffic regularly visiting your site. If your vendors can see the value in adding their products or services to your marketplace, they will be willing to pay to do so.

Freemium Customer Membership Fees

On the flip side to vendor membership fees is the option of charging the customers a membership fee. To understand whether to charge your vendors or customers, you must identify where the demand for your marketplace lies. Are the customers prepared to pay to access the services or products? Or do the vendors need your marketplace to connect with their target customer base? Once it is clear where the demand lies you can charge accordingly.

If you opt to charge customers a membership fee, following a freemium customer membership model can be an effective strategy. This helps you to monetize your marketplace whilst preventing the alienation of those potential customers who don’t want to pay to view.

In this instance, customers can browse and even shop on your marketplace for free, but certain features will be unavailable to them unless they upgrade. This could be access to premium listings, special offers, an ad-free service, and additional app features, to name a few options. By providing core features for free, visitors to your site are likely to become avid customers, leading to sign-ups to your premium membership plan.

A good example of this freemium model is Shutterstock, a high-end online digital image marketplace. Customers can view all the images available to purchase, and buy images in bundles of five. However, if customers want to download multiple images, then signing up to a premium monthly subscription plan is advisable to ensure the best price per image.

Listing Fees

Some large marketplaces charge a listing fee for every item a vendor lists for sale on their site. For emerging marketplaces, this isn’t a good strategy, as you want to encourage as many vendors to join your site as possible. But, once your website becomes popular, then charging listing fees can be very profitable.

A great example of this is Etsy. When Etsy was in its infancy, listings were free, to encourage vendors to list their products. However, once Etsy became well known, with large amounts of traffic visiting daily, it introduced listing fees. It now charges vendors $0.20 for each item listed.

eBay also charges a listing fee, or insertion fee as they call it. However, they gift sellers up to 50 free listings each month, or more if you have your own eBay store. These free listings are an effective way to encourage vendors to initially sign up, and to then continue to place listings on eBay.

Premium Listings

Another effective way to monetize your marketplace is to charge vendors to place premium listings on your website. A premium listing would be given a key position on your website, making the listing more visible to customers, in comparison to other similar listings.

Featured listing positions could include…

• On the homepage
• At the top of a specific category
• On the first page of search results
• In advertising space in a sidebar of a relevant page

Premium listings can also contain extra information, including larger images, extra text, further social links, and other features to help the listings stand out from the crowd.

Again, Etsy is a good example of a marketplace offering its vendors a premium listing service. Vendors can pay Etsy to promote their listings, helping to highlight the listing in search results.

Transaction Fees

A common approach used by many marketplaces is to charge a commission on every transaction that occurs. This is often a preferred option for vendors, as they aren’t out of pocket before they have even made a sale.

Transaction fees can be charged as a flat rate or percentage of the sale. Most marketplaces that have implemented this monetization model charge a percentage fee. However, if your market sells big ticket items then vendors will not be happy to pay a huge percentage in commission fees, making a flat rate fee a better option. eBay UK offers a combination of both options, charging a 10% commission fee, which is then capped, ensuring sellers never pay more than £250 per item.

Airbnb charges both hosts and guests a service fee for each booking. Hosts are generally charged a 3% commission fee, and guests up to 20% of the booking subtotal. It is also important to note that Marketplaces selling physical goods instead of services generally charge lower transaction fees. Global giant Alibaba, for example, charges transaction fees of between 5 and 8%.

Advertising

Advertising on a marketplace works in a similar way to that of premium listings. Vendors, or third-party businesses with products and services related to your site’s niche, can pay to display adverts in prominent positions on your marketplace.

Amazon allows vendors to create adverts to promote their products, brand, and/or store. Although the adverts are all displayed in key ad space, vendors are only charged an advertising fee when the ad is clicked on.

When displaying ads on your marketplace, be careful they don’t interfere with the user experience your site provides. Too many ads, or adverts not in any way relevant to your audience, can cause visitors to become disenchanted with your site, and consequently lower returning visitor numbers.

Final Thoughts on How to Successfully Monetize Your Marketplace

As you can see, there are numerous strategies that you can implement to help you to successfully monetize your marketplace. The monetization model you choose will depend on your niche, and the type of vendors and customers you are dealing with. Remember to look at where the demand is (customers or vendors) and then charge accordingly.

As your marketplace grows, your monetization options will also broaden, and it is important that they adapt with your business to ensure you generate the maximum amount of revenue. So, now you know the options available, which methods will you use to monetize your marketplace?

Looking to create a marketplace? Then check out Vendify, the new community marketplace platform from the clever theme developers here at Astoundify.

The post How to Successfully Monetize your Marketplace appeared first on Astoundify.

In this article, we will consider five key approaches that you should adopt to help ensure your marketplace achieves its goals. These include attracting quality vendors and providing excellent vendor experience, creating a loyal customer base, ensuring a smooth payment process, and adapting your monetization strategies over time. By the end of reading you will have a clear understanding of what your marketplace needs to succeed.

1. Provide Quality

A key feature that all successful marketplaces have in common is ‘quality’. If you want customers to repeatedly visit your site, and part with their money, then you need to be providing your consumer base with high-quality vendors, products and services.

As running an online marketplace becomes more and more popular, selecting a niche or specific industry for your marketplace is a must. You then need to ensure that items sold on your site are relevant to this niche, and will add value to your visitors’ lives. By making a name for yourself as a marketplace that deals in high-quality goods, your site will quickly become the go-to marketplace in your chosen niche or industry.

