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Marketplaces to Cross-list Your eBay Listings

Marty

— 3 min read
Marketplaces to Cross-list Your eBay Listings
There's more than just eBay for reselling thrifted items.

eBay is the heavyweight we use the most (where 75% of our sales currently originate), and where all of our listings are created; but there are other marketplaces available--each with their own positives and negatives. Cross-listing to other marketplaces is fairly easy and straightforward and multiplies the amount of shoppers that will see your listings. Let's do a quick overview of our four favorites.

Poshmark

Poshmark is our second best marketplace, based on sales volume and sales dollars, and it is easy to cross-list from eBay.

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Pros: Easy to use, 80-million shoppers, a breeze to cross-listing items
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Cons: Focused on clothing (but household items and other categories are growing), a Social Media element (we ignore it)

Poshmark is perfect for our SMALLs strategy (we focus on selling primarily small items) since their shipping rates are so inexpensive for small items. Poshmark isn't so great for larger, heavier items–the shipping costs climb with larger dimensions and weights–making it cost-prohibitive for buyers to purchase large items.

Mercari

Next is Mercari, a smaller version of eBay in the sense that it mimics the giant by allowing a cornucopia of items to be listed and sold. Like Poshmark, Mercari s perfect for our SMALLs strategy since their shipping rates match Poshmark's, and unfortunately, for larger items, Mercari is limited, very similar to Poshmark.

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Pros: 23-million shoppers, easy to cross-list, less fees overall than eBay
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Cons: More low-ball offers, Mercari support can be challenging

Mercari is a great compliment to eBay and Poshmark, and like Poshmark, it only takes 45 seconds to list an item from eBay to Mercari, plus their fees are lower than the two aforementioned marketplaces. The trade-off for lower fees is a significantly smaller shopper base of 23-million folks (eBay has 135-million shoppers and Poshmark is at 80-million).

Etsy

The hand-crafted goods super site is more than just for crafts. As long as your item is vintage (think the year 2000 and earlier) and/or related to crafting (parts, supplies, tools, etc.) you can likely sell it there.

Per etsy.com, "Everything listed for sale on Etsy must either be made, designed, handpicked or sourced by you." Those last two requirements, 'handpicked or sourced,' apply to our Reselling Report business model. The fees are generally cheaper than selling the same item on eBay but you pay $0.20 per listing every four months, so if an item is listed for a year, 12 months, 12 x $0.20 = $0.60 total for the year to list that item on their massive marketplace (about 90-million users), and they then charge a 6.5% percentage of the total final selling price (includes shipping) upon that sale, plus a small payment processing fee (about 3%); so figure 11-12% of the total sold price goes to Etsy.

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Pros: 90-million shoppers, simple to cross-list, buyers willing to pay higher prices
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Cons: $0.20 up front to list each item, photos need to be a bit better than the average eBay listing, limited to selling certain item types--not 'everything' as on eBay and Mercari

Selling on Etsy makes sense for the right products such as collectibles (vintage figurines, jewelry, glassware, artwork, prints, sewing patterns, etc.), or crafting supplies and tools.

Facebook Marketplace

Ah... Facebook Marketplace (FBMP); many have a LOVE/HATE relationship with this platform. FBMP has a tremendous reach to local and national audiences but it can be taxing to use.

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Pros: Free to list and sell (FBMP takes no commission and charges no selling fees), all CA$H sales, easy to cross-list, large customer base, great for selling larger things you don't want to package and ship
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Cons: Numerous 'false starts' (folks who ask you if the item is still for sale [it clearly is otherwise it wouldn't still be listed] and then upon confirming it is still for sale--the person disappears--never to be heard from again, and you usually have to meet in person to exchange goods for cash

FBMP is a great marketplace for reselling items, but it will take some effort to respond to each "interested buyer." Is it worth the time and hassle? Sure; simply resign yourself to normally burning through 10-15 'false starts' to finally meet the ultimate buyer.

Others

There are several other online marketplaces that work very similarly to eBay, Poshmark and Mercari. Grailed, DePop, Vestiaire Collective, Vinted, WhatNot and more exists--each has their own niche or type of items shoppers seek on these particular sites. We will explore these more at a later time.

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