[lockhouse]

I agree with you to a point, but what’s the alternative?

Running your own storefront online is a huge undertaking, even more so if you want to accept international orders. Processing payments securely while also properly accounting for things like taxes, customs, and other laws is a huge undertaking.

This is just not something that would be realistic for most of the people on sites like Etsy to implement properly.

[arp242]

Ideally there should be a few storefronts you can viably choose from as a provider of goods or services.

For example, I can walk to a Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, SuperValu, and Spar from where I live, there are a bunch of clothing shops relatively close, phone shops, off-licenses, computer shops, etc. etc. And all that in a town of ~25,000 people.

It's kind of unusual that for a lot of online stuff there's so little choice, especially from the seller's perspective: it's "Etsy or bust" (or "Amazon or bust", "YouTube or bust", "Android or bust", etc.)