Tony White
OnBuy.com is an online marketplace that was created in November 2016 to level the playing field for online retailers and make eCommerce better for everyone. OnBuy never holds any of its own retail stock, and every product on the site is listed by an independent business, so anyone looking to sell on OnBuy will only compete with fellow sellers, not the platform itself.
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One of OnBuy’s greatest strengths as a marketplace is its versatility. The website was created to provide a platform where retailers of every kind were placed on a level playing field.
That philosophy still holds true today - from small businesses to big brand names, every company selling on OnBuy is given the same tools, resources and support in growing their business.
Through this article, we’ll explore the advantages open to you when you sell on OnBuy, the methods to get set up fast, the ways DataFeedWatch can enhance and streamline your offering, and the overall growth trajectory of the platform worldwide.
What You Need to Know to Sell on OnBuy
OnBuy has been designed from the ground up to create sellers’ success. That means it’s easy to get to grips with, both for those who are selling online for the first time, but also those choosing to sell on OnBuy after experiencing other marketplaces.
Unlike other marketplaces, OnBuy is not a retailer and will never stock its own items in competition with yours. Instead, all of its efforts are focused on growing your sales.
OnBuy’s growth, potential and international ambition have made it a standout marketplace, with over 600% year-on-year growth across the last three years in a row and a customer base of over eight million in the UK alone.
All you need to get started is:
- A business PayPal account,
- An established company or trading name,
- An inventory that you intend to sell on OnBuy,
- And unique barcodes for your inventory.
What Kind of Businesses Sell on OnBuy?
OnBuy works with independent traders, family businesses, SMEs, multinationals and also directly with brand owners. With over 35 million products across 17 departments, customers have a wide variety to choose from. Popular categories include:
- Electronics
- Entertainment (movies, music, books and video games)
- Home furniture
- Office equipment
- Household essentials
- Gardening products
- Home fitness equipment
- Petcare products
- Toys
OnBuy was founded in the UK, but is rapidly growing around the globe, and actively welcomes retailers from every part of the world.
You’ll be able to sell to over 8 million UK customers from the get-go, but also join OnBuy as it expands into the United States, Canada, India, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Singapore and beyond.
Because the product range that the marketplace has is so diverse, you’re able to sell on OnBuy with almost no limits.
However, keep in mind that certain items cannot be sold through the marketplace, including:
- Counterfeit items
- Product preorders
- Gift cards
- Weapons
- Restricted or dangerous chemicals
How Much Does It Cost to Sell on OnBuy?
OnBuy offers competitive selling fees, with just 5% for consumer electronics and 9% for everything else - and no listing fees, no matter how many products you list.
The marketplace ensures transparency in its straightforward fee structure, so retailers who sell on OnBuy know what to expect and won’t spot any surprise expenses or deductions from their earnings. This is backed up by its Transparent Fee Guarantee, ensuring all sellers - no matter their size or volume - pay the same fees.
Retailers also have the choice of two account packages:
- Standard, which is £19.00 plus VAT per month,
- Partner, which is £39.00 plus VAT per month.
Through its PayPal partnership, OnBuy is unique among UK-based marketplaces. 
Put simply, businesses that sell on OnBuy can access the funds from a successful sale the moment the order is dispatched.
That’s in contrast to the classic model of payment cycles that are weekly or monthly, and avoids sellers’ funds being tied up for extended periods of time.
It also means that - whether you sell in one country, 10 countries or all 140+ by the time OnBuy is fully globalized - you can coordinate it all from one dashboard and accept payments from almost anywhere in the world.
Onboarding with OnBuy - What to Expect
OnBuy has a dedicated support and account management team who personally handle the onboarding of every retailer who wants to sell on OnBuy.
Each OnBuy seller gets their own account manager, who will be able to support the seller journey and answer any questions they might have.
Your account manager will be in touch within one working day of registering to sell on OnBuy to help you get set up.
Adding your product catalog to OnBuy
OnBuy divides its millions of products into categories, and uses a catalog listing system that means multiple sellers can list against the same product. However, on those occasions you list items that haven’t featured on OnBuy before, you can easily create new listings as required.
You can create your products manually through OnBuy's Product Wizard, add your data into OnBuy's template, or use a channel system.
OnBuy’s Product Wizard gives online retailers control over descriptive copy and product imagery, as well as technical details like product dimensions. In general, more detail is always better.
You’ll see that OnBuy’s systems are very adaptive, and that includes the ability to easily bring onboard the advantages offered by DataFeedWatch.
This speeds up the listing process, leveraging DataFeedWatch’s capabilities in creating rich content that matches OnBuy’s product templates and promotes the information most likely to convert your buyers.
5 Best Practices to Maximize Sales on OnBuy
Getting up to speed to sell on OnBuy is one thing, but making the most of what the marketplace can offer is another. Luckily, a few tips are all it takes to give you shortcuts to success when you sell on OnBuy.
