Should you sell on Instagram and marketplaces, or your own online store?
If you sell handmade candles in Brisbane, or skincare from a spare room in Perth, you've probably had the same thought: why pay for a website when Instagram and Etsy are already bringing in orders?
It's a fair question. We've built stores for sellers who started exactly that way. Some were doing fine. Others were one algorithm change away from losing most of their income. The difference usually wasn't talent or product quality. It was how much of their business they actually owned.
What Instagram and marketplaces actually give you
Let's start with the honest upside. Marketplaces come with people already looking to buy. Someone searching for "handmade soy candles Australia" on Etsy is halfway to checkout before they even find you. Instagram works the same way, less directly — a reel can reach people who never would have found your website.
There's also less to set up. You don't need to worry about hosting, payment gateways, or shipping integrations. You list, you post, you pack orders. For a side business or a first product range, that simplicity matters.
What they quietly take away
Every marketplace takes a cut, and the cut tends to grow. Listing fees, transaction fees, payment processing, optional advertising to stay visible in search — by the time an order is packed, the margin can look very different from the price on the listing.
Instagram has its own version of this. You build an audience for years, and then reach drops. If an account gets restricted over a flagged post, your main sales channel becomes a support form while you wait. It's a predictable risk of building on rented ground.
There's a subtler cost, too. On a marketplace, your customer is the marketplace's customer. You often can't email them about a new range or offer a repeat-purchase discount. You get the sale. The relationship stays with the platform.
What your own store changes
Your own store — for most small Australian sellers, that means WooCommerce on WordPress — flips all of that. You set the prices, the shipping rules, and the checkout. Nobody takes a commission on top of your normal payment processing. When someone buys, you get their email address, and you can email them next month when the new collection lands.
You also get to tell the story properly. A marketplace listing gives you a title, a few photos, and a description box. Your own store gives you room for the maker story, the ingredients, the gift guides, the bundles, the reviews from real customers. For products where trust matters — skincare, homeware, jewellery, food — that room is often what turns a browser into a buyer.
The trade-off is real, though. A new store starts with no traffic. Nobody browses past your shopfront by accident — you have to bring people there from Instagram, Google, email, and word of mouth. If you're not prepared to do that work, a beautiful store will sit quiet.
The middle path most small sellers actually take
Keep selling where your buyers already are. Use Instagram to show the product, the process, and the person behind it. Keep the marketplace listings that are profitable after fees. But start moving the relationship home: put your website on every parcel and bio link, and offer a small reason to buy direct next time — a bundle that only exists on your site, or early access to a limited run.
How to tell which one fits your business right now
First, where do your repeat buyers come from? If the same people keep coming back, you need a way to reach them directly — your own store and an email list. If almost every sale is a first-time buyer who found you by searching, a marketplace is still doing useful work for you.
Second, what's your margin after fees? Do the maths on your last twenty orders, not your best one. If fees and promoted listings are eating the profit, direct sales aren't a luxury — they're the fix.
Third, how much of your income depends on one account or one platform? If the answer is "most of it," that's the risk to deal with first, before a redesign or a new product range.
And finally, are you ready to drive traffic? A store without a traffic plan is a brochure. Instagram content, Google search for your product terms, email to past buyers — you need at least one of these working before a store pays for itself.
What we'd do first
If we were starting from scratch with a small product range, we wouldn't start with a big, expensive build. We'd start with a simple WooCommerce store: clear product pages, honest photos, easy checkout, sensible Australian shipping options, and a way to collect emails at checkout. No fancy features until the basics are selling.
Then we'd connect it to what's already working. Instagram becomes the shopfront window, not the shop itself — posts and reels send people to product pages you own. Past buyers get an email when something new drops.
That's the real choice. Not Instagram versus a website — whether you keep renting your audience, or start owning a piece of it, slowly, while the rented channels keep paying the bills.
Want a straight answer on what fits your business? Book a free discovery call and we'll look at where your sales actually come from and what a simple store would need to do for you. Prefer to chat first? Chat on WhatsApp — tell us what you sell and where you sell it now, and we'll give you an honest take.
Contact our team
Email: info@codepacesolutions.com
