--- type: WebPage name: A sale in the hand. id: "https://selfe.ai/solutions/direct-sales" url: "https://selfe.ai/solutions/direct-sales" publisher: "did:web:selfe.ai" description: "How a live merchant feed puts you into Google Shopping and everywhere else that compares, so you are in the reckoning at the moment of choosing." --- # A sale in the hand. > How a live merchant feed puts you into Google Shopping and everywhere else that compares, so you are in the reckoning at the moment of choosing. A live merchant feed puts you into Google Shopping and everywhere else that compares, so you are in the reckoning and the sale still lands in your own system, at your own prices, with the customer attached to it. Selfe keeps the sale direct with you, even when an agent found you first. ## The biggest shop window sends people to you. Google's shopping surfaces are where most people who have said what they want get shown who has it. What comes out of them arrives on your own site, at your own price, and the customer arrives with it rather than staying somebody else's. Rooms work the same way. All of it runs on a merchant feed, which most businesses either do not have or have not looked at since it was set up. It is also what Google's AI reads to answer a shopping question and what it works from to complete a checkout. And the shape that feed has to be in belongs to nobody. Catalogue, then basket, then checkout, then order, set out once as a sequence anything can follow. Google is the largest place it runs rather than the owner of it, so the work that makes you buyable there makes you buyable everywhere. ## What your Selfe keeps right. Selling direct against the marketplaces means being in the comparison with everything filled in. **Tractors & Cream** A Somerset farm café and glamping stay, connecting through ResNexus, the same adapter already proven end to end, live, on a real partner sandbox. **Cranstons Cumbrian Food Hall** A Cumbrian food hall and deli, connecting through its own WooCommerce shop, via Visit Keswick. ## The margin you keep is the cheapest margin there is. A sale that comes to you directly is worth more than the same sale arriving through somebody else, by a distance that decides things where the margin is thin. That has always been true and it has always been hard to act on. What makes it actionable is that the surfaces doing the comparing hand the customer over. You are not renting a pitch on somebody's marketplace, you are being listed and then getting the visit, the basket and the card details. And what you end up holding is a customer, not a reference number. Who they are, what they wanted and what they said afterwards, which is the part that pays for years instead of once. ## Worth reading next The latest on how agents actually work, written as it happens. **Can an agent actually buy from you?** *(coming soon)* The foundational question, answered plainly: what has to be true before an AI agent can complete a booking rather than just mention you. **Being found is not the same as being bought from.** *(coming soon)* An AI agent can mention your business and still never send it a booking. What closes that gap, and where most of the work actually happens. **Your booking button is not the point.** *(coming soon)* A link back to your site is not something an agent can act on. What it actually needs to make the booking happen itself. ## How does this compare with a marketplace or booking channel? A marketplace is a destination that brings the customer, controls the journey and usually keeps the relationship. Selfe makes your own business available wherever the customer's agent is asking; the sale lands in your system and the customer remains yours. They can work alongside each other, but the economics and ownership are different. **Is this saying we should leave the channels?** No. Channels earn their place when they introduce demand you would not otherwise reach. Selfe adds another direct route and makes it easier to complete sales without handing over the customer. The sensible question is which sales genuinely needed a channel and which could have completed with you. **Why charge a percentage at all?** Because part of the value only exists when a sale completes. A transaction charge puts that part of our return on the same side of the arithmetic as yours. It applies to an attributable sale completed through Selfe, not simply to every order appearing in a system you connected. **Is that instead of card fees, or on top?** On top. Your payment provider still processes the money into your account and charges its normal fee. Selfe never becomes the merchant or holds your proceeds. Its transaction charge is for creating and completing the attributable sale, not for moving the card payment. **Can an AI agent really complete a sale or booking?** Yes, where your connected systems and rules allow it. Selfe checks live availability and terms, takes authorised payment through your existing provider, and writes the order or booking into the system your team already uses. Anything outside your rules stops before it commits. ## Act on this - [Check whether an agent can buy from you](https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/buyability-check) — the free readiness scan. - [Discover venues](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/discover) — `POST`, semantic browse across the registry. - [Match a bookable answer](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/match) — `POST` with dates and party size. - [Verify Selfe's identity](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/did.json) — `did:web:selfe.ai`. - [Agent card](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/agent-card.json) — how to connect over A2A or MCP.