Commission structure with online marketplaces

Its all about the value and about how defensible your idea is.

A marketplace like craigslist or offerup or ebay has high defensibility, and high value proposition. The network effects are hard to compete with. (Sellers don't post where there are no buyers, and vice versa).

A marketplace like upwork or freelancer is high value, but hard to defend, because once people find the connection, they can take their business off the site.

In a competitive marketplace, even defensible marketplaces that provide really high value are going to attract competitors. The marginal cost is pretty much nonexistant for online businesses which drives the value you can capture for your service down to pretty much nothing, so typical strategies are to drive the profit percent down and go for volume.

The trick if you want to demand and capture high value for marketplaces, is to create a highly defensible marketplace that provides really high value continuously. The user has to see and feel the value that they get is worth the price they pay - for ebay, the users say, its not worth taking it off the grid because ebay/upwork protects me in cases of fraud this is worth something. The more services you can provide, and the less alternatives they have the better.

You want to provide such a good service that you become a monopoly, no one even wants to consider alternatives because your product is better than any alternative and is a bargin, its actually cheap for what you get. The service is outstanding, you would recommend it to all your friends, you trust the service and the team, and like them. This is what I want my customers to think and believe when they think of my brand, that we are a symbiotic unit, together we can do more, do better, be stronger, and without each other we are both poorer and worse off.