A small seller with one product has a hard time getting found. They don't have a store, they have a link, and a link on its own doesn't get foot traffic.
The idea is a virtual mall. One Google Sheet that lists storefronts, each with a photo, a description, and a link, published as a web page that shoppers browse. Sellers pay you rent for the row.
It's one of the 100 business ideas in Google Sheets on my list, and it's the one that surprises people most when they realize a spreadsheet can be the whole thing.
The idea
Create a unique shopping experience for buyers, and for sellers too. Allow sellers to "open" a storefront with a photo and a description of their product or service. That's the whole transaction. They give you the material, you give them the space.
The virtual mall could be used by businesses in a variety of industries, including fashion, beauty, electronics, and more. But I'd start with one theme. A mall for handmade ceramics. A mall for indie board games. A mall for products made in one city. A themed mall gets shoppers who care, and shoppers who care are what sellers pay for.
It could also be used by entrepreneurs looking to start their own businesses without the overhead costs of a physical storefront. Somebody with one product and no website can have a storefront in your mall in ten minutes.
In addition to storefronts, the virtual mall could offer other services to businesses. Virtual event spaces, like a tab for a weekend sale with time-limited deals. Marketing and advertising opportunities, like a featured row at the top. Customer analytics, like a monthly report of how many people viewed and clicked each storefront.
What makes this work in a spreadsheet is that a mall is a list. A list of stores, each with the same fields. Google Sheets is very good at lists of things with the same fields, and it can publish that list to the web for free.
How to build it in Google Sheets
Tabs
- Storefronts: one row per seller. Store Name, Owner, Category, Photo URL, Description, Product Link, Price Range, Featured checkbox, Rent Paid Through, Status.
- Applications: Google Form responses from sellers who want in.
- Mall: the public tab. A clean, formatted view of active storefronts, grouped by category, built with formulas from the Storefronts tab.
- Events: sale weekends and featured promotions with dates.
- Stats: view and click counts you collect, one row per store per month.
Features to use
- Google Forms intake so sellers apply with their photo, description, and link, and the row is ready for you to approve.
-
IMAGE in the Mall tab so the photo URL turns into an actual picture in the cell:
=IMAGE(D2). - FILTER and SORT to build the Mall tab from only active, paid-up storefronts, with featured ones first.
- Publish to web on the Mall tab only. That gives you a public URL shoppers can open without a Google account, and it updates on its own when you edit the sheet.
- Conditional formatting on Rent Paid Through so expiring tenants turn yellow, then red.
- Apps Script with a time-driven trigger and MailApp to email tenants a week before rent is due.
- Protected ranges so only you can edit the Storefronts tab.
Build the Mall tab to look like a page, not a grid. Wider columns, wrapped text, images, and a header row. It's the storefront window for the whole mall.
Who pays for it, and how to sell it
The seller is the customer. Small makers, one-product founders, local businesses without a real web presence. They're paying for a place to be seen next to similar sellers, and for the traffic you bring to the mall as a whole. Shoppers pay nothing.
Price it as rent. Monthly or yearly per storefront, with a higher rate for a featured row and a small fee for a spot in a sale weekend. You can also sell the mall template itself on Gumroad to people who want to run a mall for their own niche, which is a second product from the same build.
If you go the template route, OnlySheets lets you sell access to the sheet and share it with each buyer automatically, so you're not sending copies by hand.
The service is the marketing. Charge more for a storefront that you also post about on social media once a month. That's the part sellers can't do for themselves.
For the first ten tenants, offer free rent for three months to sellers in your chosen theme, in exchange for them sharing the mall with their customers. Ten stores sharing one link is how a mall gets its first foot traffic. Once shoppers show up, the next ten tenants will pay.
Related ideas from the list
- Create a Local Marketplace, the same sellers-and-shoppers mechanic scoped to one town instead of one theme.
- Create a Curated Directory, a published list of listings where the listed party pays, which is exactly what a mall is.
- Virtual Conference Hall, another "venue in a sheet" idea, with booths instead of storefronts.
Want the other 99? This is one idea from my list of 100 business ideas you can build in Google Sheets. Get all 100 business ideas as a free Google Sheet.
And if you want to learn how to package and sell spreadsheets, my course Selling Spreadsheets walks through exactly that.