New seller guide to listing products New seller guide to listing products
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New seller guide to listing products

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Listing your items might feel overwhelming at first, but this guide will walk you through your options and help you choose the best setup for your inventory.

Before you start: Weigh items accurately

Your item’s weight determines its shipping cost - so it’s crucial to enter the correct weight when listing.

  • Underestimating weight → The carrier may return the package to you.
  • Overestimating weight → Buyers may overpay for shipping.

Tip: Use a scale. When in doubt, it’s better to round up slightly than under-report.

Listings on Whatnot

Listings at Whatnot have two parts: the description of the product you are selling (Product Details) and how you will sell it (Listing Details).

Product Details include:

  1. Category
  2. Title
  3. Description
  4. Image(s)
  5. Product Attributes (optional)
  6. Shipping Details (weight, dimensions)

We recommend creating listings with all these parameters, as they can be re-used across shows and are easier for buyers to understand.

Note: While you are live, image and description are optional, to facilitate listing something you are just showing on screen and you didn’t list before the show. Listings without image and description disappear when the show ends.

Listings can be sold as: 

  • Auction
    • Price increases as viewers bid
    • Runs for a set duration
  • Buy-It-Now (BIN)
    • Fixed price
    • Available throughout the show and beyond (if it’s a Quality Listing)

Tip: You can change how you are selling a listing after it is created. For example, a listing you created as a Buy-It-Now can later be edited into an Auction.

Additional options for BIN listings only:

Most sellers use a mix of Auction and BIN listings in their shows; this combination offers buyers more ways to shop.

Shipping settings for your first show

When creating listings, simply choose a Shipping Profile that reflects the item’s weight (from the dropdown menu). If your item is in between weights, choose the higher weight to avoid under-reporting the weight and risk having the carrier send the item back to you.

Which listing format should you use?

✔️ Selling a handful of unique items you want to show off one-by-one?

Create one listing per item, with clear photos and descriptions. You can list each as an Auction or a BIN.

✔️ Selling a high volume of items, many of which are similarly weighted?

Create one listing per product type (for example, one for Tops, one for Dresses) and for each, set the quantity to how many items you plan to sell. This makes it easier for buyers to see from your shop what you are going to be selling, and save the categories they are interested in.

As you run items, Whatnot will auto-label items as “Tops #1,” “Tops #2,” “Dresses #1,” etc. Use sticky notes or labels as you run the items to track which item corresponds to which number. Alternatively, using Auction Numbering by Show (in Show Settings) you can get a single sequence of numbers such as “Tops #1,” “Tops #2,” “Dresses #3,”. 

✔️ Selling a high volume of items and want to create a Quality Listing for each item?

Try our CSV uploader.

✔️ Running a card break?

Use our Breaks Feature. 

✔️ Running a Surprise Set?

Use our Surprise Sets Feature.

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