Why is owning my own website more important than just selling on marketplaces or social media?

You must own your home base—your own website with your own domain, your own customer list, and your own email addresses. When you sell only through marketplaces or social media, you don’t control the customer relationship or data. You can’t contact them for future sales, you don’t know who they are, and you can’t build collectors (people who buy from you repeatedly over a lifetime). Your website should rank first in Google when someone searches your name. Once you have this foundation solidly in place, then you can expand to marketplaces or other channels as supplemental outlets. But the hub must be something you own and control, or you’re building your business on rented land that can disappear.

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Asked by general teaching · Answered by Patrick · Art Business Webinar · 2026-07-20