2. Excellent Vendor Experience

Successful marketplaces always ensure an excellent vendor experience. By providing your vendors with an impressive user experience, you will help to secure their commitment to your marketplace. So what can you do to guarantee this top user experience? Let’s take a look…

• Use a Secure and Well Built Platform – It is crucial that your marketplace provides a seamless performance. From site speed to transaction security, vendors need to be able to trust your platform. Vendify, created by the developers here at Astoundify, is a powerful marketplace platform and a must see for anyone considering setting up their own marketplace.
• Ensure an Easy Set Up Process  – Set up should be a smooth, intuitive process. This will enable vendors to quickly and easily list their products and services, and then get selling.
• Provide Extensive Features – Providing a wide range of features to cater for the many needs of your vendors is a must. From product and sales management, to customer info and analytics, vendors need to be able to quickly access the data they need from one central dashboard.
• Allow Customization – Offering customizable options, so vendors can display products and information in a way that reflects their brand, will allow sellers to take ownership of their listings and pages.
• Provide Support – Supporting your vendors and providing answers to any questions or problems that may arise is vital. Consider creating a well-organized knowledge base that sellers can rely on, enabling them to quickly find answers to queries, as well as providing further personalized support.

Evidently, there is much you can do to ensure your marketplace delivers an excellent user experience. However, if you want your marketplace to be successful, it’s equally important to focus on the customers…

3. Create a Loyal Customer Base

Another key strategy of successful marketplaces is to create a loyal customer base, that returns again and again to make purchases. To do this you need to build trust with your customers and create a reputation as the top marketplace in your niche. Here are some ways to do so…

• Provide Quality – As previously referred to, it is crucial that you ensure the vendors, products, and services sold on your marketplace are high quality. This will establish your site’s reputation as a marketplace well worth visiting.
• Allow Customers to Leave Reviews – Giving customers the opportunity to leave reviews on your marketplace demonstrates transparency, a sure way to earn trust.
• Protect Your Customers – Your marketplace needs to be a trusted intermediary. Therefore, ensure all necessary legal frameworks are in place, terms and conditions agreed with vendors, and safeguards set up for payment processes and site security.
• Be Present on Social Media – Running campaigns and connecting with your target consumer base is an effective way to keep your marketplace fresh in people’s minds and remind them to return to your site.
• Offer Incentives to Loyal Customers – Providing incentives for regular consumers and rewarding their loyalty can help turn one off buyers into lifelong customers.

Retaining customers is much more cost effective than constantly trying to attract new audiences. Therefore, make sure building a loyal customer base becomes a priority.

4. Seamless Checkout Process

A seamless checkout process will cut down on those abandoned shopping carts and ensure customers complete purchases. So let’s take a look at some key features that successful marketplaces use to create a smooth checkout process…

• Site Navigation – Ensure the checkout process is easy to navigate, with uncluttered page layouts and clearly visible ‘next step’ buttons.
• Checkout Steps – Keep the number of checkout steps to a minimum. If the checkout process is too long winded you will quickly lose customers.
• Logging In – Provide customers with the option of logging in with a social media account or checking out as a guest.
• Accept Popular Payment Methods –  Ensure you accept all major credit cards and that the payment gateway provider you use is reputable and trusted.
• Be Upfront with Prices – Display the full price of an item on the product page. Don’t wait until the final checkout page to spring extra costs on a customer. If shipping costs extra, be clear about this from the start, and ensure the shipping fees are reasonable.

The take away here is that customers don’t want to part with surplus information. Neither do they want to take more than a few clicks to make a purchase. Therefore, just ask for the bare essentials, and keep the whole checkout process as streamlined as possible.

5. Change your Monetization Strategies as Your Marketplace Grows

As your marketplace grows, and traffic increases, the monetization options available will start to broaden. There are numerous ways to earn a living from your marketplace. Options include…

• Vendor Subscription Fees – Charge your vendors a subscription fee to list and sell products on your marketplace.
• Listing Fees – Charge a listing fee for every item listed on your site.
• Premium Listings – Charge vendors a premium for listings featured in prominent positions.
• Transaction Fees – Another well-used profit-making strategy is to charge a fee for each transaction made on your marketplace. This fee can be a percentage of the price, or set at a flat rate.
• Advertising Fees – Charging to advertise on your site can also be very profitable. Consider providing banner ad space at the top of a page, or displaying ads in sidebars.

Successful marketplaces alter their revenue methods over time. Most new marketplaces will opt to simply charge vendors a fee for each transaction. This is because the traffic they receive is not substantial enough to warrant charging for listings or advertising space. However, as a marketplace becomes more popular, and the demand from vendors to be visible on your site increases, you can begin to introduce vendor subscription fees, charge for premium listings, and more.

For more information on how to generate revenue from your marketplace, check out our article on How to Successfully Monetize Your Marketplace.

Final Thoughts on Successful Marketplaces

Building a marketplace from scratch isn’t easy and will take time and effort. However, if you take note of the well-learned lessons discussed in this article, you will be able to implement the right strategies to help your marketplace succeed.

Not found the right platform for your marketplace yet? Then it’s time to check out Vendify.

The post Five Things that Successful Marketplaces Do! appeared first on Astoundify.

Don’t worry! In this article we will discuss a range of strategies to help you reach out to potential vendors, grab their attention, and help boost the number of vendors listing on your marketplace. From networking at local events, to joining online communities in your niche, revamping marketing emails, and offering rewards for referrals, we have a wide assortment of approaches that will help you grow the number of vendors selling on your marketplace. Let’s get started…

1. Reach out to Your Professional and Social Networks

Word of mouth and recommendations go along way in the world of business. Without even realizing it, you will have colleagues, friends, and family members who either have businesses relevant to your marketplace niche, or know people who do.

Connect with your professional and social networks and discuss your marketplace plans with them. Crucially, ask them to spread the word about your venture, as well as recommend your marketplace to potential vendors that they know from their own networking circles. If your friends and colleagues can vouch for you, then vendors will feel more comfortable in trusting your marketplace and taking a chance on you.

2. Attend Events, Trade Shows and Meetups

Meeting people in person, and building those all-important personal relationships, is key to signing up vendors for your marketplace. An effective way to do this is to attend events, trade shows, and other meetups that are relevant to your niche.

By having conversations with potential vendors face-to-face, enthusiastically promoting your marketplace, and answering any questions or concerns people may have, you can help encourage vendors to register for your site. Depending on your niche, events and meetups could be local or more further afield. Either way, making the effort to get yourself and your brand ‘out there’ should be a priority.

