Crosslisting comics and collectibles on eBay, Whatnot, Shopify and Discogs: one batch, four listings, and the sale that has to come down everywhere
Crosslisting means offering one item on more than one marketplace at once. For a reseller it is the obvious way to more buyers: the same comic on eBay and in a Whatnot show, the same record on eBay and on Discogs. It works, and it has one cost that the pitch for it leaves out. The item exists once. When it sells in one place it has to come down everywhere else before a second buyer pays for it, and a sale you cannot fill is a cancelled order, a refund and, on eBay, a mark against the account you spent years building.
So a crosslisting setup is two jobs: writing the listing for each marketplace, and taking it down on the others when it sells. Most of the advice is about the first. Most of the money is in the second.
Pick the marketplaces where your category sells
Ten marketplaces is not ten times the buyers. Comics sell on eBay and in Whatnot's live shows. Records sell on eBay and on Discogs, where record buyers already shop by pressing. A shop with its own customers sells on its own Shopify store. Posting a long box of back issues to a clothing marketplace adds listings to manage and very few sales. Start with the two or three where your category already moves, and add one when you know it pays for the time.
The same item is a different listing on each one
eBay wants its own category and its item specifics, the fields buyers filter on; the item specifics guide covers comics. Whatnot wants an opening bid for a live show and a price for its Buy It Now store, and a show runs in an order you choose; the Whatnot guide covers the file. A Shopify product wants your store's own description, with nothing in it about eBay policies or eBay search; the Shopify guide has the columns. Discogs wants the exact release by number and a grade on its own scale; the Discogs guide explains why a record whose pressing is not certain stays off it.
Copying one listing's text into four boxes is where crossposting eats the afternoon. The details are the same four times; the shape is different every time.
One custom label, everywhere
The thing that keeps an item the same item on four marketplaces is its custom label: the SKU, the box and the number, like 76TR-012. Put the same label on every listing of it, and write it on the bag. Then a sale anywhere names one physical thing, in one box, and the question "is it still listed somewhere?" has an answer you can look up. The custom labels guide has the pattern.
The sale is the part that matters
Take a sold item down everywhere else the same day, before anything else. Three habits make that possible:
- Know where each item went. A list by custom label of every marketplace an item was offered on. Without it, a sale sends you searching four sites.
- Do it in one pass. After a Whatnot show, end the eBay listing of every item that sold in the show at once, rather than one listing at a time while the next show is starting.
- Put a show first, then the store. Whatever does not sell in a live show is the natural stock for a Buy It Now listing; whatever sells is a list of labels to end elsewhere.
A quantity of more than one is the exception that needs care. If you have three copies, a sale is one fewer everywhere, not an ended listing.
How Point and Sell fits in
You photograph a box once and tick where the batch goes: eBay, a Whatnot show, a Whatnot Buy It Now store, your Shopify store, and Discogs for a crate of records. One review screen makes every file: the eBay file (or the listing itself, sent to eBay with a connected account), the Whatnot show file with your opening bids and a run-of-show sheet, the Buy It Now file, the Shopify products file with your own Shopify description, and the Discogs inventory file. Every one of them carries the same custom label.
For the sale: with eBay connected, a sale on eBay is recorded as it happens and you get an email naming the Whatnot, Shopify or Discogs file the item also went into. Without the connection, drop eBay's orders report on the pick list and it names the ones that also went into a Whatnot file. After a Whatnot show, paste the sold custom labels and you get the eBay End file for them.
What it does not do, as of today. It does not post to Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, Etsy or Facebook Marketplace. It does not read sales on Whatnot or Discogs: a sale there is yours to tell it about, by pasting the labels. Apart from a Shopify store connected to the site, which is not open to sellers yet, it does not take a listing down anywhere but eBay; the email tells you which ones to take down. Records, games, Funko Pops, movies and CDs do not go into the Whatnot or Shopify files. And nothing goes up anywhere until you have checked the rows and approved them.
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Sources
What Point and Sell does is its code on the day this was published. The advice on which marketplaces sell which category and how to take down a sold item is one working reseller's practice, not a rule.