Why Should You Own Your Sales Channel?

Owning your sales channel means you can reach your buyers directly, without asking permission from Amazon, Etsy, Google or an algorithm. It matters because whoever owns the relationship with the customer sets the rules: the prices, the fees and who gets seen. If you don't own it, someone else does.

Here's why that's true, explained with one of the most useful ideas about how the internet makes money, and a small example of my own.

What does it mean to own your sales channel?

A sales channel is the road between you and the people who buy from you. It can be a marketplace like Etsy, a social media account, a spot on Google, an email list or a community.

You own it when you can talk to those people whenever you want, and nobody can raise the toll or close the road overnight. You rent it when a company in the middle decides how many of your followers see you, how much you pay per sale, and whether your account keeps existing.

Why do platforms always end up winning?

In 2015, tech analyst Ben Thompson published an idea he called Aggregation Theory. In simple words, it goes like this.

Every market has three parts: the people who make things, the road that takes those things to buyers, and the buyers. Before the internet, the road was the expensive part (stores, trucks, newspapers), so whoever owned it had the power. The internet made the road almost free. So the power moved to the next scarce thing: the buyers' attention.

Companies that gather huge numbers of buyers in one place, like Google, Amazon or Facebook, become the gatekeepers. Sellers need them more than they need any one seller. And when you need someone more than they need you, they set the price.

Etsy is a clear example. It raised its fee on every sale from 3.5% to 5% in 2018, and then to 6.5% in April 2022. Thousands of sellers closed their shops for a week in protest. The fee stayed. They had built their businesses on Etsy's road, so they had nowhere else to go.

The lesson isn't that platforms are evil. It's that whoever owns the buyers wins. So the smart move, even for a tiny seller, is to own a small piece of that yourself.

What happens when you build on rented land?

Writer Nicholas Carr had a name for this back in 2006: digital sharecropping. Sharecroppers worked land that belonged to someone else and gave the owner a big cut of the harvest. On the internet, you create the content, the reviews and the followers, but the platform owns the land.

The most visible cost is reach. According to Socialinsider, in mid 2026 a post from a Facebook page reached on average only 1.80% of the page's followers. If you have 10,000 followers, a normal post shows up for about 180 of them. You built that audience, but you have to pay to talk to it.

That's why many people who sell online feel they work harder every year for the same results. They're not doing it worse. The landlord just changed the rules.

How did a Facebook group reach 1,100 members without posting?

Here's my own small example. I created a Facebook group called HOTMART AFILIADOS 2026, for people who sell digital products as affiliates. In about three months it grew to more than 1,100 members, and I only published one post.

There was no trick. Just a few simple things done well:

• A name people actually search for. The name and description use the words people type when they look for this topic, so Facebook shows the group to them.
• A clear, simple promise. In a few seconds you know what the group is for and why you'd join. No over-thinking. Simple wins, every time.
• Clear rules and clear incentives. People know what's allowed and what they get out of being there.
• A description that makes newcomers feel welcome. Someone who joins should feel included, understood and part of something bigger than themselves.

The difference with a Facebook page is big. Nobody followed the group by accident: every member chose to join because of a topic they care about. And I'm the one who sets the rules and the tone, not a marketplace.

Is a Facebook group really yours?

Not 100%. Facebook still owns the land, and it could change how groups work tomorrow. That's Carr's warning again.

But it's a big step forward compared to selling on a marketplace, because now you're the one gathering the people. In Thompson's terms, you become a tiny aggregator: your own small crowd of buyers, in one place, around one topic.

The next step is to move part of that crowd to a channel nobody can take from you, like an email list or your own website. Offer something useful in exchange for an email, like a free guide. If the platform changes the rules, you still have a way to reach your people.

Many indie makers work this way. Pieter Levels built a large following on X and announces his new products straight to it, and Marc Lou does the same with each app he launches. They don't wait for a marketplace to show them to buyers. The buyers are already there.

How can you start your own channel this week?

• Pick one topic your future buyers care about. Not your product: the problem it solves.
• Give it a name people search for. Use the same words they type in Google or in Facebook's search bar.
• Write one clear description and a few rules. Short, simple and welcoming.
• Invite the first people by hand. Friends, contacts, people asking about the topic in other places. I explain how in How to Find Clients on Reddit and Facebook.
• Start collecting emails early. Even if it's just a few. That's the part that's truly yours.

It won't make you money in a week. But every person you gather is someone you can reach tomorrow without asking anyone for permission. And that adds up.

Sources

• Aggregation Theory, by Ben Thompson (Stratechery, 2015)
• From Surf to Serf: on Nicholas Carr's digital sharecropping (IEEE Spectrum)
• Thousands of Etsy sellers are planning a strike (Fortune, 2022)
• Etsy sellers launch a week-long strike over increased fees (NPR, 2022)
• Social media reach benchmarks for 2026 (Socialinsider)