3. Join Online Communities, Groups, and Forums

As well as meeting up with potential vendors in real-life, it is also important to connect with people online. Find communities, groups, and forums in your niche where you can interact with participants and give your name and brand visibility.

By contributing to threads on forums, taking part in discussions, and replying to comments on social media, you will become a recognized name in your industry. Then, when you do reach out on these platforms to partake in a bit of blatant marketplace promotion, potential vendors will already be familiar with your name and be more open to starting a dialogue.

4. Revamp Your Email Campaigns

Sending the odd email here and there, hoping to connect with potential vendors, will not generate optimal results. Instead, use a professional email marketing service that will enable you to segment your email list, personalize your emails, and send targeted email campaigns based on recipients’ interactions with your marketplace. (Recommended email marketing providers include AWeber, MailChimp, and ConvertKit).

Creating specific drip campaigns, based on a potential vendor’s behavior in relation to your marketplace, ensures that your email content is relevant and deals with each vendor’s specific needs. For example, a cold-call email introducing your marketplace should read very differently to a follow-up email sent to someone you met and conversed with at a trade show. By sending the right emails to the right people, your emails are more likely to engage with the receiver, and ultimately increase vendor conversions to your marketplace.

5. Make Phone Calls

Alongside your email campaigns, picking up a phone can see results. Talking on the phone immediately creates relationships, and enables you to have frank conversations about the benefits of your marketplace, and what vendors can expect if they choose to sell on it.

Cold-calling isn’t an easy option. So it is important that you know as much about the business as possible before you pick up the phone. Always try and speak to the person in charge of making decisions, ensuring your pitch reaches the right ears. Ringing early in the morning or late in the evening, outside of secretary hours, can help overcome this problem.

More often than not, you will find follow-up calls to be one of your most successful approaches. The fact that a vendor has shared their phone number with you shows that they already have an interest in your marketplace. All that is left is for you to make a convincing argument for signing up.

Before making a call, think carefully about what you are going to say. Sell the benefits of joining your marketplace, but don’t be too pushy. Remember, building a strong relationship with your vendors is key to a successful long term relation, so start as you mean to go on.

6. Be Present on Social Media

Building a presence on social media is a must for any online business in 2019. The social platforms are an effective way to promote your marketplace and will help you become a familiar brand in the eyes of vendors and customers alike. Use your social channels to reach out to potential vendors – like, comment, and share their images and posts, ensuring your brand becomes an every-day name.

7. Advertise

Advertising on social media, as well as Google, can be a great way to reach out to potential vendors. Ads will help your marketplace gain exposure with new possible vendors, as well as remarket and reconnect with those who have already shown an interest in your site but have not yet signed up. Although advertising will cost you, if you track your analytics you can get a good idea on the number of leads and conversions your ads generate.

8. Reward Referrals

Once you have a number of vendors signed up and selling on your marketplace, encourage them to promote your site amongst their own vendor networks. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. So rewarding vendor to vendor referrals will help you quickly grow the number of sellers that list on your site. Rewards could include financial discounts off listing fees or site membership, free access to advertising space, or displaying listings in prominent positions on your site.

Final Thoughts on Successful Ways to Reach Out to Potential Vendors

As you can see, there are numerous ways to reach out to potential vendors. By persevering with a range of approaches, your vendor numbers will soon start to snowball. And with an increase in vendors will come an increase in customers. So what are you waiting for – let the hard work begin!

Which strategies will you use to reach out to potential vendors to help grow your marketplace? Please share your thoughts in the comments below…

Looking for a platform for your new marketplace? Then check out Vendify – the new WordPress marketplace theme from the developers here at Astoundify.

The post Reach Out to Potential Vendors: Eight Successful Strategies to Grow Your Online Marketplace Seller List appeared first on Astoundify.

In this article, we look at how to provide a top-end vendor user experience that sellers will be happy to pay for. We discuss key features that you should consider offering, like a drag and drop interface, analytics, comprehensive support, and branding and customization options for each shop. And we also think about potential incentives that you can offer to boost sign ups to your vendor membership plans. Let’s get started…

Provide a User-Friendly Interface

Providing a high-quality user experience is a must if you want to charge vendors a subscription to sell on your marketplace. Vendors must feel like they are getting something for their money, so you need to ensure that your platform provides an intuitive dashboard, useful features, extensive support, and processes that don’t leave sellers feeling frustrated.

Vendify, the impressive marketplace theme created by the developers here at Astoundify, provides an extremely user-friendly interface that caters for the skills and needs of all vendors, whatever their experience selling online. Vendors can access all the features they need within a custom built interface, ensuring that they won’t need to deal with WordPress at all.

So what features does the Vendify interface include? Let’s take a look…

• Drag and Drop Editor – Using a drag-and-drop editor, marketplace shops and product pages can be created and customized in real-time within the Vendify dashboard. This makes shop set up quick and easy, saving vendors time and helping them display their products in beautiful layouts, which ultimately will help push sales.
• Branding and Customization Options – Vendors want to stand out from the crowd and keep their own identify, not just become yet another marketplace seller. Vendify enables sellers to customize their online stores and add their own branding, including logos, colors, shop header images, taglines, and more.
• Product Management – It is important that vendors can easily view and manage products and orders. Vendify also allows vendors to add notes to their orders to keep organized.
• Analytics – Providing advanced analytics, that supply vendors with information on their product sales, will help them tweak their marketing strategies, and ultimately increase revenue.

Using a marketplace theme like Vendify, that incorporates all of these useful features, will provide an impressive user-experience that vendors will be prepared to pay a monthly subscription for.

