• Online marketplaces for products are the most commonly known revenue sharing business models.

• Online marketplaces play host to virtual stores run by small merchants, D2C brands, and large product distributors.

• The virtual store operator posts products to a general online marketplace of goods and the market advertises to consumers who want to shop for all products in one location.

In a Survey by SimilarWeb, as of April 2021, Amazon.com was the most visited online marketplace in the United States, with approximately two billion visits per month. Second place went to eBay, with about 689 million visits, followed in third place by Walmart, with 389 million.

[Chart from Statista; statisitc_id2708 (png)]

The most popular online marketplaces for goods, which utilize virtual store models, who receive a share of the revenue from a sale to an end-customer are:

Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Target

When a customer buys a product for $100 from the “third-party” marketplace on Amazon, the price they pay includes the following revenue share formula:

1. Amazon Fee = $30 [30%]

2. Virtual Store Owner = $70 [70%]

Revenue share formulas in marketplace models vary from 1% to 50% of the value of the sale. The marketplaces create the consumer demand and the merchants or virtual store operators delivery the supply.

CHART: Supply = Merchants

Demand = Consumers

Marketplace = [holds it all together, balanced on it]