Join Clara, Kim, Maggie Weber, and Doug as they discuss listing optimization and share tips and tricks to optimize your listings so you can reach more buyers online. Listing optimization is the key to selling more, so let’s get you started!
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the ecommerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and a hub for information on growing your business. Find out more at thesellercommunitypodcast.com, leave a message or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email us at podcast@listperfectly.com.
Links
Seller Community Podcast on Anchor
Episode Links
The Clothing Reseller’s Handbook
Refashionedhippie YouTube
Refashionedhippie Poshmark
Transcript
Clara: Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening, everybody. I’m so happy. Dougie and Kim, why don’t we say hi to our special guest Refashionedhippie? It’s our amazing Maggie Weber! Welcome Maggie!
Maggie: Hi. I’m so excited to be here. And I got applause from Doug’s board. That’s like all I wanted.
Clara: No, that was the crowd.
Doug: The crowd.
Very excited about this panel. We’ve got our List Perfectly and our eBay expert, Kim Koala Trading Company. And Maggie, you’re very poshy. Would you say you’re the posh expert? Yeah. Okay, cool. And then Clara is our expert on everything.
Clara: It’s always a learning journey, and that’s why I wanted to be surrounded today by the three of you. Thank you Dougie for being here. And thank you, Maggie and Kimberly, because these two sellers, including Doug himself, are what we call medium to small sellers, in List Perfectly, but in other companies, they could be like big sellers.
What was your native platform and if you could do an introduction of yourself?
Maggie: My name is Maggie. I go by Refashionedippie everywhere that matters. I started on Poshmark as just a regular buyer because I needed some professional clothing for my first real professional job. I can’t pay $70 for a dress. My body won’t let me. I basically got a completely new work wardrobe for less than $300. And then I started selling some stuff on the side. And when I got pregnant with my daughter, it felt unfair to make the company pay me to sleep at my desk. So I stayed home and started selling on Poshmark just to bring in some extra money in between throwing up and playing Witcher 3.
And then when I had my daughter, it was like, well, now I can never leave this tiny person. Now I have to make that job. And anyone who’s a parent of multiple children, by the way, I bow down to you.
I was always terrified of cross-posting because I had that big fear that I think we all have in the beginning and I can tell you I’ve been professionally selling for four years now, and that’s literally never happened to me, like not one time. So don’t miss out on 2000 sales because you’re afraid of what might happen one time.
Getting over fear is a huge thing you have to work on. I grew, I finally kicked myself into signing up for List Perfectly, and then I started crossposting and now I do this professionally. And I always say once my daughter is in kindergarten, watch out because I will rule the world. I absolutely love that my business now is based on reselling and a portion of all of my sales goes into my daughter’s college fund.
Clara: You said the magic words whether it is a college fund or your retirement income, maybe you wanna contribute to an IRA, maybe if you’re part-time and you have a W2 job, maybe you wanna increase that percentage for your 401K and so forth. That’s what reselling will allow you to set up a better future for yourself or your family, or whoever you choose.
Maggie: A portion of my sales also goes to help Sanctuary Village, which is a charity for that I volunteer. We’ve built a tiny house community for the homeless in Philadelphia. We break ground in two months. I can tell you more about this later, but I’ve used my reselling skills to net them at least $12,000 this year. And I have done that with zero money invested. It’s all the money that I’ve made. So I’m really, really happy with that.
I wanna tell you guys, List Perfectly is serious. They’re not paying me to come on here and say all of this. Clara and List Perfectly have donated to our organization before without being asked to and it makes a huge, huge difference. And I think one of the biggest things is the first 12 residents of our village will be women who are chronically homeless.
So that means they’ve been unhoused for at least 10 years…
Clara: damn.
Maggie: At the age of 55 with some sort of health complication that makes it more susceptible to Covid. I love that I get to be a part of a women-founded and women-led company that is truly helping women in lots of different aspects of the community.
Clara: We’re all here, we’re for profit. Our business is for profit. But at the same time, you can have a philanthropic motive. When you start reselling with an additional purpose and you communicate that to your audience, you would be surprised how much that’s gonna help you to optimize listing. And Clara, what does that have to do with listing optimization? I can tell you everything. And you know why? It’s everything.
Because we’re buying from you. Because you are a small business seller. When we buy from a small seller from eBay, Poshmark,, Shopify, or whatever, we care about your story and how you’re making an impact on your micro-community.