Create an Extensive Support Network

Creating sufficient support for your vendors should be a priority, as this is a key feature that vendors will be prepared to pay for. Let’s have a look at some areas of support that you should consider offering…

• Knowledge Base – Create an in-depth knowledge base, where your vendors can access articles and video tutorials to help them with setting up their account, or find answers to any queries. This will not only support your sellers, but also ensure you aren’t being repeatedly asked the same questions via other support channels.
• Facebook Page – Setting up a Facebook page, where your vendors can support each other, share what is working well, and answer each other’s questions, is a great way to grow a seller community whilst providing an extra layer of support.
• Email Support/ Live Chat / Phone – Choose what support options work best for you and your sellers.

Sellers will be prepared to pay for high-quality support, so this is an area worth investing in.

Offer Incentives

Offering incentives to sign up sellers to a subscription plan is another effective strategy. Here are some potential incentives that could help increase your vendor numbers….

• Promotional First Month – Consider offering the first month for free, or the first couple of months at a discounted price.
• No Contract – Don’t put vendors off by trying to sign them into a contract, simply offer a month to month subscription.
• Don’t Pay Until You’ve Sold Your First Product – Vendors may be skeptical that your marketplace is the right match for their products. Allow them to set up a shop, then wait until they have made a sale or two before charging a membership payment.
• Numerous Membership Plans – By providing a number of membership plans that range in price you can appeal to all potential vendors, whatever their budgets.

A refer-a-friend scheme, where current vendors get money off their subscription if they bring a new seller onboard, is also an effective strategy as it rewards current vendors and equally helps to grow your membership numbers.

Ensure Tight Security

The security of your marketplace is another crucial factor, and you will find many sellers happy to pay a subscription for advanced security features. Sellers want to know that their data, and that of their buyers, is safe and secure. They also want to sell their products on a website that is optimized for performance, with fast loading times, minimum downtime, and high security levels.

So how can you improve your website’s security? Here are a few key strategies…

• Choose a Reputable Hosting Provider – With hosting, you get what you pay for. A high-end host will incorporate numerous security and performance related features into its service, alongside impressive support. Do your research before selecting a provider – check on past security scares, downtime figures, and other performance data – this will help ensure you are getting a host you can rely on.
• Buy a SSL Certificate – Purchasing a quality SSL certificate is a must. An SSL certificate will encrypt buyers data and personal information, helping increase security and build your marketplace a reputation for reliability.
• Install a Security Plugin – Wordfence is an impressive free WordPress security plugin. It contains both a firewall and a malware scanner, which will monitor and protect your marketplace.
• Backup Your Website – Having a current backup of your marketplace is crucial. Then, if the worst does happen and your site is lost, you can quickly restore the backup. This ensures that your site won’t lose too much uptime, and your vendors’ revenue won’t be overtly affected.

Create High Levels of Traffic

Probably the most important factor for a vendor, when deciding whether to pay for a subscription to sell on a marketplace website, is traffic levels. If your marketplace is receiving high levels of traffic from the right target market, then a seller will be prepared to pay to list their products on your site.

So let’s find out how to boost traffic levels…

• Social Media – Grow your presence on social media, helping you to find and connect with the target audience for your marketplace. Follow competitors, vendors, and other potential sellers, join groups and communities within your niche, and get your name out there.
• Mailing List – Make growing your marketplace mailing list a priority. By collecting email addresses you can stay in contact with people who have visited your site and either shown an interest in the products being sold or made a purchase. You can then send them promotional emails, inform them of new vendors and products being sold on your site, and consequently increase repeat customer numbers.
• Advertising – Paying for ads to promote your marketplace is an effective way to reach out to new potential customers. By understanding your demographic, you can work out where best to advertise – this may be Google, Facebook, Instagram, or other sites. By tracking your ads you can monitor how much traffic they are sending to your marketplace, and if this traffic is converting into sales.
• Real Life Events – Being present at real-life events will help you personally meet your target audience and market your site to them. Going to trade shows, meetups, and other in-person events should ensure your marketplace becomes memorable to the masses, which in turn should increase traffic numbers.
• Customer Reward Scheme – Reward repeat customers with discounts, free shipping, or other incentives. By encouraging people to return for future purchases you will help turn a one-off buyer into a life-long customer.

When first starting up your marketplace, it may not be possible to charge vendors a subscription. However, by using the above strategies, you can boost traffic to levels that vendors will be prepared to pay for.

Final Thoughts on How to Charge Vendors a Subscription

If you want to charge vendors a subscription to list on your marketplace, then you need to offer a premium service. Top features, including user experience, impressive support channels, and high levels of security, as well as sign up incentives, are all factors that may increase vendor membership.

However, to build up a large base of paying vendors, the most important strategy to concentrate on is growing traffic levels. By providing vendors with a platform that is frequently visited by large numbers of their target audience, you will find sellers will be more than willing to pay a subscription fee. Good Luck!

Any top tips for implementing vendor subscriptions? Please share your thoughts in the comments below…

The post How to Charge Vendors a Subscription to Sell On Your Marketplace appeared first on Astoundify.

In this article, we discuss a number of potential dangers that all marketplace owners should be aware of. We then consider how to prevent these problems in the first place, and how to overcome them if they do arise. These include selling poor quality products, having weak security, and customer service issues.

So let’s have a look at some of the potential hazards of running a marketplace, and how they can be dealt with…

Selling Poor Quality Products

As a marketplace owner, you will find that you have a distinct lack of control over the products that are displayed on your site. This is because it is extremely hard to verify vendors, and only time will tell if customers are happy with the products they have purchased.

However, selling poor quality merchandise is a sure fire way to quickly lose your customer base and earn your site a poor reputation. So what can you do to ensure that the products sold on your marketplace are top quality?

What Can You Do?

Putting vendor and product checks in place before and after accepting a vendor, can help ensure product quality control. Here are some strategies to help with this…

• Research New Vendors – Before you accept a new vendor on your site, do your research. Check out where have they previously been selling products, what their reviews and ratings are like, and if they have had any bad feedback.
• Ask for Product Samples – If it is not possible to meet the vendor in person and look at their products, ask for some samples to be sent. This may not be feasible for all marketplace niches, but it is a strategy worth keeping in mind if you are unsure whether to accept a particular seller.
• Encourage Reviews and Ratings – Use a ratings and reviews system, allowing customers to score and comment on products they have purchased. This is an effective and transparent way to hold your vendors to account.
• Track Product Returns – Monitor product returns to see which vendors get a higher than average return rate, and find out the reasons behind this.

