Where to go next?

[Mummmers]

I’d like advice on what other platforms to sell on next. I have a fulltime day job and I have been selling on eBay for about a year (as of Nov. 10). I have a premium store and do pretty well. Lately I have started listing on Facebook Marketplace (local and shipping)  also and I’m very happy with the results. I also have started listing more stuff on Craigslist, especially heavy stuff I don’t want to ship. Now I’m considering getting into the other platforms (Etsy, Mercari, Bonanza, Amazon, Poshmark) and I’d like some advice on where to go next. I have about 800 eBay listings, which form the basis of my listings on all platforms, except for the very heavy stuff, like chairs, which are only on Craigslist or local pickup on Marketplace. My thinking is that people probably have their favorite place to shop and folks who don’t see my listings one place will see it on another platform, so it expands the number of potential buyers. Does anybody have suggestions on which new platform to prioritize and get into next, and which ones to stay away for any reason?  I mostly sell stuff from around the house and thrift store / garage sale finds (clothes, CDs, cassettes, shoes, boots, jewelry, household stuff). Here’s a link to my store

https://www.ebay.com/str/harmony535

 

[jaepete]

I’ll be following this thread as I’m in the same boat with selling platforms, although only about 70 listings at this time.

[Mummmers]

I’m all signed up with Poshmark, Etsy, and Mecari (and eBay and Craigslist, of course). Now I have to figure out what types of items match up best with which platform. I don’t think I’m interested in doing Amazon right now. That seems like a whole different level.

[Old Dad]

I agree, stay away from Amazon for now.  I’ve been selling there for 7-8 years and it’s about 30% of my sales, but also about 75% of my problems.  It’s hard to walk away from that level of sales, but if I had it to do again I wouldn’t.

[Pikapop]

I would say looking at your items they are a best fit for Poshmark, especially now that they have expanded into menswear and houseware which means you could list most of what you have. A couple things to be aware of:

• they require square photos
• buyers tend to ask a lot of questions and then flake
• you cannot set a “Buy It Now” price; all prices are open to negotiation and you will get a fair amount of low-ballers
• it’s often expected if you enter into negotiations you will at least discount for “free shipping” so I build it into the price
• Poshmark pushes a lot of “sharing” and “following” social features but I have found them to be pretty useless in terms of generating sales and just overall time wasters. My advice would be to just ignore it.

With 800 listings I would probably subscribe to ListPerfectly for a month (you can cancel after) to more quickly cross post everything.

[Mummmers]

Thanks @pikapopblog for all the excellent advice and tips. Very helpful.

[Antique Frog]

If you’re using the Gimp photo editing program, which is free, there’s an option in the crop tool dialog to set it to crop square. The second option to check is “allow growing”. Use the crop tool to crop the image, set the colour palette to the default white background, flatten the image and then resize to (say) 1,600 x 1,600 pixels for eBay.

The advantage of uploading square images to eBay, even if most of the image is white, is that the main image stands out a bit more. Also, although eBay doesn’t allow text or borders, or presumably coloured backgrounds that look like borders, they don’t say nothing about close-ups in your main image.

 

 

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