Maggie, Let’s start with your journey, when you became a full-time seller what did you do for the next level to take your business, okay, to be more visible, and rank better your listings? What did you do?
Maggie: We all use the word consistency. And usually when we say that we mean consistency in the listing. You have to list consistently every single day. Anybody who doesn’t know, if you list every single day, eBay is gonna push your listings up higher in their algorithm. Poshmark is gonna push their listings up higher in your algorithm. So a lot of people, who are brand new sellers, when they start selling on something like Poshmark, they get a lot of attention and they’re really, really excited.
Weeks later that goes away. And so they get discouraged and they stop. And that’s why you see a lot of accounts that maybe have like 50 listings and then they just stop. Because that interaction stopped. But you and I know you have to list consistently. You have to keep listing. I do it all the time. I just take down an old listing, revamp it a little, and post it again, but something that I learned from Don at the Donovan Collection in a Listing Party the other day was you have also have your listings be consistent. So he showed us his layout for listing ties and he has something like 700 ties listed right now.
But all of his tie listings look the same. So if you’re scrolling his Poshmark closet looking at ties, all of them look the same. The way he has them laid out, the way they’re sized, the way they’re lighted, the way his listings are. And it makes you look really professional. Cuz if you go on like Lululemon.com they all look the same because they’re a professional company. And when you’re buying things from strangers on the internet, it can be really hard to trust that person. So one thing you can do as a business to have someone trust you and to give them the confidence to buy from you is to have things be consistent.
Poshmark knows that we are in a very competitive world. They know that we have to do this sharing. That’s how they designed their platform. So they came out with their bulk share. So even if you’re going to use a bot, which I would never do, I would at least once a day use their bulk share because that’s gonna push you higher up because that’s what they want.
So go through, select all of your available items and you just have to keep your phone on. So, like, I do it when I’m at dinner, frankly, because I’m not looking at my phone. I just tap it every once in a while to keep it awake. Or do it while you’re watching tv. I don’t know what you do with your life, but when you have time, just let it do it yourself because that’s how Poshmark wants us to be sharing. So if you do what the platform wants you to do, they’re gonna push you up higher and use you as a seller. I can tell you I won the Heart and Hustle grant cuz I’m amazing. But they never want to reward you for something and then find out that you’re cheating. So Poshmark is not going to reward you when they know you’re doing something hanky. The second part of this, try Posh Shows. And I know a lot of people are not as comfortable on camera as me. I have this bone structure, it’s God-given. I can’t give it to you.
I love doing live shows, but if you’re not, they have an option for you. You can do a silent show. You don’t have to talk, and you don’t have to be on camera, but it’s a great way to just get new eyeballs into your closet because I always think of it as an introduction. Even if nobody buys from my silent shows and they often don’t, it’s a great way to say, Hey, here’s the product I have, here’s the reason I’m selling.
If you wanna look at my closet, let’s talk. Posh is gonna reward you for that. Like any platform, when they have a new feature, they’re gonna push your closet. If you’re using that feature, remember all of the ads that you got, all of the ads that you get from Poshmark saying like, Hey, here’s this live, here’s this live, here’s this live.
Especially if you specialize in something. So if you sell like men’s sneakers, if you’re a sneakerhead, have a sneakerhead show. I specialize because most of what I get is donated to me. I’m building my empire on $5 sales from Old Navy. I love it. So I get to have those shows where I say I’m selling at a low price, but hey, here’s why. And that’s another reason somebody can shop with me because I’m having a great show. I like to think I have a good personality. I’m clearly insanely hot.
Clara: When you have it, you can’t explain it, right? It’s just, you just have it. You can’t explain, I can’t teach you about it, you know?
Maggie: But when somebody meets you, they wanna buy for you. When they know what they’re supporting, they wanna buy from you. So I love telling people, Hey guys, this is where your money’s going. It’s going to my kid, it’s going to my charity, it’s going to me getting sushi after this show like it. But it’s a great way, and you can do that with a silent show. So even if you don’t wanna be on camera, I would definitely do that because then you are promoting yourself. And Poshmark will promote you too.
Clara: That was a great answer, Dougie. We had an opportunity to interview Maggie on episode 22. What was your take from that session on the Seller Community podcast with Maggie, please?
Doug: Well, Maggie and I are good buds. We talk really regularly. She does a lot with us. She’s been on the show a couple of times. I love that. She’s so creative. She’s so funny, such a great personality, and I love her entrepreneurial spirit. And she comes from a background of giving and charity. Her mom’s got the housing program. Her dad was doing a sandwich for the homeless program, and she comes from that. She gives so much back and then, I love too, that she’s so dedicated to her family and balancing her business and we talk regularly.
