Reselling arithmetic · listing pace
About 10 — and that number barely moves with your sell-through rate. At a steady state you sell what you list, whatever the rate. What the rate decides is how much stock you must own to produce it, and how long the climb from an empty shelf takes. Advice that gives you the first number without the second two is the thing this page is for.
Item price $42.00 Shipping the buyer paid $8.00 eBay's fee, 13.6% + $0.40 -$7.20 ------- You receive $42.80 What you paid for the item -$12.00 Postage label -$6.40 Packaging -$0.60 ------- Profit on one sale $23.80 $1,000 / $23.80 = 43 sales a month 43 sales / 4.33 weeks = 10 listings a week
42 sales would leave you $0.40 short, which is why the figure rounds up. Your own profit per sale is the number that matters here and it is almost certainly not $23.80 — put your own price, postage, item cost and label into the free fee comparison and read the profit column, then divide.
| Monthly sell-through | Active listings you must hold | Months to 90% of that shelf | Listings a week |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | 860 | 45 | 10 |
| 10% | 430 | 22 | 10 |
| 15% | 287 | 15 | 10 |
| 20% | 215 | 11 | 10 |
| 30% | 144 | 7 | 10 |
The last column is the point: it does not move. At a steady state the number of items you sell in a month equals the number you listed that month, whatever fraction of the shelf is turning over — a slow shelf is simply a bigger one. The stock you must own swings from 144 to 860, a factor of 6, and so does the patience. Sell-through is defined here as items sold divided by items active, over one month. Other people define it over 90 days or against sold plus active; a rate from somewhere else is not necessarily this rate.
| To arrive by month | List a month | List a week | Active listings by then |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | 90 | 21 | 422 |
| 12 | 59 | 14 | 424 |
| 18 | 50 | 12 | 425 |
| 24 | 46 | 11 | 424 |
| 36 | 43 | 10 | 421 |
Every row ends on the same shelf — about 430 listings — and the only difference is how fast you build it. Listing the steady-state 10 a week from nothing, your first month is 43 listings and about 4 sales: roughly $102. The money is late because the inventory comes first. That is also why the slowest row is 36 months rather than the 22 it takes to get within 10% of the shelf: the last stretch of an approach like this one is the longest.
| Marketplace | Headline rate | Profit a sale | Sales a month | Listings a week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | 6.5% transaction | $25.80 | 39 | 9 |
| Mercari | flat 10% | $26.00 | 39 | 9 |
| Depop | no selling fee (US/UK) | $28.90 | 35 | 9 |
| 10%, minimum $0.80 | $26.00 | 39 | 9 | |
| eBay | 13.6% + $0.40 per order | $23.80 | 43 | 10 |
| Whatnot | 8% commission | $25.25 | 40 | 10 |
| Poshmark | $2.95 under $15, else 20% | $22.60 | 45 | 11 |
The same $42 item with $8 postage and $19 of item cost, label and packaging. The spread is 9 to 11 listings a week for the same $1,000 — which is to say that where you list is a far smaller lever than how fast it moves. Why the fee is bigger than the headline rate suggests →
| Monthly profit | Sales a month | Listings a week | Active listings at 10% |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500 | 22 | 6 | 220 |
| $1,000 | 43 | 10 | 430 |
| $2,000 | 85 | 20 | 850 |
| $3,000 | 127 | 30 | 1,270 |
| $5,000 | 211 | 49 | 2,110 |
All of it scales straight off the profit per sale, which is the lever worth pulling. Finding $5 more profit in each item — a better price, a cheaper label, a lower source cost — takes the 1,000-a-month shelf from 430 listings down to 350. That is 80 items you never have to buy, photograph, title or store.
Profit per sale is the free fee comparison: price, postage, item cost and label in, profit on seven marketplaces out. Sell-through starts with whether the item can be found at all, which is the free title auditor — it reads a listing title and shows which of the eighty characters went on words buyers do not type. Neither needs an account and neither uploads anything.
The one number this page cannot give you is your own average profit per sale and your own sell-through, which come from your order history. If you keep none, there is a small paid reseller profit tracker, $1, that records per-order figures you can average. The arithmetic on this page is complete without it.
About 10, at $23.80 of profit a sale — but only once you already hold about 430 active listings. 10 listings a week is 43 a month, and at a steady state the number you sell in a month equals the number you listed. Starting from an empty shelf at that pace, month 36 is the first one that actually clears $1,000. Listing 14 a week instead gets you there inside a year.
No. It means you need to own fewer. At a steady state, sales per month equal listings per month whatever the rate, so the listings-per-week figure is 10 either way. What changes is the shelf: 144 active listings at a 30% monthly sell-through against 860 at 5%, a factor of 6.
About 430 at a 10% monthly sell-through and $23.80 of profit a sale: 43 sales a month divided by the rate at which your stock sells. Halve the sell-through and you double the shelf; the table on this page has the others.
Because the inventory has to exist before it can produce. Listing 10 a week from an empty shelf, your first month is 43 listings and about 4 sales — roughly $102, not $1,000. Each month's new listings land on a shelf that is also selling down, so the active count approaches 430 rather than jumping to it, and 36 months pass before a month's own profit reaches the target. The 22 months to 90% of the stock is the honest milestone; the last stretch is the slowest part.
It is a pace, not advice, and it is a bigger one than most people asking this question want. Ten a day is 303 listings a month, which at $23.80 of profit a sale settles at about $7,219 a month — excellent if that is the target, and a lot of evenings wasted if $1,000 is.
Barely, for this question. The same $1,000 needs between 9 and 11 listings a week across the seven marketplaces compared here, because the fee difference moves the profit per sale by a few dollars. The sell-through rate moves the stock you have to own by a factor of 6. Which you sell on is a smaller decision than how fast it moves.
It is arithmetic on a steady rate, not a forecast. It assumes your sell-through and your profit per sale hold still, which nobody's do; it ignores seasonality, price changes, markdowns, items that end unsold and items you give up on. It does not price your time, your storage, or the money tied up in 430 unsold items — which at $12 of cost each is the real reason the slow row is hard, and it is a number only you can put on. It says nothing about what any marketplace's search or recommendation system does with more listings, because that is not knowable from here: more listings give more chances to be found, and this page will not pretend to know the rate. It does not cover sourcing, promoted listings, store subscriptions, taxes, or whether any of this is a good use of your evenings. One thing only: how a monthly profit target turns into a number of listings, and what it actually takes to get there.