Keep an eye on vendors reviews and ratings and monitor returns. If products are flashing up as poor quality it is important that you act fast, banning the vendor from your site if necessary.

An apology email to disappointed customers, which could contain a compensatory offer or discount code for future orders, can also help keep your buyers happy and encourage them to continue shopping on your marketplace.

Weak Security

A busy marketplace will deal with sensitive data from customers on a daily basis, which needs to be kept safe and secure. On top of that, websites can easily fall foul of viruses and other security issues, which at best can cause problems with user experience, and at worse can take down your whole site.

Security breaches on a large scale can cause users to become frustrated with your site and lose trust in your business. This can severely damage your reputation as a marketplace, and long term lose you customers and sales.

What Can You Do?

So let’s find out how to secure your website…

• Use WordPress – There are a wide assortment of platforms that you can use to build your website. However, if you want a secure marketplace then using WordPress is your best bet. WordPress is a free open-source content management system used by over 30% of the top ten million websites worldwide. This software is constantly audited and updated by WordPress experts, helping to ensure it stays ahead of any major potential security issues.
• Select a Reputable Theme – It is important to choose a top quality theme designed by reputable developers. Vendify, created by the developers here at Astoundify, is a marketplace theme that is well maintained and regularly updated, keeping security holes to a minimum.
• Install a Security Plugin – Wordfence is a top-level WordPress security plugin that includes an endpoint firewall and malware scanner, helping to protect your site from malicious traffic.
• Choose a Quality Hosting Provider – Research hosting providers before making a decision on the right host for your marketplace. You need a provider with a good security track record that has stringent security checks in place.
• Purchase a SSL Certificate – It is crucial that sensitive customer data is kept safe. An SSL certificate will encrypt all data traveling between browsers and your website server, adding an extra layer of protection against hackers.

If your site is hacked then you need to get it fixed asap. Use the WordPress backup plugin UpdraftPlus to make backups of your website, so if the worst does happen and your site goes down, you can quickly restore a previous version.

Customer Service Issues

As your marketplace grows, customer service issues can become a real problem. From vendors to customers, you will quickly find you have a lot of people to keep happy. Be prepared for numerous queries on all aspects of your website and service, from how to list products, to payment issues and buyer returns.

If your customer service isn’t up to scratch then both sellers and buyers will quickly become frustrated with your marketplace. So what can you do to ensure high levels of customer service?

What Can You Do?

Let’s take a look at these top tips to ensure top-quality service for both your vendors and buyers…

• Extensive Knowledge Base – Creating a knowledge base for your vendors, which walks them through every detail of how to sell on your marketplace, will help support the sellers and allow them to independently set up their stores on your site.
• Clear Customer Service Terms and Conditions – Having clear terms and conditions displayed on your website will give everyone a point of reference when problems do arise.
• Customer Service Strategies in Place – As well as a knowledge base, ensure other customer service strategies are in place. These could include community forums, live chat, email support, or interactions via social media.
• Training for Support Staff – By providing training for your staff, they will understand your customer service expectations and how to react to customer queries and situations as they arise.

By being proactive, and setting up customer service strategies and transparent terms and conditions, you will ensure consistency, which will help your marketplace become renown for excellent customer service.

Final Thoughts on the Potential Dangers of Running a Marketplace

Being aware of the potential dangers of running a marketplace, and putting systems in place to deal with any issues before they even arise, is a must. That way, you are prepared for any eventualities, and can react quickly as and when problems do occur.

What’s your experience of running a marketplace? Please share your thoughts in the comments below… And if you ready to create an online marketplace, then check out Vendify.

The post Potential Dangers of Running a Marketplace Revealed (And How to Overcome Them) appeared first on Astoundify.

In this article we will look at six very effective ways to monetize your directory site. From selling listings and advertisements to businesses, to charging visitors for access to content, or setting up your own AirBnB style booking site, we will discuss multiple revenue options that you could enable on your own directory site.

Using Listify to Create a Directory Site

Listify is our very own WordPress directory theme. Purpose built, this beautiful, stylish and responsive theme is ideal for creating and monetizing a directory website.

Listify provides specific directory site features, including built-in listing support and advanced geolocation filtering. This ensures your visitors receive a great user experience, and are shown relevant content based on their current location. Listify is also quick and easy to set up. With demo content and a live drag and drop editor, you can brand and customize your site without having to have a degree in design.

As for monetizing, Listify caters for all your needs. Whether you are looking to charge businesses for creating listings and advertising on your directory, or charge customers for access to your site, content, and bookings, Listify has all the necessary features to support these different revenue streams.

Let’s now consider the options for successfully monetizing your directory site…

1. Charge for Listings on Your Directory Site

The most obvious way to monetize your directory site is to charge for directory listings, an option that our own directory theme Listify offers through integration with WooCommerce. Listings can be anything, from restaurants, shops, and hotels, to financial services, property, and events. You can charge businesses just to place a listing, or to upgrade to a premium listing that displays extra information.

Premium listings can range in price, depending on what they offer. More expensive listings can include extra features, including images, more text, social media links, and lots more. Sought after listing positions, at the top of a page or in a featured space, can also generate higher fees.

Selling listings can be an effective way to create recurring revenue. A monthly fee can be charged per listing, with the listing on display until the subscription is canceled. Alternatively, a one-time fee can be charged for a limited amount of time.

Bear in mind, if you are trying to sell listings to businesses, you will need a to be able to show that your site is receiving adequate traffic, as people will want to see a return for their money.

2. Let Businesses Claim Their Listings

A great way to keep your site relevant and updated, as well as generating a profit, is to encourage businesses to claim their own listings. This involves less of a hard sell than simply selling listings, and ensures your site is displaying the correct information.