I just love how she balances it all and I love that she started on Posh. She’s expanded. And I love too that she is an expert in sustainability and I’ve learned a lot from her. Like, what, a $30 leather jacket from Shein looks good. No, it doesn’t. It’s bad. That’s what Maggie would say. Don’t buy from Shein. And I scolded my daughter. Was this from Shein? Yes, it is. I said, Maggie says Shein is bad. But I learned a lot about, you know, quick fashion, which I thought…
Clara: Fast fashion. It’s called fast fashion.
Doug: Fast fashion, which I thought was just the English translation of one of my favorite bands Depeche Mode. I’ve learned a ton from Maggie, and she’s a writer and she has books. She’s written books on reselling. She’s got a great background in the thrift store industry. She’s got great stories from that and, she just kind of has evolved her business into what it is today. A mom, environmentalist, small business owner, and author says it all right there.
Maggie: You guys make me sound so good.
Clara: Kimberly, let’s talk about Koala Trading Company. So Kimberly, what would you say from when you started, okay? You started part-time and then you left, and then you came back, and then you were part-time, and then you were with your yucky job like you said. So tell us when you started, what would you say was your most common error and you wish you could take back when you started and you could tell someone that is starting and what would be the best tip that you are like for listing optimization?
Kim: One of the main things that I did back then, and that includes up to a year, two years ago, was lowering my prices. I would go in and be like, oh, it didn’t sell and I would, oh, what, what’s this item selling for right now? What’s the lowest price? I didn’t realize at the time that was a mistake, but that’s what I would go in and that was what I would do. That was part of my routine.
Clara: Would you agree to say that for you, listing optimization, in the beginning, was just comparing prices and not even reviewing the content of your listing?
Kim: Absolutely. When comparing prices, especially in the very beginning, I was looking at what the prices were going for at that point. Not looking at solds, not taking into account the history of the product. There are so many things that you learn by just doing and you have to do to learn and, you have to make mistakes to learn. That was one of my big things was just going in and cutting those prices.
Clara: Like I say, the race to the bottom, right? That’s not a good technique for listing optimization. Kimberly, what’s the biggest thing you do on eBay to optimize your listings right now?
Kim: I do promote, I promote everything at 2%, which doesn’t seem like much, but, it actually does work because about 54% of my sales on eBay are from promoted listings. So over half of what I’m selling is selling through the promoted listings even at 2%. So that’s something I do, with every listing, there’s probably two or three that I haven’t done that with because there are no other ones out there something vintage and there just isn’t anything else out there like it, so I won’t promote it, but everything else I promote across the board.
And something else that I used to do that I don’t do now, is for people being really careful with putting abbreviations in your title. No abbreviations use that real estate. Very, very carefully. Treat it like it’s gold because it is, you get so many characters in your title. You need to use that. That’s part of what’s grabbing people is that title. And if you’re using abbreviations, I don’t go in and search abbreviations, and people that are, you know, as far as pushing up in search and that kind of thing, that’s not gonna help either.
Clara: And MSRP in your title. Please don’t do that. Don’t waste your time with MSRP. Ooh, look, I’m selling it for $20 and MSRP is $8,000. No, don’t do that.
So like Kimberly said, please, make sure that you take care of that real estate, which when she said she means that, what you really think about each word has to be absolutely relevant. Now, one of the things that we do, I dunno if you noticed Kim and Maggie, have you ever wondered why we don’t choose categories for you?
Kim: I can guess. I don’t know if I’m correct.
Clara: Just in case you’re in a service, in which you’re forced to choose the category in their platform. Just know that marketplaces add categories daily. And they change categories daily. The number one thing on listing optimization, I can have the best title, the best photos, the best description, and if I put it in the wrong category, nobody will care. That’s why List Perfectly doesn’t choose the category automatically.
To the listings that can be merged from List Perfectly with any sell similar from any marketplace. Poshmark, Mercari, eBay, okay? All of those marketplaces you can merge your List Perfectly listing with those that sell similarly to that you chose, even Etsy. And in that way, you optimize your listings. You don’t have to manually reenter those descriptions.
All you have to do is review and it takes your pictures, keeps your title, keeps your specifics, and then the rest you cherry-pick if you wanna keep it. That’s why List Perfectly doesn’t choose a category for you. We just give you a suggestion.
