The trade is genuine in both directions. A marketplace has buyers already searching, established trust, and payment infrastructure you do not have to build. What you give up is the margin, the customer data, and any ability to build a relationship, since the customer belongs to the platform and frequently does not register which seller they used.
Account suspension is the risk that matters most and it is why the recommendation is both rather than either. Marketplace accounts are suspended by automated systems for reasons ranging from a policy interpretation to a competitor complaint, appeals are slow, and a business with no other channel has no revenue during that period. That scenario is common enough to plan for.
Your own store is what makes the marketplace safe rather than what replaces it. It costs little to run alongside, it captures the customers who search for you by name after buying elsewhere, and it means a suspension is a bad month rather than an existential event.
Price consistently across both, since most marketplaces have terms about this and customers notice regardless. What you can legitimately do is offer something on your own store that does not exist on the marketplace, such as a bundle, a subscription, or a warranty extension, which gives somebody a reason to buy direct without undercutting.
Use the marketplace to acquire and your own channel to retain, which is the strategy that makes the arrangement work. Anything that arrives in the box directing somebody to your site, provided it complies with the platform terms, converts a one time marketplace buyer into somebody you can reach. Those terms are stricter than they used to be and they are worth reading rather than assuming.
Calculate the real margin on marketplace sales including every fee, since the headline commission is rarely the total. Referral fees, fulfilment charges, storage, returns handling, and advertising to appear in results all apply, and businesses regularly discover that a product profitable on their own store loses money on a marketplace.
Watch the advertising requirement specifically, since visibility on most marketplaces increasingly requires paying for placement. A channel that appeared to have no acquisition cost develops one, and the effective margin falls further.
Then keep your own store genuinely operational rather than nominal, because a neglected site that exists as insurance does not function as insurance. It needs current inventory, working checkout, and enough visibility that somebody can find it, and testing that periodically is what makes the arrangement real.
Read the terms about contacting customers before designing anything around it, since platforms have tightened this considerably and a practice that was common two years ago now risks suspension.
Track which channel each customer came from, since the marketplace and your own store attract different buyers and the difference determines where product and pricing decisions should point.
Diversify across more than one marketplace if that channel becomes significant, since a suspension on a single platform is survivable when it is one of three and severe when it is everything.
Watch for the platform launching its own version of what you sell, which happens in categories that prove profitable and is a risk with no defence other than having a channel of your own.
Build your email list from every channel you can, since that is the one asset no platform can take away and it is what makes a marketplace disruption survivable.