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I do think running a sale really helps. It was mentioned in my store review. Speaking of that, I need to schedule part 2. I really liked the person I had last time, though looking back he did have an agenda of things to discuss that wasn’t particular to me per se. I implemented some of his stuff. Trying the coupon was most effective. I never went back and added 6-7 photos but started fluffing new listings. I also did not create a sale category but Poshmark and their 6.49 shipping is helping me to get rid of some very old stuff.
@mycottage do let us know how it goes with promoted off. I’m getting Ebay yelling at me everywhere to up my percentage. I’m going to make a point to check monthly to see what happens to my promoted % of clicks. If it’s down from last year at the low percentage I may remove the campaign. Ebay obviously will test everyone to see what they do. I’m hoping a lot of Americans decide to reduce or end promoted. We are feistier on this side of the pond. At the same time, I’d like to keep in front of those who decide not to. I’m not sure Ebay will reward a 2.6% rate at all though.
AI will be really interesting to watch. People seem keen to adopt it. Ebay isn’t blocking Open AI and they want to look like they are catching up tech-wise. Going forward I’m going to be much more flexible on price and VERY careful picking stuff up. I just got my TRS back too and I hope that helps with ChatGPT hits.
Also have continued to post all my listings on Pinterest but shifted to fewer, less specific boards.
And I introduced Ebay flat rate shipping business policies for 1, 2 pounds. I think this works best for the one pound rate, which I set at 6.50 (coastal).
I’ve been afraid to list used clothing on Ebay in case it messes up my feedback but I have a bin or two of our better brand used clothing and true vintage to list. I may do just Posh or I may go ahead and cross post. Good brands have done well on Mercari for me.
I have opted into Mercari’s new automatic offer system. For now, I’m doing manual offers on Poshmark but I may go ahead and switch that up. Currently for Ebay I’m doing the 7 day automated default. I’ll have to think about that one since they have the vacation glitch and you can’t edit the listings while an offer is out.
The Pure Hustle podcast guys reported on this recently. Good to know!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C45n4ZpUYxk&t=1707s He has an interesting discussion regarding the impact of USPS shipping going up again (8% I think for ground). Start at 8:21. Point is widening gap between the $ increase for buyers close to you vs further zones and how this affects your choice of flat, free or calculated shipping on Ebay.
Revenue
Mercari
$75.25
Poshmark
$132.00
eBay
$782.16
Total $989.41I’m getting lazy about checking my COGS when doing my numbers. Probably my margins are down since I have been making and taking a lot of offers, especially on used items. My margins on Posh are smaller since they take higher fees and there is so much negotiation. Hopefully sales will hold up ok through mid-January. I’m probably not going to be able to list some of those days. I’m pretty motivated to sell as much as possible and closer to paying off my business credit card which got a balance in the second half of 2026, while sales were poor (and listing was pretty poor too).
I LOVE efficient app Mercari and it’s 10% fees. I wish they would have a deeper audience. Quoting a youtuber “it’s surprising what sells on Poshmark”. I agree with this. Since I started in October I’ve sold both vintage and new items on Poshmark, mainly non-clothing. People are liking and buying items that have long sat on Ebay with lots of competition and probably burying my Cassini. They do tend to go on offer though about 90% of the time. It feels a little happy to get revenge on Ebay a bit for their burying and for the cancellations they cause showing my buyer post-sale cheaper items. I also feel like maybe these are young people not shopping on Ebay.
I just have some consolidating to do in my listed inventory but about half of my unlisted is still a mess and needs to be sorted. With the higher shipping cost, I may consider a yard sale of $15 items I had kept before to list.
I read somewhere that people are using Chat GPT and it’s now 10% of Ebay’s outside referrals. Right now it’s free but that is likely to soon change. I’m sure Ebay would pass on any cost to the sellers one way or the other. If I had to guess, I’d imagine that a lot of those leads are to “focus categories”. For us non-focus category sellers, it’s hard to know how ads help or not. However, I do get a report about the % which sold through promoted vs organic (in the past about half roughly before the new attribution). So I guess it’s helping? Also we are still competing within Ebay against other non-focus category sellers. I’m hoping a lot of them aren’t paying fees.