Maggie: Clara just made a really good point that I hope you all take to heart. So, part of staying on top of things like the changing categories, and listing optimization requires constant education as a reseller. And if you don’t know the difference between a miniskirt, a tea-length skirt, and a floor-length skirt. You need to go and Google right now. It requires constant education. Please go to YouTube, go to Listing Party, go to Google, buy some people’s books maybe. But it really does take constant education because if you have something listed and you see it all the time if you have something listed as a miniskirt and it’s not a miniskirt, it’s not going to sell because the person who’s looking for miniskirts and sees your listing is not going to look at it because it’s wrong. And the person who is looking for your miniskirt won’t find it if it’s in the wrong section.
Talking about continuing education, one thing I love about this community is we really are a community and we want to help each other. Listing Party is a great way to do that. If you are a new LP user and you don’t know what Listing Party is, go check it out. It’s a great way for sellers to get together, share information, just have fun and see a human, see a human face after being trapped in our houses for so long.
If you have been sellers for any length of time over two days, you have knowledge that the general public doesn’t have and you have to remember that cuz I don’t know what OOP is. I don’t know. So when you are trying to sell, remember you’re trying to sell to everybody. Cuz I don’t care who I sell to, I wanna sell to everybody. They don’t use an abbreviation that somebody outside of the community might not know because you know, you don’t know how much you know until you start to teach someone who just started out.
Clara: I highly beg you, from the bottom of my heart, to not use VTG if you are selling on eBay. eBay will cast your listings on Google. Google does not like gray backgrounds. Google does not like abbreviations. And if you’re not thinking of Google, then you’re gonna be thinking of promoting your listings or doing something else to promote yourself.
Kimmy, what do you do when it comes to optimizing your listings now? What’s the biggest practice that you do now with all your experience working with LP? How long have you been working with team LP?
Kim: I’ve been a List Perfectly user for over two years.
Clara: What would you say after a year and something, what would you say has been your biggest evolution in optimizing your listings?
Kim: There’s so much that I’m doing differently from when I started. The title, of course, is one, you know, not using the abbreviations and that kind of thing. Keywords. I have learned so much just by doing and learning that way of not only how important they are, but, but how to pick the right ones. It’s one of those things that, especially when you’re first starting out, it’s so hard. It’s like hashtags. I don’t know as much about hashtags as I do about keywords.
Clara: They’re the same. So the only difference is with the hashtag, you are appealing for organic marketing as long as your post is public, so hashtags that are relevant on Facebook might not be relevant on Instagram, but might be relevant on TikTok. So every platform has a way to measure hashtags.
Kim: Even though they are the same, I don’t know why, but the word hashtag has always kind of scared me. When you cross-post from List Perfectly to Instagram, your keywords, which are called keywords in List Perfectly, go over to Instagram as hashtags. So I experiment with hashtags just to see, and I will get likes and that kind of thing from people. I have no idea who they are. I don’t know how they found my post. I have no clue. But that’s something else I love about List Perfectly is the fact that it generates keywords for you. I use that all the time. In every listing, all my little keywords are right there.
Maggie: I wanna add on to the keywords, cuz Kim, you are absolutely correct that you have to choose the right ones, but please don’t be that buyer that adds random ones for attention.
Doug: And one quick thing, and this touches back on categories as well, so adding keywords that aren’t necessary. Basically, you want people to find your stuff. So if you’re adding unnecessary stuff, it makes it harder. And what people will do too is they’ll try and game the marketplace by trying to list in multiple categories or listing in something that’s not in the right category. That doesn’t help people find your item and it does not help the algorithm because algorithms need good data to help us all.
Clara: Like Maggie said, you gotta use the new tools, for marketplaces. So Maggie, tell me if I’m wrong or right, Maggie, but if I do a Posh Live show, the visibility of my closet is gonna tank and I will sell nothing. But Maggie I did one Posh Live show and I never sold anything else. What happened, Maggie?
Maggie: Posh lives are amazing, and again, whether you’re doing a silent show or you’re doing an on-camera show, they are so incredibly worth it. Your first Posh show is probably going to be a disaster. Like my first Posh show, I didn’t bring any water and I started hacking up a lung. I can tell you that Posh shows are now about 45% of my income as a reseller. And I like to think that part of that is because I’m so fun and whatever, but it’s because it’s the new thing.
