The hidden costs of marketplaces (and why going direct matters)

Marketplaces promise creators visibility, convenience, and instant access to an audience. Sites like Gumroad, Udemy, Skool, or Whop seem like an easy way to start selling digital products. At first glance, it feels like a shortcut: list your work, tap into existing traffic, and let the sales roll in.

But chasing shortcuts is not how you grow an online business. What looks like an open door often comes with hefty fees, sometimes even hidden. These marketplaces quietly eat away at your earnings, limit your control, and prevent you from building the one thing that truly matters in the creator economy: ownership over your brand identity and over your customers’ data.

If you’re serious about building a long-term business as a creator, relying solely on marketplaces is not only less profitable, especially in an era where virality is fleeting and trust is the currency that drives sales, but also far riskier. Going direct with your own platform matters more than ever. Not just for your profits, but for your brand and long-term independence.

The invisible tax on your earnings

The most obvious hidden cost is financial. Marketplaces typically charge a mix of transaction fees, processing fees, and even “success fees” that take a cut out of every sale. A 10% cut may sound small on paper, but if you sell a $500 course, you’re handing over $50 each time. Multiply that across dozens of customers, and you’re suddenly losing thousands of dollars in income every year.

And that’s not all. Many platforms stack hidden fees on top of subscriptions, leaving you with an even smaller share of what you earn. In practice, this means you’re working harder just to cover platform costs before seeing profit.

That’s why high-earning content creators pay attention to these compounding costs. Every percentage point you save is more money reinvested into your growth. With Sherpo’s low transaction fees, the math finally works in your favor. You keep more of what you earn, and over time that difference compounds into a meaningful advantage.

You don’t own the audience

The second hidden cost is less visible but far more damaging: marketplaces own your audience, not you. When someone buys through a site like Udemy or Etsy, they become the platform’s customer, not yours. You rarely get their email address, you can’t follow up directly, and you’re completely dependent on the platform’s algorithm to reach them again. For creators, that’s a **dangerous trap. Without direct access, you’re building on rented land. One policy change, a competitor with better placement, or an algorithm tweak can erase your profits, as well as your work.

By contrast, owning customer data, even from something as simple as collecting emails with freebies or lead magnets, means you build a real, direct relationship with your audience. When you sell directly, every customer is more than a transaction: they become a connection that can lead to repeat sales, upsells, cross-sells, and referrals. That’s how creators build businesses that last.

Price pressure and commoditization

Marketplaces thrive on comparison. Customers scroll through endless listings, and when two products look similar, they choose the cheapest one. That dynamic creates a race to the bottom on price.

Your $100 guide suddenly looks expensive next to a $19 knockoff. Even if your work is superior, the marketplace model erodes your ability to stand apart. Over time, this commoditization devalues your expertise and conditions audiences to view digital products as interchangeable. As a creator, there’s nothing more dangerous than being forced into a knife fight in a red ocean.

Selling direct flips the script. Instead of competing on price, you control the narrative. You can design bundles, create automated campaigns that unlock discounts after reviews, or build premium offers that reflect your expertise. You can also use a product ladder strategy where free content naturally leads to paid products. This doesn’t just give you control over positioning: it protects your margins and elevates the value of your brand.

Lack of control over the experience

Another overlooked cost of marketplaces is creative control. From the design of your storefront to the checkout process, everything is standardized, the marketplaces brand front and center. Your brand is reduced to a logo and a line of text buried among thousands of competitors. When you sell directly, you design the entire buying journey. With Sherpo’s white-label storefronts, every touchpoint feels like your brand, from the homepage to the after purchase email.

That consistency builds trust, enhances the customer experience, and increases the likelihood of repeat purchases. It also allows you to create cross-product pathways, where an ebook leads to a course, or a course leads to a download sale, and viceversa. When going direct, your storefront is no longer just a place to transact. It becomes part of your storytelling, your authority, and your reputation.

The long game is ownership

Marketplaces may help you start, but they aren’t designed to help you scale. Their incentives are misaligned: they profit most when you remain dependent.

Going direct requires more upfront effort, but the payoff is exponential. You keep more of your revenue, you own your audience relationships, you control the buying experience, and you build a brand that grows in value over time. At Sherpo, we’ve seen creators make the leap away from marketplaces and transform their income and freedom. The difference isn’t just higher margins, it’s the shift from being a vendor in someone else’s shop to becoming the owner of your own thriving digital business.

Marketplaces may rent you an audience, but going direct gives you an asset you truly own. And in the creator economy, ownership is everything.

Build and sell on Sherpo

Sherpo is the operating system behind digital goods stores that gives you the fastest way to create, publish, and sell digital products in 2025. With an all-in-one platform powering your entire store, offering site hosting, built-in video hosting and encoding for courses, AI-powered features, and zero percent fees on the Ultra plan, Sherpo is designed to help creators grow without limits.

Unlike marketplaces, Sherpo is built for independent creators who want flexibility, control over their brand and pricing, and the scalability to grow into something bigger. All while being free like common marketplaces, where similar products demand a subscription.

Start your digital store on Sherpo today and join the movement of creators turning knowledge into thriving digital businesses.