[talldayo]

Just a word of advice about marketplaces; they are not as profitable as you might think. Unless you have some way to force people through your service (eg. a legal mandate or technical limitation), people generally won't want to spend money on your store. The larger you try to make your profit margins, the harder it will be to compete with Amazon and Shein. They have profit margins that are razor-thin, alongside special agreements with mainstream payment processors specifically designed to stop you from competing.

If you do manage to find a niche, then you're invited to a whole new circle of hell in fraud mitigation and chargebacked invoices. You need a really good idea to break into the current scene.

[changer1]

thanks for the advice. i wanna build an online food delivery marketplace and my aim is not huge profitability actually. i just wanna build something that is useful and agile. and i don't think i'll spend much money until it gets to the breakeven point. so i feel like i should give it a try.

[tobinfekkes]

I built, maintain, and own an online food delivery marketplace used by a handful of local food producers. Some people license my system to run their own food marketplace, while others just sell directly to us and we do the logistics. I would concur with the above comment that you better have a darn good reason, runway, and resources.

Initial ideas are easy, execution is harder, and maintaining it across time and devices and changing tech is very hard. Delivering static things like books or phone cases or laptop chargers is one thing. Delivering food is a completely different ball game.

I agree with your overall sentiment though, we'd all be better off if our food originated nearer to us and we had the proper systems to make local food more profitable for smaller food producers. But Amazon, WalMart, Costco, Hello Fresh, Full Circle, Blue Apron and dozens of other very deep pockets make it very difficult to keep up. You have to be better at something besides price or convenience, because they're run circles around you with those two. For example, you have certain advantages when you're "small" that an Amazon just simply can't compete with. Things like quality, small quantities, hyper-local, hyper-fresh, customer service, high-touch items, etc. Amazon has disadvantages because of their scale, so lean into those areas that don't scale to get some traction.

[changer1]

i just wanna know how to build stuff and understand the skillset needed

[tobinfekkes]

Find someone who is on a similar or adjacent trajectory and shadow them, learn from them, ask questions, be a sponge. Start building very simple things, and then gradually make them harder. The "Skillset needed" for knowing how to build stuff is years and years of building, breaking, fixing, and rebuilding stuff.