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This is the first guest post in a series of posts by Mike Williams on building, launching, and scaling online marketplaces. This is also covered in more detail in Chapter 1 of The Guide To No Code Marketplaces.

Building a successful online marketplace starts with proper planning at the earliest stages. When you initially come up with your marketplace idea (and before you start building), it's beneficial to think through it and ask yourself a few key questions:
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1. What tangible problem are you solving?

2. Who are you solving it for?
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3. How are you uniquely positioned to solve this yourself and through creating an online marketplace?

4. What are your skillsets, resources available, and timeline for building and launching your marketplace?

5. What are some milestones that you can then use to evaluate your progress?‍‍‍

(i.e: x amount of supply in 30 days, x amount of bookings in 60 days, etc)
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6. As a marketplace, how are you going to add value to both supply and demand? With that answered, what is your desired relationship with each side as a marketplace?

(i.e: providing listings as a simple directory, connecting them with demand, owning the transaction and payment layer, etc)

‍‍‍7. How are you going to monetize your marketplace?

(i.e: listing fees, booking commission fees, etc)

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8. How are you going to differentiate as a marketplace and ensure there is no platform overlap with other marketplaces?

After thinking through the above questions and thoroughly answering them, you'll be more prepared for taking the next steps in building and launching your online marketplace.

Note that you can access a Google Doc version of this as a worksheet to use and directly answer them for your marketplace here.