1. Keep on top of pricing
Because OnBuy has no listing fees and has structured its selling fees to be as competitive as possible, businesses can, in turn, price competitively and capture plenty of interest.
On top of the product marketing OnBuy does for free as standard, the marketplace attracts more buyers for its sellers through its industry-leading Price Crash sale events.
It’s the only marketplace that covers the cost of its sales itself, rather than just pushing its retailers to drive down their prices.
What that means is that OnBuy soaks the financial impact of knocking a percentage off every product on the website during a Price Crash sale event - sellers on OnBuy don’t pay a penny, and are never expected to.
2. Set up Boost marketing for powerful visibility
OnBuy has a versatile, scalable and risk-free ad service - Boost. Boost lets every retailer on OnBuy control just how visible their product listings are.
The major advantages of using Boost are:
- It lets sellers ramp up the visibility, ranking and level of additional marketing that their products receive.
- It uses a tiered, scaling structure.
- At lower tiers, Boost will increase your exposure on-site. While at higher tiers of Boost, OnBuy will also proactively and powerfully market your products across the internet.
- Sellers can easily boost a single item, multiple products, everything in a category, everything under a certain brand name and their entire inventory in just a few clicks.
- Boost helps improve your products’ ranking too, and they’ll keep that ranking even if you stop using Boost, letting you invest in organic visibility while driving more sales.
- You’re not locked into a contract or charged upfront, because Boost uses a cost-per-acquisition model (rather than cost-per-click), it’s risk-free to try out. Sellers only pay their chosen Boost fee if a sale is made through Boost - you won’t be charged for non-sponsored sales.
3. Consider how you’ll go global
OnBuy already welcomes sellers from around the world, yet the opportunity to participate in the marketplace’s aggressive worldwide scale-up is huge.
OnBuy will always allow sellers to do business their way - opting into or out of territories they want to sell on OnBuy. As the marketplace grows worldwide, it's worth considering how to prepare your business for international customers.
With DataFeedWatch’s powerful price watching and product analytics, we can help ensure your time spent on OnBuy is wisely streamlined. That should help towards hitting the ground running, wherever in the world you end up selling to.
By launching alongside OnBuy in new territories with optimized product listings and competitive regional pricing strategies from the outset, you can see fantastic ROI.
4. Set up a Sale Price strategy
Another tool offered by OnBuy to help retailers grow their sales is Sale Price. This tool gives retailers the opportunity to easily discount their products and attract more customers - be it one product, their entire inventory, a select range from one category, or every product under a certain brand name.
OnBuy lets you define your own Sale Price strategy, so you can set discounts of your own for cultural events, stock clearances, limited offers, launches into new territories overseas and so on.
Products discounted using Sale Price enjoy a crossover effect if OnBuy is running a site-wide Price Crash. Your price deductions and those being funded by the marketplace will stack, making bigger discounts for customers at no extra charge to sellers.
Much like Boost, OnBuy’s Sale Price system can be flicked on or off for one, several or every product that you sell on OnBuy, with no minimum or maximum timeframe or ‘lock-in’ period.
5. Keep your inventory moving
Not only in the sense of shipping, but in the sense of keeping what you stock topical, topped up and ready for dispatch to your OnBuy customer base. The world of eCommerce is evolving all the time, so keeping up with changing consumer habits and trends is key.
You’re also wise to list as much as you can when you begin to sell on OnBuy. The marketplace’s customers see the huge variety in products as a crucial point of interest.
Also, consider that your best sellers on one marketplace might not be your most successful products on another. Casting a wider net in getting products live at scale can really help you hit the ground running.
Whether you’re joining OnBuy as your sole route to market, using it alongside a physical business, or you’re going to sell on OnBuy as just one of the marketplaces in a multichannel strategy, DataFeedWatch has the tools to get listings live and content-rich - fast.
Summary
OnBuy’s status as the fastest-growing marketplace in the world hasn’t happened accidentally. This is a viable, dependable platform that has evolved fast to meet the needs of an eCommerce community that was eager for a differentiated marketplace model.
By sustaining high levels of customer service - while ensuring businesses that sell on OnBuy do so with support and resources that help them to grow - OnBuy presents a new frontier for many businesses looking to increase their revenue streams and global presence.
In just over four years, OnBuy has gone from an eCommerce challenger brand to a major player in the industry. Anyone looking to sell on OnBuy is advised to act fast - getting ahead of the curve as the marketplace goes global means that smart sellers will be well-established worldwide as OnBuy continues to expand.
Setting up at speed and scale is made that much easier with DataFeedWatch - feel free to explore the solutions open to you when looking to sell on OnBuy, helping you find the best advantages to get up to speed fast on this exciting eCommerce platform.
Ready to get started with selling on OnBuy.com? Get started here.