And guys, video is the way of the future. You have to adapt to it. I have not added videos to my eBay listings because that’s not what I do. If you do electronics, it’s sort of a different thing to show it’s working, but for me, you have to adapt to what’s coming, and what’s coming is the future.
Whatnot has it. Facebook has had it for years. Instagram has it. Poshmark is adding it.
The Poshmark shows, get you more sales, they get you more eyeballs. They get you more visibility as a closet because you are doing the thing that Poshmark wants you to do. And the people that you are hearing say it lowers your visibility. It’s a waste of time. You have to sell for lower than you want to. Those are people who have failed. And why are you running your business based on the failures? Why are you running your business based on the advice of the people who aren’t succeeding at it? I feel really strongly about this.
One of the things that I love about it is you get repeat customers because people start to feel like they’re your friends. Cuz like when I buy something on Poshmark, I open the package, I wear it, I’m done. You know. But with live shows, I get people, I call it the Lilly Tax because Lilly, I love you baby. She comes to every single show I have and she buys something. So every time I get my Lilly tax, I get 20 to 25 to $50 every week from Lilly and even the shows where she says, I’m just here to support you.
But getting a repeat in a business like ours is incredibly complicated. I think you guys all know that. And with Poshmark shows, they wanna help you. They wanna support you because they know you.
If you wanna know what the newest things are that people are searching for, Instagram and Pinterest have businesses that are based on that knowledge. I would just scroll through that, check it out, and call it your homework because there are things I’ve never heard of.
There’s grandmacore. Grandmacore is a thing and people are buying grandma-looking clothes. I did not know about that. Regencycore is a thing, weirdcore, like all of this stuff. People who are buying stay apprised of that knowledge.
Clara: I wanna hear from Kim. How would you like to close? And give a message to our audience. What would you say to them, you know, about listing optimization? Where to start?
Kim: I would hope that there would be some way for them to connect, even if it’s not at an in-person meetup or something like that. If they have any kind of internet connection, join a Facebook group.
There’s so much like Maggie said, there are so many people out there that know so much and they’re so willing to share. I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if so many people hadn’t helped me and helped me learn.
Just find some kind of community in some way. And, you know, ask questions. And, in addition to that experiment, just experiment. You know, you learn so much by doing and if you. If you get out there and just, just start doing it, you know, start doing a title, you know, start doing your own titles and experimenting with them, and then, you know, you go, wow, I’m, I’m not making sales. I wonder if it’s my title.
Something else that I think is a really good idea is, you know if you have some listings that you are finding that, oh, they’re not selling, what’s wrong? I’m not seeing any views. Go and look up solds of something that is similar or the same as your item and compare your listing to the one that’s sold.
You’re always gonna find something that’ll spark that in your brain and you go, oh my gosh. So you have a lot of tools to help yourself learn.
Clara: Amazing, amazing. Dougie. What would you like to add? You are a small seller and former eBay employee, but at the same time, that’s even more intimidating, you know, if you’re a former eBay employee, come on. When you’re doing a listing, that must be so intimidating. So how, how is that for you, Doug, you know, with your listings and what would you say based on your experience with our community, maybe you might not be this consistent seller, but the exposure you have with the community, it’s so big and the experience, what would you say to them, please?
Doug: Well, the big thing I would say is, like Kim had touched on and we’ve touched on, is put yourself out there, connect with the community. There are so many different ways. It doesn’t have to be in person. And always be willing to learn to change and evolve. Cuz if you look at eBay, how much has eBay changed since 1995 to now.
When there was eBay and there was Amazon and now look at all the different platforms and they’re always making changes. They’re always making updates. You have to evolve, you have to grow, and you have to be willing to learn. And one of the big things that you all touched on early and you’ve all done, and I do it too at a level, is be consistent in building your own brand.
So that’s like the Donovan Collection listing his ties. So you know that you’re looking at his ties. Look at Kim Koala Trading Company. Refashionedhippie, Clothing Vault’s, Instagram. It’s consistent. It looks the same cuz you’re building a brand. Because at any level, if you’re doing this, you’re a business and you’ve gotta keep those things in mind.
And the other thing is, being willing to learn. And we talked about this: don’t try to cheat, don’t try to game the system. Don’t try to cheat. It doesn’t work. You’ll get caught. You’re not helping yourself, you’re not helping the platform, and you’re not helping the algorithm, which is important to keep in mind.
Thank you for joining today on our reselling Listing optimization panel. Thanks for tuning in.