Both Google Business and Yelp provide the option for businesses to claim their own listing. It works by a directory site posting all the listings in their niche, or location, for free. Businesses can then claim, or purchase, their own listing.

By claiming their listing, companies have the option of adding more text, photos, and further contact links, replying to reviews, updating important information like opening hours, and lots more. This gives them control over the information displayed about their business. It also enables companies to use their listing to promote their brand.

For you, the directory site owner, this is a great way to monetize your site, generate traffic and display the correct information that your audience might need.

Listify, our directory theme, integrates with our own Claim Listing plugin. This enables businesses to verify and edit their data, keeping it up to date. It also ensures you can generate a regular revenue from listings that have been claimed.

3. Sell Advertising Space

Many site directories choose not to charge for listings, or to claim a listing, and this can be understandable. Having all businesses listed, and their information all up to date, is important if you want to run a successful directory website and provide a great user experience for your audience. If you charge for listings, then you may end up with a site that isn’t displaying all the correct content for the businesses in your niche, which may lose you return visitors.

Selling advertising space can be a very effective way to monetize your directory site. Depending on your theme, advertisements can be placed within your posts and pages. Listify, for example, allows banners to be placed in any widgetized area throughout your site. This enables you to place relevant ads with specific content, ensuring the user experience isn’t negatively affected by ads, and make money from every page of your site.

Adverts can be charged as a recurring fee, giving you a regular income, or as a one off payment for a set time period. However, as with charging for listings, you will need to show that your site is receiving substantial traffic to entice companies to place an ad. Google AdSense, or another ad service, can also be used to monetize advertising space.

AdRotate is a free WordPress plugin that can help you to sell and manage advertisements on your directory site. You can run advertising campaigns from within your WordPress dashboard, create your own adverts and monitor the results. AdRotate Pro also supports geo-targeting and mobile adverts, avoids ad blocking, and lots more. If you are looking to go down the advertisement route, then AdRotate is definitely worth checking out.

4. Make Individual Listings Private

Another way to monetize your directory site is to charge your visitors to view content. By making individual listings private, you can then charge your audience to view them.

Plugins like Restrict Content Pro enable you to hide specific listings, and then take payments from your audience to access them. This can be in the form of a one-off payment or a recurring subscription. Once they have made the payment, visitors can then view the protected listing.

If you are going to make individual listings private in this way, make sure the listings are important enough to pay for. A good example of paid for listings can often be seen on job websites. Here jobs offering a higher salary are often hidden from general view, as it is worth people’s while to buy access to higher paying jobs.

So, if your directory is in a niche where your audience will pay to see private listings, this could potentially make you some good money.

5. Set Up an Exclusive Membership Directory Site

Creating an exclusive membership directory site is a great way to generate a regular recurring revenue. Our directory theme Listify provides the option of making your directory site exclusive to paid members.

Customers will have to sign up and pay a fee to access your site and the information on it. This could be a one-off fee, but more likely to be a monthly payment. To make a directory membership site truly successful, you will need to create a site packed full of useful and interesting content, relevant to your niche.

Apart from listings, you should consider adding a blog, including videos and podcasts, running webinars, organizing live events, setting up a members forum, and lots more. By regularly updating your site with content that your community needs, they will continue to subscribe to your directory.

6. Create a Site like AirBnB

Another option to monetize your directory site is to turn it into a site like AirBnB. With Listify you can let businesses sell services and products on your site, as well as take bookings and arrange appointments. A fee for a booking or sale is then charged via WooCommerce.

Creating a site in the style of AirBnB will help keep traffic on your site and encourage recurring visitors. Your audience will be able to organize all their booking and buying needs directly on your site. This will help turn your site into an indispensable resource for your niche.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are numerous ways to monetize your directory site. Think carefully about the type of directory site you want to set up, or are already running. This will be the main factor in deciding which revenue streams you use.

How will you monetize your directory site? Please share your thoughts in the comments below…

The post 6 Ways to Quickly Monetize Your Directory Site appeared first on Astoundify.

In this article, we look at how to start up your own online marketplace in five easy steps. Not only do we discuss the benefits of using the Vendify platform, we also consider how to choose a niche for your marketplace, attract vendors, and market your website to buyers. Importantly, we discuss how to monetize your website so you can ultimately create a passive income. Let’s get started…

Step One: Pick a Niche

When starting up your own online marketplace, it is important that you select a suitable niche. Is your marketplace going to sell digital products, handcrafted goods, specialized art pieces, or even a food? Let’s have a look at some points to consider when choosing a niche…

• Interest – You will be spending a lot of time thinking about and working within this niche, so it needs to be something you have an interest in. 
• Vendors – You will need to entice vendors to sell on your online marketplace. So do your research – find out about potential sellers, product ranges, price points, where they already sell online, and much more. 
• Target Market – To make substantial sales there needs to be a sizable target market for your niche. Again, by researching your niche you will have a good idea of who your target market is, where they currently shop, the type of products they buy and how much they spend. 
• Profitability – By understanding your potential vendors, products, and target market, you will be able to work out if your niche is popular enough to generate a reasonable profit.
• Competition – Every niche will have some competition, but if the competitors look too fierce, consider just focusing on a particular area of that niche. This will make your online marketplace a specialist platform, giving it a unique edge over the others in your field. 

Once you have decided on a niche for your new marketplace, next you will need to choose a platform on which to design your new website.

Step Two: Choose a Platform (We Recommend the WordPress theme Vendify)

There are numerous web building platforms and software that will enable you to create an online marketplace. However, if you want a quick set up process, a stunning site that appeals to sellers and buyers alike, and a seamless behind the scenes experience that allows you to easily manage orders and payments, then we recommend using the impressive WordPress theme Vendify.

