Ask the internet how many products to launch with and you get advice for somebody inventing a brand. Start with three to five. Keep the range tight. Let demand tell you what to make next.
None of that is wrong and none of it is your problem. You already have the catalogue. You made those decisions years ago. Your question is which slice of an existing range to send to a marketplace that has never heard of you, and that is a completely different question with a completely different answer.
The instinct is to send everything, because the listing feed is already built and marginal SKUs feel free. They are not free. Every listing you add is content that has to pass the platform’s approval, attributes somebody has to map, images that have to meet a spec, stock that has to stay accurate across two systems, and a price that has to stay right when you run a sale on your own site and forget the marketplace exists. Multiply that by two thousand and you have not launched a channel, you have built a maintenance burden that will be broken within a month.
The bigger cost is diagnostic. When you list everything at once and the channel underperforms, you cannot tell whether the category is wrong, the price is wrong or the images are wrong, because all three variables moved together. You have run one enormous experiment with no control.
So send a slice you can actually reason about. Take the products that already sell well on your own site, because proven demand travels better than hope. Cut anything with a delivery profile the platform will punish, which usually means the heavy and awkward things. Cut anything whose price cannot survive the commission. What is left is a shortlist you can price deliberately, photograph properly and watch closely.
Then expand on evidence rather than on ambition. The second batch should be chosen by what the first batch taught you, which is the whole point of going in stages.
Listing your full catalogue is not a launch. It is a bulk upload, and the thing that makes a channel work is the attention you can only afford to give a small number of products.
If this is the exact wall you are staring at, tell me what you are seeing: mail@sandeepkv.com, or message me on LinkedIn.