The Hidden Cost of Selling Through Someone Else
Every month you sell through Wolt, Ananas, or Instagram, you pay twice. Once with money and once with something more valuable. Here is what that actually costs you.
Take whatever you sold last month through Wolt, Ananas, or any other platform.
Now multiply it by 0.25.
That number left your business. And it will leave again next month, and the month after, for as long as you keep selling through someone else.
Most business owners know there is a fee. Very few have ever written it down as a yearly number and looked at it properly.
The Cost You Can See
Every platform has a price. The question is whether you have calculated yours.
Wolt charges restaurants between 25 and 30 percent of every order. Ananas.mk, the largest marketplace in Macedonia, charges commission on every product sold, following the same model as Amazon. Reklama5 and Pazar3 charge you for promoted visibility, meaning you pay just to appear in front of buyers, with no guarantee that anyone purchases. Instagram requires paid advertising to reach people who already chose to follow you.
Take your monthly revenue from these platforms and multiply it by 12. That is what you paid last year to sell on someone else's territory.
For most small businesses in Macedonia, that number is somewhere between 2.000 and 15.000 euros per year. Paid out quietly, month by month, without ever appearing as a single line on an invoice.
The Cost You Cannot See
The commission is painful. But it is not the real problem.
The real problem is that when someone buys from you through Wolt, Ananas, or any marketplace, that customer does not belong to you. They belong to the platform. You do not receive their email address. You do not see their purchase history. You have no way to reach them next month with a new offer, a discount, or a simple thank you.
When they want to buy again, they return to the platform. The platform takes another commission. And the one after that. And every sale that customer makes for the rest of their life.
A customer who buys from your own website is yours. You know who they are. You can email them. You can reward their loyalty. You can sell to them again at zero additional cost. That customer has a lifetime value that compounds over time.
A customer through a marketplace has a one-time transaction value, and you paid a percentage to receive even that.
When Platforms Make Sense
This is not an argument against marketplaces. They serve a real purpose.
When you have no audience and no brand recognition, platforms give you access to buyers who would never find you otherwise. When you are testing whether a product sells before investing in your own infrastructure, a marketplace is a low-risk starting point. When your product category attracts buyers who browse platforms specifically looking for deals, being present there has genuine value.
The problem is not using platforms. The problem is treating them as a permanent strategy rather than a temporary one.
What Changes When You Sell Directly
When a customer buys from your own website, your payment processor takes between 1.5 and 2.5 percent. Not 25. Not 30. The remaining 97 to 98 percent stays in your business.
More importantly, that customer is now yours. You can market to them again for free. You can build a relationship that no platform can interrupt, reprice, or take away from you.
Your website also builds equity over time. Every visitor, every purchase, every returning customer makes your brand stronger on your own domain. None of that equity belongs to someone else.
The Question Worth Asking
Add up what you paid in platform fees and commissions over the last twelve months.
That number is not a cost of doing business. It is the price you paid to build someone else's platform instead of your own.
If you want to talk through what a direct sales setup would look like for your business specifically, get in touch.