Vendify, built on top of WordPress, is a fully-functioning marketplace platform that will cater for all your marketplace needs. Let’s have a look at its top features…

• Built for Every Niche – Whatever your niche, and whether you are selling physical or digital products, or services, Vendify has got you covered. 
• Customizable Design – Choose your own colors, layouts, and features, add your own branding, and much more, enabling you to create a marketplace to suit your exact specifications.
• Easily Manage Vendors and Orders – Whatever your web experience and skillset, Vendify’s backend drag-and-drop interface means that anyone can set up and manage a marketplace, organize vendors, and keep track of orders and payments. 
• Tools for Your Vendors – Keep your vendors happy with a suite of tools especially provided to help increase sales, including a custom dashboard, private messaging, and analytics. 
• Impressive User-Experience for Buyers – Buyers will benefit from beautiful layouts and images, easy navigation, and quick checkout processes, helping to drive sales. 
• Control Your Revenue Streams – Vendify allows you to control your listing costs, campaign fees, and advertising. You can set your own commission rates, choose your payment gateway providers, and more.

Once you have installed and set up Vendify on your WordPress website, you next need to attract vendors to sell on your site. Let’s find out how to do that…

Step Three: Connect with Vendors

When you are first starting up, recruiting vendors to sell on your marketplace won’t be easy. Here are some strategies to ensure your perseverance and hard work pays off…

• Don’t Charge for Listings – Letting vendors display products on your site for free is a great way to attract new sellers. That way vendors lose nothing by signing up to your marketplace. And you can still make a profit by charging a commission on sales.
• Get Active on Social Media – Join groups, pages, forums, and any other social space. This will help give your marketplace exposure and connect with potential vendors.
• Attend Events, Meetups, and Trade Shows – Promoting your marketplace to people face-to-face is an extremely effective way to build relationships and trust in your platform. 

After you have attracted the first wave of vendors, setting up a referral program, where vendors who bring in new vendors are rewarded, will also help to grow your marketplace.

Step Four: Attract Buyers

Your other key focus, alongside connecting with vendors, is attracting buyers. The more traffic and sales your site receives the more vendors will be interested in listing products on your site. So let’s have a look at some strategies to attract buyers…

• Use Your Contacts – When you are just starting out, ask your family, friends, colleagues, and any other contacts you have, to spread the word about your new marketplace. Reposts on social media, alongside word-of-mouth, can go a long way to getting your marketplace traffic. 
• Advertise – To gain exposure and engage with your target audience consider advertising on social media, Google, and even competitors’ sites. 
• Turn Visitors into Loyal Customers – Rewarding customer loyalty will encourage buyers to return to your marketplace again and again. Incentives like free shipping, money off, or access to special offers can all be popular options. 

Once your site is up and running successfully, hosting numerous vendors, and receiving high levels of traffic and sales, you can then begin to make some serious money. So let’s now take a look at how to monetize your marketplace…

Step Five: Implement Monetization Strategies

There are numerous ways to monetize your marketplace and you need to decide on the right methods for your site and audience. Here are some of the most effective options …

• Transaction Fees – Although you will probably be charging transaction fees from the very start, once your marketplace becomes successful, you can consider increasing your transaction fees, or charging different fees depending on the price or category of product. 
• Vendor Membership Fees – If you have a strong customer base then you will be able to charge your vendors a membership fee to list their products on your marketplace. This could be a one-off joining fee, or an ongoing monthly subscription, the latter being a great way to generate an ongoing passive income. 
• Premium Listings – Charge vendors to display a product listing in a key position on your website. This could be at the top of a specific category, on the first page of search results, on the homepage, or in a sidebar. These listings could also contain extra information, including more images and extra text. 

There is a delicate balance between generating a substantial revenue and keeping your vendors and customers happy. Try and find the best monetization strategies for your marketplace – ones that ensure your vendors don’t leave but that also help you create a passive income that fulfills your financial needs. 

Final Thoughts on How to Create a Passive Income with Vendify

Setting up an online marketplace is an effective way to create a passive income. And, evidently, Vendify is the ideal WordPress theme to help you do so. With its extensive feature list, beautiful visuals, and intuitive interface, you can quickly create a stunning and successful marketplace.

Are you ready to create an online marketplace? If so, check out Vendify.

The post Create a Passive Income from Home with Vendify (an Online Marketplace WordPress Theme) appeared first on Astoundify.

Amongst those eCommerce plugins is one standout option, WooCommerce. There are numerous reasons why WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin around. However, one of its many impressive features is the freedom it gives you over how you collect payments from your customers.

In this article, we’ll explain how you can choose the right payment gateway for your WooCommerce store. We will discuss the key points to consider when making a payment gateway selection, and look at the main features of Stripe, PayPal, and 2Checkout, to see if any of these options suit your needs.

Why Choose WooCommerce?

As mentioned there are many different eCommerce solutions for WordPress but the biggest name out there is WooCommerce. Not only is it widely used, but in what can be seen as a recent vote of confidence, it has been purchased by Automattic, a company that dedicates a large portion of their resources to the WordPress project.

WordPress, together with WooCommerce, is an extremely flexible and versatile platform for creating an eCommerce store. You can design and customize your site, making it unique to your brand and totally in sync with your audience’s needs.

The core WooCommerce plugin is free and provides you with enough functionality to start selling online. However, there’s a massive library of in-house and third party add-ons that you can use to upgrade your store.

As far as payment gateways are concerned, WooCommerce offers over 140 free and premium payment gateway extensions to choose from. This means that whatever you’re selling, whoever your customers are, and wherever they’re based, there are payment gateway options that will suit your business.

Altogether, this makes WordPress and WooCommerce the defacto choice for almost any eCommerce store, whether you are selling physical products or digital downloads.

What is a Payment Gateway?

There are many different ways to collect payments from your clients and customers. However, if you want to run a thoroughly modern online store, and collect payments on an automated basis, then a payment gateway is a great option.

In short, a payment gateway is an eCommerce service that authorizes payments between businesses and customers. Payment gateways facilitate transactions and process funds between buyers and sellers, taking care of the payment process for you.

