7 Reseller Hacks to Save Time, Avoid Mistakes, and Boost Sales

As a long time reseller, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to save time, boost sales, and simply run a better reselling business. While some of these may seem obvious to me, or other experienced resellers, if this post can help anyone run a smoother or more profitable reselling business, then it was worth the time to write this post!

Let’s get started with some hacks to save time, avoid making big mistakes, and even boost your sales as resellers.

Note: This post is sponsored by Vendoo, a company I’ve partnered with because I have been a subscriber for years and truly think it’s a beneficial tool for resellers.

Hack #1: Increase Chances of Making a Sale

When new resellers come to me saying they’re not selling quite as much as they want to, one thing I ask is if they’re selling on multiple platforms yet. Most resellers get there eventually and once you’re comfortable with one platform, I think it’s so smart to expand to more. Why? Because you already invested your time and money into listing that item, why not get it in front of as many people as possible to get it sold?

The best way to do this without burning out, copying and pasting to several marketplaces is to use a tool like Vendoo to automatically cross list your items. It makes it so easy to import your items from the platform you’re already using and cross post it to other marketplaces.

Hack #2: Avoid Double Selling

If you do take my advice above, or you’re already selling on multiple platforms, then you want to make sure you avoid double selling. Selling an item to two different people when you only have one is a huge mistake that sellers run into. While this doesn’t seem super likely, it’s happened to me more times that I’d like to admit.

The key to avoid this is that as soon as an item sells, you need to go to the other platforms to take it down before someone else buys it. Even with notifications on my phone, I wasn’t always able to do this quick enough to avoid double selling. My saving grace? Vendoo recently added automatic sales detection with automatic delist, which means it detects when you sell an item and automatically removes it from any other platform it’s listed on! I have not had one double sale since I turned this feature on in Vendoo. The best part is, all you have to do is turn it on! It does the work for you.

Hack #3: Bundling Low Value Items

One thing I’ve learned from reselling for a long time, from many different locations, is that sometimes you just don’t live in an area where it’s easy to find items that sell for a $20 or $30 profit. But if you live in an area where you can get cheap inventory, like at the Goodwill Outlet, you can try bundling lower value items. For example, target brand tops that only sell for $5-$10 online can be bundled together to make a $30+ sale. 

It’s a great way to increase your order value without having to source higher value items, something not everyone has access to. This is a strategy I often use when I come home from sourcing and find I made some bad buys. I also do this with kids’ clothing!

Hack #4: Save Time Pricing Your Items

Pricing is one of those things that you normally don’t want to just guess on. Price too high and you’re not going to sell the item, price too low and you’ll miss out on profit. But I sometimes find that I hop on eBay to do price research and spend way too much time scrolling and comparing, which kills my listing efficiency.

Luckily, Vendoo added an eBay Pricing Tool directly in their listing page! This uses your title to do a search and pull the average listing price and average sold price so you have a good idea of where to price. Don’t worry, if you need a little more info there’s also a quick link to open up the search results in a separate page. This tool allows me to stay in my listing flow without constantly switching between tabs or apps. That extra bit of efficiency really adds up when you’re trying to list as many items as possible in one sitting.

Hack #5: Revive Stale Listings to Get Items Sold

Old listings have a harder time selling than fresh new listings. While I don’t have scientific data to back this up, I do experience it first hand all the time. I will relist an old item that has been sitting for months with barely any views, and it’ll suddenly sell. It doesn’t happen every time, but it definitely seems to happen more than an older listing selling. You can relist inside each platform, but I personally use Vendoo’s bulk delist/relist tool which allows you to select up to 240 items for it to automatically delist and relist for you.

Hack #6: Save Time Editing Photos

While there are some great photo editing apps out there, the best way to save time editing photos? Take good photos. Sounds simple, right? Bright, natural lighting and a neutral background will always look good and save you from having to make major edits. Also, it can be hard to edit a photo to look better without changing the color of an item so by taking a good photo right off the bat, you won’t accidentally mislead buyers.

Hack #7: Use Metrics to Make Profitable Decisions

While we are working in our business every day, it can be hard to take a step back and see what’s truly working. For example, you may think that eBay is performing better, but be shocked to see that Poshmark is actually your best platform. This has been the case for me for the last year or more and it still surprises me! Seeing hard data on things like where you’re selling more, which platforms are making you higher sales, what brands you’re selling the most, etc. can help you make good decisions when sourcing that will improve your profit and sales. You can collect this data yourself, but I use Vendoo’s analytics to see this in an easy to understand format.

Hopefully you found some inspiration in some of these hacks to help improve your reselling business! These are all things I’ve learned over the years and these little changes can really make a huge impact.