On the whole, I figure that it’s going to be about using technology, keeping items fresh, accepting lower prices and paying less for inventory so I can still make a profit. Since I tend to be a spotty lister, I think the software will help my business.
I did an experiment after crossposting to Posh. I was showing up on Google with the same listing from Posh vs. Ebay (calculated shipping). I ran the searches on Chat GPT though and none of my listings showed on there. I asked Chat GPT why a lower priced item wouldn’t be shown and it gave a Cassini style generic factors answer, including seller rep. I just got my top rated back finally after some inventory multi-quantity issue last winter. I hope that may help. It would go to figure that the chat models would not want people to end up with bad sellers and stop using them to shop.
Regarding Etsy I always had a complex about photo quality and branding, but I may hand pick some things to go on there. The listing fee and the free shipping are a little intimidating as well.
I decided to go with 2.6%. Ebay recommended 14% and they had a banner pop up when I started this new campaign that I should go higher to get my ads seen. Also a warning all the time that I have picked a low percentage. Then I think I saw something also that said make it at least 5%. However, I am sticking with this and I’m hoping that my ads are shown. It’s a tough time of year for sales coming up so it will be hard to know.
Let us know how it goes for you. I am always passing on revising old listings in favor of posting new inventory. Though cross posting on another platform has done way better for me than I think revising on Ebay would. Also loving that the software will end and relist on Mercari and Ebay.
I am glad I started selling on Poshmark. I like that Posh has fewer home goods and they don’t show your competitor’s listings to buyers. I had 5-6 cancellations after purchase in December. I really hate that Ebay does that. Posh is already charging 20% so Ebay is still lower than that where I am promoting. Posh shows you the net payout before you make offers. Ebay is wise I think not to do that.
I’m thinking about cross posting a few items on Etsy at some point in 2026. A reseller Youtuber I follow says she only does $50 and up on Etsy. I don’t like the charge to keep a listing on there though some of my stuff I got at very good prices.
@mycottage I just deleted all my campaigns (for some reason there were like 8 going) and I plan to go with 2.2%. I was thinking of 3% originally. I’m hoping a lot of sellers have taken off their campaigns. I don’t think sales will be great this winter anyway but I’m curious to see what happens.
@VT listing definitely helps the sales! I sold a lot this season by making deals but did not list much. I’m getting back on it this week. We will get a huge storm tomorrow for days so even with family around I intend to list. My son has coding work to do and I like to put on coding music for us while we work near one another like when he used to study for high school. After the holidays we have a short trip and I will reinvigorate my efforts to list more days of the week.
Quick couple of additional notes:
1. I just went into my manage active listings page and it was super easy to bulk edit the floor on my best offers. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there before?
2. I was able to recover my lost listings from that Ebay glitch. The software Nifty can filter what you have and don’t have on select platforms. It’s pretty great. I have had a couple of times that Nifty has not been able to auto-delist or adjust quantity on an Ebay item that sold on Posh, but Nifty sends an email to alert me.
I have not been great about listing but I probably am doing at least a couple about 4/7 days. This is a big shipping time, but that will slow probably later this week. I think the official ground cutoff was the 17th.
Wow that’s awesome – thanks for sharing. I don’t have any right now – knock wood. Just finally got my TRS back this week after out of stock Christmas items last year cleared out. I’m very surprised to hear this since at Ebay Open, they did not mention anything like this. Also there was some Federal policy or new law discouraging removal of consumer feedback. I did notice that there is some kind of count of remaining feedback requests on my order page I think.
P.S. Posh is reporting like 75% of my listings are taking too long at USPS and they are upping their estimated delivery time to 7 to 10 business days. A lot of my sales have not paid out yet. Normally I don’t check on tracking, but I’m seeing it’s taking days to get out of my town. I have been waiting in line for a scan, and I’ll either have to do that or drive out to the distribution center counter (10 minutes) to CYA. I feel like the cutoff dates they are giving at USPS are not going to work out.