Of course, there are many payment gateway options to choose from. Thankfully WooCommerce supports multiple payment gateways, so you will be able to select the right option for your online store.

Things to Consider When Choosing the Right Payment Gateway for your WordPress Website

Choosing a payment gateway can be a daunting task. Not only are their many different providers, but often each provider offers multiple plans as well. So before picking a payment gateway, do your research.

Don’t just pick the most popular payment gateway, consider your business, your audience, and your personal circumstances, to help you make the appropriate choice. Let’s now have a look at some of the main points to consider when selecting a payment gateway…

Cost

WooCommerce works with a number of different payment gateways. Some of these are provided for free, where as others are premium add-ons. If you are just starting out and are not flushed for cash, it is sensible to start out with a free payment gateway. You can always upgrade at a later date.

Other costs can include a signup fee, and a monthly or yearly subscription fee to the payment gateway provider. Transactions fees are also charged and can range in price depending on the service.

Direct v Redirect

Payments can be taken directly on your site or your customers can be redirected to the payment gateway site. Both of these options have pros and cons.

If you choose to have customers purchasing items and entering their card details on your site then you become responsible for the security of that data. This means you will need to purchase an SSL certificate, so data is encrypted when sent from browsers to servers, helping keep it safe and secure. However, always check this out as some payment gateways do take care of SSL for you. Hosting companies often include SSL too.

Using a payment gateway provider that redirects users to process payments, means that the provider takes sole responsibility for data security. However, the downside to redirecting payments is that customers often don’t like having this extended checkout on another site.

Consequently, using a redirect payment gateway option can lose you sales, as well as diminish your business’s credibility. A redirect option may be a good choice for new businesses, but as your eCommerce store grows, you should look to swap to a direct payment gateway.

Payment Options

The payment options accepted can be very important as they can make or break a sale. The larger your audience the more payments options you’ll need to cater for the extensive range of needs.

Always check a payment gateway accepts all major debit and credit cards. Then other payment options that may be beneficial include credit card types local to the area you are doing business in, Apple Pay, Android Pay and Bitcoin to name a few.

Location

If you are selling to customers across the globe, then you need a payment gateway that caters for international transactions. Generally, people like to make purchases in their home currency, so you need to select a service that not only works for the countries where your audience resides, but that also accepts the relevant currencies. When taking payments from other countries, always check the fees charged by your payment gateway provider, as they often vary from country to country.

So now we know what to consider when selecting a payment gateway. But what are the main gateways available and what do each of them offer?

Stripe

Stripe is an excellent payment gateway option for a WooCommerce store, and my number one favorite. Offered as a free extension, Stripe has no setup fees, no monthly fees, and no hidden costs. Fees are only charged when you get paid.

Easy to set up, Stripe takes payments directly on your site, whilst providing SSL security. All major debit and credit cards are accepted as well as Apple and Android Pay, Bitcoin, and lots more. Stripe also integrates with the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension, enabling you to collect recurring payments if needed. So whatever your customer’s preferred payment choice, Stripe can cater for it.

As for the user experience, Stripe provides a fast and seamless checkout. Minimal details have to be entered on the checkout payment form that is embedded on your site and works on desktop, tablet, and mobile. Customers addresses aren’t necessary, just email, and card details are remembered, meaning checkout can take just seconds. This can be particularly beneficial for the quick sale of digital products.

Lastly, Stripe is supported in numerous countries and accepts payments in over 100 currencies. Growing all the time, once Stripe is up and running in your home country, you can immediately take payments from all over the world. Perfect for international sellers.

PayPal

PayPal is a well-established payment gateway that the general public know and trust. The core WooCommerce plugin gives you free PayPal functionality straight out of the box. Numerous PayPal extensions are also available. So let’s see what they have to offer…

PayPal Standard

PayPal Standard, that comes as part of the WooCommerce plugin, works by redirecting customers at checkout to PayPal’s website. Customers can then log into their PayPal account to pay, or checkout as a guest.

Although PayPal deals with all the payment and security details for you, the process takes customers away from your site. This increases the chances of them abandoning their shopping cart.

PayPal Express Checkout

PayPal Express Checkout is a free extension for WooCommerce. This extension enables you to add an in-context PayPal express button on your checkout page. When clicked by a customer, a lightbox popup will appear on your site. Here they can sign-in and pay with PayPal. Alternatively, customers can checkout as a guest.

This is a good option, as although customers never have to leave your site, PayPal still handle the transactions for you. The downside is customers still have to log in to PayPal to pay, or complete a lengthy checkout process.

Premium Extensions

PayPal Pro and PayPal Advanced are two of the premium extensions available for WooCommerce. These allow visitors to pay directly on your site, ensuring smooth transactions and a positive user experience. However, not only do you have the initial cost of buying these add-ons, there are also monthly fees to pay, and use is restricted to certain countries.

As you can see, the features of the PayPal extensions for WooCommerce vary greatly. If you think PayPal may be the payment gateway for you, then it is worth checking out the comparison table on the WooCommerce website to see which plugin would be the best option for your online store.

2Checkout

2Checkout is another popular payment gateway, with two premium plugins available to support your WooCommerce store. No start-up or monthly fees are charged for either add-on. However, rates will vary depending on countries and currencies.

2Checkout Plugin redirects customers to their site for payment. This means 2Checkout takes care of all payment and security issues. 2Checkout Inline Checkout enables payments to be taken on your website, in a lightbox popup, similar to PayPal’s Express Checkout. Both add-ons are available in 200 countries and 87 languages, making them good options for many.

Final Thoughts

All of the payment gateways mentioned here are great options. The key is to choose the one that best suits your unique situation. Consider cost, location, and what your audience will want during checkout, to help you make a decision. And remember, you can always change or upgrade your payment gateway in the future if your site’s needs change.

What payment gateway will you choose for your online store? Please share your thoughts in the comments below…

The post Choosing the Right Payment Gateway for Your Site appeared first on Astoundify.