How to Create a Multi Vendor Marketplace

Online marketplace websites allow the users to buy and sell items by setting up their own mini stores within their eCommerce website.

There are three types of marketplaces:

01.Vertical

02.Horizontal

03.Global

Vertical: A vertical marketplace sells products from many sources but they are all of one type.

Horizontal: A horizontal marketplace sells products of many types but they all share a characteristic.

Global: A global marketplace sells everything. The ultimate example of that is eBay.

Top Online Marketplaces:

01: AliBaba: 515 million active buyers.

02.Amazon:184 M visitors per month.

03.eBay:Over 164 M active buyers.

04.Etsy:31.7 million active buyers.

eCommerce Platforms & Marketplaces-

The Big Marketplaces Platforms:

1. Shopify

Best for: Selling anything

2. BigCommerce

Best for: Building powerful stores for any brand

3. Magento

Best for: Building any type of eCommerce store

Other Top Marketplaces Platforms:

4. 3dcart

Best for: Anything eCommerce

5.Dokan

Best for: Creating Multivendor Marketplace.

6. WooCommerce

Best for: Large-scale retailers of consumer goods

7. Yo!Kart

Best for: Early stage startups

The success of platforms like Airbnb, Etsy and Fiverr has proven that the marketplace model is very scalable and can be applied to pretty much any area of business. As one of the top VC firms, Andreessen Horowitz, put it: “This is just the beginning“.

There are five different ways to build an online marketplace:

Method #1 – Code it from scratch

Method #2 – Pay someone else to code it from scratch

Method #3 – Build it yourself on top of existing marketplace software (self-hosted)

Method #4 – Pay someone else to build it on top of existing marketplace software

(self-hosted)

Method #5 – Build it yourself using a hosted software solution (SaaS)

Each of these approaches has its own pros and cons. Let’s go over them.

Method #1 – Code it from scratch

Biggest benefit: You can make it work and look exactly as you wish.

Biggest drawback: Takes a lot of time and resources.

Method #2 – Pay someone else to code it from scratch

Biggest benefit: You can make it look exactly as you want.

Biggest drawback: Takes a lot of time and money.

Method #3 – Build it yourself on top of existing marketplace software (self-

hosted)

Biggest benefit: Cheaper and faster than building it from scratch.

Biggest drawback: Requires an upfront investment.

Method #4 – Pay someone else to build it for you on top of existing marketplace

software (self-hosted)

Biggest benefit: No technical skills needed.

Biggest drawback: Requires a bigger budget and upfront investment.

Method #5 – Build it using a hosted SaaS software solution

Biggest benefit: Fastest to launch and learn.

Biggest drawback: Limitations in customizability.

In this article, we are going to apply Method #3 and will discuss how easily we can create an online marketplace website with CMS platform, and on that note we are going to use WordPress.

There are two types of WordPress available: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. One is a limited blog hosting service while the other is known as the self-hosted WordPress.Between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org, WordPress.org is recommended because it gives us the freedom and access to all WordPress features out of the box.

To start an online marketplace using self-hosted WordPress we will need the following:

A domain name (For example, wedevs.com)

Web hosting account (This is where our website’s files are stored)

SSL Certificate (To secure online payments)

WooCommerce (best WordPress eCommerce addon)

Online marketplace addon ( we are going to use dokan multivendor by wedevs.com ) Find out the reason ( https://wedevs.com/dokan/compare/ )

Normally a domain name costs around $14.99 / year, web hosting costs around $7.99 / month, and SSL certificate costs around $69.99 / year. eCommerce platform WooCommerce and marketplace addone Donkan both has freemium and premium version. We will use the freemium version.

Setting up Your WooCommerce Store.