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Unlike other marketplace sites, ApiTap doesn’t charge the merchant commissions on every sale. A merchant’s profits are entirely their own.

Most marketplace sites have a wide range of hidden fees and charges a merchant has to pay if they want to get the full benefit of what the site has to offer. Before a merchant signs up, the site presents an image of all sorts of features that are available for a merchant to use to gain sales. However, once signed up, a merchant discovers the full details of these features and finds out to use them requires the merchant to pay additional fees each month, or even each item. At ApiTap, the primary features we show and the tools we offer are included with the merchant’s standard monthly subscription. While ApiTap does have additional paid services, none of them are required to be successful on the ApiTap marketplace and are instead related to services for a merchant’s convenience

Many marketplace sites manufacture and sell their own goods under private labels that they own themselves. In fact, in many cases, they will use sales data gathered from the merchant sales to determine what categories and products are selling well, so they know what products they need to produce. The merchants own sales are providing the marketplace with the ability to compete with them. There is of course the added issue with this. If the marketplace is making the goods themselves, they can afford to sell the items at a lower price than what the merchant could hope to sell for. The marketplace wouldn’t have all the fees and extra costs to promote their own items that a merchant would have to pay to promote theirs, so their profit isn’t even affected despite the lower price.

Everywhere you look on most marketplace sites, the site name and logos are displayed prominently all over. The merchant names are usually only shown in small print off to one side, almost like a side note. Even when a customer is buying something from a merchant, they really have no immediate indication of who that merchant is. All the customer knows is that they bought something from the marketplace and not who actually provided the item they purchased. This eliminates any chance in most cases for the merchant to have repeat business or even word-of-mouth business because the customer doesn’t really know they even exist. All the customer knows to say is that they bought it off the marketplace. At ApiTap, merchants have their own storefront and checkouts are handled by the merchants own identified shopping cart. All communication is also between the merchant and the customer directly. ApiTap gives merchants every possible opportunity to grow the reputation of their business and gain as many sales as possible.

Often customer search results on a marketplace site will display prominently a marketplace’s own brands in priority, or more often, than the ones their merchants offer. Even merchants that are paying to be promoted on the marketplace site often say that they see the marketplace brands being shown more often, or in better position on the results page, than their own. ApiTap doesn’t have its own brands. Our entire focus is on the merchants to make as many sales for themselves as possible. We want them to succeed and believe that we will only succeed if they do.

Many marketplace sites have complicated algorithms to determine the results when a customer searches for something. These search algorithms are kept secret to their specific details but can include anything from as genuine and basic as the title or category of an item all the way to if a merchant has paid for special sponsorship, is paying to have their goods fulfilled by the marketplace, or even who owns the brand. They take into account multiple factors that the merchant has no control over, so they really have no way to ensure that their products show up when and where they’re supposed. With ApiTap, customer searches are straightforward. We don’t have all the extra sneaky fees, so we don’t take any of those into account. When a merchant enters a product or service, what they enter directly affects how and when that item comes up in a customer’s search results.

Often, because a marketplace focuses their attention on promoting themselves instead of their participating merchants, it’s very hard for a customer to know who they are buying from. This is done for two reasons. It’s done, in some cases, so the customer comes back to the marketplace instead of the merchant for repeat business. The second, and more problem reason, is so the marketplace can direct the sales for an item to specific merchants as they wish. When a customer clicks on a product today to look at the details and tries again a week from now, there is a possibility that they can be taken to an entirely different merchant’s listing for a similar product. With ApiTap, from the moment a product is clicked on a customer is inside that merchant’s storefront. The site graphics changes to focus on that merchant. Even the primary navigation at the top of the page is dedicated to interacting with that merchant. From start to finish, the customer is not only shown who they are buying from, but given every opportunity to communicate with and follow that merchant so they can come back and buy from them again.

ApiTap believes that every business deserves the right to promote itself and be successful. We don’t feel that the tools like what we offer should be limited to only one particular industry. From the traditional retail stores and restaurants and bars to hospitality and special events venues or even service-based businesses can use ApiTap to promote themselves and generate sales. Just like a physical mall may include many different kinds of businesses under its roof, so too does ApiTap.

Most marketplace sites are designed to promote and generate sales strictly within their system or system. This is mainly because they charge commissions for any sales and are built around the idea of controlling as much of the merchant’s business as possible to make sure they get them. ApiTap doesn’t work with commissions. We definitely don’t control a merchant’ business. We are a tool to help them succeed. That’s why we don’t care where a sale comes from, as long as the merchant gets the sale. That’s why our system is designed to generate sales traffic not just online or not just mobile, but also to drive traffic to the merchant’s physical location if they wish. All of the entire promotional and sales decisions are left to the merchant to make, because they know their own business and goals better than we will.

Marketplace sites, and e-commerce website companies, often direct merchants to use a processing account owned by the marketplace or hosting company itself. These accounts usually are at a higher rate than what the merchant could get on their own and has an additional drawback in that the money goes to the company instead of the merchant when a sale is made. As a result, merchants usually have to wait anywhere from two weeks to a month or more to get the funds from the sale. There are times where the marketplace or e-commerce company has even held funds indefinitely, while they work out a clerical error on their own part. With ApiTap every merchant has their own merchant account, provided by one of our partners. As we’ve often said, we feel that we are in a partnership to succeed, in a sense, with our merchants. For this reason, we consider it our duty to make sure that a merchant working with us has the best deals and rates possible going forward. Because of this, we were able to negotiate a rate more competitive and lower overall than any other possible merchant account provider could give. Plus, because it’s the merchant’s own account, the funds are available as soon as they are cleared and processed by the merchant’s own bank.