On the list of the Top 150 Marketplaces in the world, OpenSky takes 146th place. With around 150,000 visitors per month it beats out sites like Sell.com and MassGenie (the strangest selling site ever)....

...Yet it doesn’t get the traffic the eBid (300,000 visitors per month), Jet.com (1.4 million) or Bonanza (5.4 million). But, as we have discussed before, general traffic levels do not necessarily mean one site is better than another. What is more important than general traffic is the TYPE of traffic versus the TYPE of products you sell. Here’s a quick example; let’s pretend a site called CellPhonesRus.com, a site that specializes in cell phones, gets almost 35 million visitors per month. If you were to list clothing on CellPhonesRus.com, even though they get a lot of traffic you likely won’t be making many sales whereas Bonanza get’s only a fraction of the traffic but Clothing is a big seller on their site.

Anyhoo, Alibabi is a large owner of OpenSky. Last I read they had acquired nearly 40% ownership in OpenSky. That could be a pro or a con depending on our opinion of the Chinese juggernaut.

WHAT MAKES OPENSKY DIFFERENT

Today I took a look at their site and here’s the homepage:

The first thing you notice is all the “Deals”..

.

Clearly there are a ton of “HURRY AND BUY NOW!!” tactics employed here. But what I find even more annoying is this:

My all-time biggest pet peeve EVER is having to do additional work to find out how much something costs. I despise it. But let’s find out how much the $95 retail “Floral Embroidery Button Down” top shown on the right of the image above costs. Before I click Reveal, what’s your guess? $40? $20? Does this really retail for $95 or is that hype? Hmmmm… ok, time to Reveal….

Well, after all that debate it turns out that I can’t even buy it anyways because its Sold Out.

I then clicked the right arrow shown in the photo above to see what would happen and it showed me a nothing listing:

This is also another expensive top that doesn’t seem to have any name brand. Odd. But since this top is in stock I am going to try to add a size Medium to Cart.

Well, it turns out that there is no Size Medium. So this listing was also a bust.

I realized there is a Shop By Size navigation on the left of the site, so I clicked Medium:

And here’s what appears… the same damn Sold Out blue top…

So I decided to instead go with the Grey Drape Top shown on the right above… yes, the one that somehow supposedly retails for $125…

This listing also has a limited size assortment but they do have size Medium. However, the “Original Retail Price” of $125 is really bothering me. It just doesn’t seem true for this unbranded piece that is 100% Polyester would somehow retail for over a hundred bucks. So I did what all weirdos do, I ran a “Reverse Image Search”... because I am totally convinced I can easily PROVE that $125 retail is a total lie. Sure enough, here’s what I discover…

Let’s take a closer look…

Surprisingly, I can’t find a ton more info on this specific top so I decided to reverse lookup this “$69.99 Retail” top instead:

This one also had results:

So I started investigating. Here’s my findings:

The identical top is available (in 4 different colors) on LookLoveLust for $29.99 with NO MENTION of a $70 Retail:

Let me say this real quick (again); I am NOT a “price hater”. I am a firm believer in Capitalism. I DO NOT believe people need to try to play “price war” with Amazon, eBay or every other site. In fact, I encourage you NOT to aim to underprice everyone. The price of the top on OpenSky is NOT my issue. My issue is saying these items are Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger PRICES even though they are brandless items, such as these listings:

In my opinion, that is dishonest because your goal is to make buyers believe they are getting a giant discount that just... isn’t real... Kapish?

Regardless, it would seem you can *say* your item is worth anything you want on OpenSky.com.

Let’s move on...

I have a bad taste in my mouth. Do we even need to keep looking into this marketplace? Yeah, I guess we should. Let’s continue…

COSTS

Pricing is harder to CLEARLY access than any other site I have reviewed.

When you try to access pricing through OpenSky.com you are rerouted to MoreCommerce.com

Once you arrive at MoreCommerce you will be able to select from a menu of prices:

It would be nice if instead of this list, they explained the DIFFERENCE in these four different selling options. Since they don’t explain it, I’m gonna try to figure it out for you.

First up is “Auctivia Multi-Channel” which brings you here https://www.auctiva.com/?how=morecommerce

Then you can again click on Pricing and this is what you get:

What Auctivia does is posts your listing on eBay, Amazonand, if you use the expensive plan, it’ll post to PickPerfect. Basically it saves you time. Maybe you’re like “Ok, but how does this relate to OpenSky… I have no F’n clue. I would *think* these listings also appear on OpenSky….maybe? I don’t see anything about OpenSky on the Auctivia website…. Sooooo….. There’s that.

