Column: List Perfectly helps people save time while selling things online
Amanda Morse and Clara Albornoz were earning a small fortune selling vintage clothing online when Albornoz was struck with arthritis. No longer able to spend hours typing listing descriptions into multiple online sales platforms, Albornoz thought her career was over. Instead, her disability became the inspiration for List Perfectly, a time-saving tool for sellers of all kinds of things — used shoes and clothing, office equipment, electronics.
Now co-chief executives of List Perfectly, Morse and Albornoz have more than 10,000 customers who use List Perfectly’s software to simultaneously list items for sale on up to 12 websites. And, thanks in part to the sharp growth of reselling online, the site is growing rapidly.
The backdrop
Online direct-to-consumer sales are soaring in the United States. This market, fueled by both entrepreneurs and average Americans reselling their own underused possessions, hit $76.7 billion in sales in 2019. U.S. sales are expected to more than double to $175 billion by 2023, according to Statista.
At the same time, peer-to-peer sales sites are proliferating. Years ago, the resale market was dominated by Craigslist and EBay. SideHusl.com now reviews and rates more than 50 peer-to-peer sales platforms, several of which have millions of monthly users. Many of these sites have niche specialties, such as designer goods, menswear, electronics or crafts.
This fragmented market is both an opportunity and a challenge for sellers.
The opportunity is that the right platform can deliver a wealth of buyers specifically interested in the type of goods you’re peddling. The challenge is that no single platform has a lock on appropriate buyers — even for specialty goods. To find a critical mass of buyers, many sellers list the same items on multiple platforms. And that can take hours.
Instant soup mix, dresses, sneakers, appliances and so on. Buy common consumer items cheap; resell for more, maybe much more. COVID lockdowns supercharged it.
The tool
Enter List Perfectly, which works with internet browsers to help sellers simultaneously post listings on up to a dozen sites, including Shopify and Etsy. The user types a listing once into List Perfectly’s software, then clicks on the sites where the listing should run. The software automatically opens browser windows for all those sites and copies the listing information into the appropriate boxes. The next step: Hit “publish.”
Jon and Brad Anthony, who share the online handle theposhkings, say the service has been a lifesaver for their reselling business. In a pre-pandemic world, the couple ran a nine-store chain of luxury men’s clothing stores. But with overhead expenses exceeding $60,000 a month, they were run ragged.
They closed the stores and moved to selling online. Initially, they listed their luxury clothing exclusively on Poshmark, a site that specializes in designer goods. But the pandemic trashed that business model.
“No one really needed to buy a Dior blouse when they were working at home,” Jon Anthony said.
The Anthonys knew they had to pivot to more moderately priced apparel and list on sites that support that type of sale. But they were reluctant to multiply their workload by posting photos, product descriptions and shipping information on multiple sites.
List Perfectly enabled them to create a single listing that they could easily repost on multiple platforms. They now sell on EBay, Instagram, Tradesy and Mercari as well as Poshmark. They said their sales have doubled.
“It increased our sales dramatically and our productivity beyond belief,” Jon Anthony said. “List Perfectly allowed us to grow in ways that we’d wanted to for years.”
EBay, B-Stock and other sites make it a lot easier to get started as a reseller than you might think.
Worth the price?
The software isn’t free. List Perfectly charges a minimum of $29 per month. That cost can be easily justified by professional resellers like the Anthonys, but people who sell things on an occasional basis may want to think twice.
If you’re simply marketing your used car, the amount of work saved to list one item — even on multiple platforms — probably isn’t worth the cost.
If you resell regularly or are listing hundreds of items online as an alternative to hosting a big garage sale, it may be worth the cost. List Perfectly’s membership allows you to post an unlimited number of items on the 12 online platforms List Perfectly supports: Depop, EBay, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, Grailed, Heroine, Instagram, Kidizen, Mercari, Poshmark, Shopify and Tradesy.
There’s no requirement to remain a member for more than a month, so if you’re not a regular seller, you can use the service once — much like running a classified ad to market your garage sale. But if you don’t want List Perfectly to automatically renew your subscription, you need to cancel it.
Kristof is the editor of SideHusl.com, an independent site that reviews hundreds of money-making opportunities in the gig economy.
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