Next on the list is “Vendio Handmade MultiChannel”. Here’s their pricing:

With Vendio you can auto-post your crafty listings to these sites:

Again, I don’t see any mention of OpenSky so I am damn confused.

Third on the OpenSky / MoreCommerce pricelist is “Managed Marketplace Network”. When you click this link you stay on MoreCommerce and see this:

So I guess what this does is give you access to more sites to auto-post on:

OpenSky IS actually on this list. As you probably noticed, it says “Starting at $32 per month” but they also want you to have a phone consultation with their “expert” https://www.morecommerce.com/boost - and, from my experience, whenever a company insists on a phone call, it’s going to be really expensive. Heck, the last time I was forced into “expert” phone calls was when we were looking to have a new eCommerce site built. The first quote I got (over the phone) was $38,0000. The second quote was $23,000. Third quote was $25,000. Like, why can’t you just post on your site “An estimated price is $20,000 - $30,000” - that would save EVERYONE a ton of time.

And the final link in the Pricing section is called Storenvy Storefront https://www.storenvy.com/open-a-store and here’s their pricing:

After all of that researching, I still feel like I have literally no clue what the costs are to SELL ON OPENSKY, which was entirely what I was looking for. So I started digging through OpenSky’s Terms section and this is what I found on 4.17.20 https://www.opensky.com/content/general/terms-of-membership-policy

I then clicked the link that says “Additional Membership Plan Details Available at https://www.morecommerce.com/ and I ended up right back at MoreCommerce.

So, in total rage and fury worse than Batmans, I decided to just google other peoples articles about OpenSky to try to figure out WTF this site is and HTF much it costs to sell on there. I came across this really amazing article on EtsyAlternative.com (cool site, check it out!). Anyways, the unknown author of this article fills in a lot of the grey areas that I couldn’t figure out. In fact, I want to quote a couple things directly from the EtsyAlternative.com article. Check this out:

Please tell me that you read the very last line… if you didn’t, let me restate it, in all caps…

Quote, “YOU’LL BE PAYING OPENSKY 50% OF YOUR SALES!” should I type it again in a larger font? Highlighted? Italics? A quirky font?

“YOU’LL BE PAYING OPENSKY 50% OF YOUR SALES!”

But let’s say you decide not to do “enhanced marketing”; ok, then you’re still paying 15% commission, which is the same as Walmart, yet Walmart gets almost 500 MILLION hits per month. Additionally, Opensky charges the monthly fee. Walmart is FREEEEEE. I am not saying “Walmart is better” but what I am saying is, factually,

Walmart has waaaay more traffic

Walmart costs less to list

Walmart will auto-post your applicable listings on their other sites, such as Jet.com

Welp, it's time for our overall rating...

I know, I know... you're like "TWO?  TWO STARS?  Bro... that's rough!  Why so low?"

Here's my reasoning:

1. It's confusing.  As a shopper you have to really invest a lot of time in trying to find what you want.  From my personal experience, customers who are confused just LEAVE.  That is why we have watered down our website to being as simplistic as possible.  No bells, no whistles, nothing "advanced", totally public pricing, no need to call us, no need to haggle, no run-around.  We figured out that the LESS the customer has to click, the better.  In the case of OpenSky.com there is so much clicking, and scrolling, and hunting through pages to try and find what you need.  Meh. 
2. It's dishonest.  I can deal with the clicking, scrolling, clicking, back-arrow, clicking, sold-out, scrolling... but the dishonesty about the RTV (Retail Value) is crappy.  
3. I friggin' despise websites who choose to show "Out of Stock" items.  Yes, this is a setting within your site that the site owner can CHOOSE to turn on or off.  The only reason sites allow Sold-Outs to be seen is to get traffic to their site in HOPES that the shopper will purchase something different.  it sucks.  It's not cool. I can't stand it when I FINALLY locate a site with the thing I want then it's not even available to buy.  
4. The pricing, as a seller, is beyond confusing.  Actually, it's not even "confusing", it's more like "difficult to locate".  Heck, I spent TWO HOURS trying to find it.  I prefer to have the price be directly in my face, like "BAM! Here's our price.  You wanna join, or naw?" - Honestly, I don't even know what the actual pricing for a seller is as of this moment and I've been writing this article for almost 4 hours.  

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