Hi everyone, its Lydia. I’m a work from home mom and most of my articles are about how you can make money working from home yourself as well.
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Today I wanted to share with you the basics of selling on the app Mercari. In my article I refer to selling items on eBay, Poshmark, Amazon and every once in awhile, I’ll throw Mercari in there.
I get a lot of questions and comments from people saying what is Mercari, Mercari, Mercari, Mercari and comments and questions that I’ve been getting leads me to believe that a lot of people don’t know very much about Mercari.
In this article my goal is to put all of the questions that I have been getting about Mercari. This is a very basic article on how to get started on Mercari. Make sure you review the listing regulations, what’s expected of you as a seller, the prohibited items that you are not allowed to sell on Mercari and some basic frequently asked questions, kind of material.
Currently when you sign up with Mercari, you get $10 to spend on anything that you want site-wide.
The first really big question that I get about listing on Mercari is the cost of doing business on the site and what fees sellers are charged. Well, I’m happy to say that on Mercari, there are no subscription fees, no promotional fees and you only have to pay Mercari a percentage when your item sells. You don’t have to pay five or ten dollars a month to join like other platforms.
You don’t have to pay to get a certain amount of listings every month. You don’t have to pay ten cents every time you want to list something. There are zero fees unless something sells and that is one of the best parts about listing on Mercari. When an item sells, you pay is 10% for them bringing you the customer.
They also take their percentage off the top before the money is evenly dispersed into your Mercari account. So if you sell an item for $10, let’s say Mercari will take their 1 dollar Commission right off the top and disperse what’s left into your account, now the only time they’ll take more money out is if you opt into having a shipping label purchased through Mercari instead of shipping on your own which that is what they highly recommend you do.
What will happen is they will take their 10% off the top then they will deduct the cost of the shipping label that you select and you will get whatever money is left deposited into your Mercari account. That means that there are no invoices that you are expected to pay once that money gets deposited into your account.
There is nothing else that Mercari is going to tie to it that is your money so it makes bookkeeping super-duper easy. Now those funds are only available to you after the buyer receives and accepts their items in the Mercari app until then the funds are pending which really isn’t a big deal.
If you’re opting to buy a shipping label through Mercari because then the shipping label is provided. You don’t have to worry about paying anything out of pocket but if you opt to ship things on your own, you’re not going to have those funds available to purchase shipping labels. So you have to have a little bit of money in a different account to pay for the labels and then you can reimburse you once you get your payout.
If the buyer does not accept and rate your item timely, then Mercari will go ahead and do it automatically for you and I believe that timeframe is three days but I’m going, to be honest, and say I am not exactly sure how long it takes Mercari to automatically let your items become accepted.
So funds are released but I want to say that it’s three days. Basically, what has to happen is the buyer receives your item and then they rate your product and your service and all of that and then once your rating is given, you must rate the buyer and then your funds are released. And this is a very different procedure than what happens with eBay.
With eBay, you automatically give your buyers positive feedback. You don’t have the option to rate them any less than five stars but on Mercari, you can rate the buyer however you want to, so if you have an exceptionally difficult buyer, you can rate them under five stars and leave a comment for future sellers to see.
I’m really thankful that they give that option because you are forced to rate your buyer before you can receive the money. So if you had a really bad situation with a buyer and they’re being extremely difficult. You are welcome to reflect that in the rating that you give them. You are not forced to give them a positive rating just to get your money but in my experience, I have never had a bad buyer so I’ve never had to rate any less than five stars.
But just know that the option is there now in order to get your funds out of the Mercari account. You do need to have a bank account linked for a direct deposit. That is the only option to move money out of your Mercari account. Now, if you don’t want to link a bank account, you don’t have to but the funds will just sit in your Mercari account and you can use it to shop on the site.
Now, let’s talk about the basics of listing items on Mercari. Mercari is both desktop and app compatible which I do appreciate because I don’t like always working on my phone but I will say that the app itself is much easier to maneuver, on the app probably because that’s where it initially came from.
They just decided to make a desktop version for people who wanted to be on the computer but you can list on either the app or the desktop. I find it just as easy to do on both. I don’t find one method any faster than the other which is very different of an opinion that I have. Usually, I always prefer the desktop because I feel like a desktop is faster but with Mercari, I feel like the app and the desktop listing is equally as fast on both.
I will prefer to cross-post on the desktop and I will do a video later hopefully by the end of this month showing how I cross-post listings to Mercari like my exact process, cross-posting because I do feel like cross-posting is much faster on the desktop versus the app but creating a listing from scratch, I think it’s just as easy on the app as it is on the desktop.
But I will say for a fact that making purchases is easier on the app as opposed to the desktop. So the content that you put in your listing is extremely straight forward. They’re not looking for a lot of fluff, the title that you get is very short and concise.
You only get 40 characters, so you have to make sure that your title is very straightforward and there’s nothing extra in there but that does kind of limit search function but luckily the body of the description is also searchable so you don’t have to worry about sticking all of your search terms in the title.
You also get eight pictures and only eight pictures to showcase your item. And what I really like also is when you go to price your item; it will tell you what you will make in pocket less the Mercari fee and the shipping label fee. So if you’re not exactly sure how to price your item, if you’re looking for a certain profit point, you can enter at different prices and watch Mercari calculate it for you so you know how much money you’re gonna make on the item after it sells.
Now let’s talk about shipping on Mercari. So when you’re creating your listing, you will have the option to provide the buyer with free shipping or charge the shipping to the buyer. Now Mercari definitely recommends that you give the buyers free shipping and that part is completely up to you but if you decide to pay the shipping for the buyer, you then have to decide on one of two other options.
You select whether or not you want to buy the shipping label on your own or if you want to use Mercari rates and have Mercari email you a shipping label. Now I do think that having the ability to have Mercari email the shipping label directly to you is extremely convenient and it definitely speeds up your shipping process when it comes to printing labels and getting packages out the door but when it comes to lightweight items, in my opinion, Mercari is extremely expensive for shipping.
Now that being said, shipping heavier items is extremely affordable on Mercari. So basically, when I list on Mercari, I take it on a case-by-case basis to determine whether or not I want to use a Mercari shipping label or if I want to take the time to ship it on my own through PayPal. If you opt into Mercari shipping labels, it is very straightforward and very easy. Mercari gives you a range of weight to select, you do not have to worry about putting the exact weight of the item in the packaging, and you just need a wide range.
So currently, as of today, the first-class rates for Mercari labels are 0 to 8 ounces is $4 and 25 cents for United States Postal Service and then 8 ounces to 16 ounces is $5.25. So depending on the actual first-class weight of your item, you might go ahead and benefit from shipping the item on your own through maybe doing a PayPal shipping label instead because like I said, it’s $4 and 25 cents for 0 to 8 ounces and 5:20 five for eight to sixteen ounces.
So if you have a ten-ounce package, if you know you can print a shipping label more inexpensively through PayPal. It would benefit you to do it through PayPal versus spending $5.25 for a Mercari label because depending on the amount that your item sells for $5.25 can eat up a lot of your profit.
Now when you get to over a pound, that’s where you can really benefit from Mercari shipping labels depending on how big your item is. So the current rates for one, two, three pounds are $9 and ninety cents for FedEx and $11 for USPS priority, 3-10 lbs. is currently $11.50 for FedEx and $16 per USPS priority, 10-20 lbs. is currently $17 for FedEx and $30 for USPS priority, 20-40 lbs. is $35 for FedEx, 40-70 lbs. is $50 for FedEx, 70-100 lbs. is $65 for FedEx and 100-150 lbs. is $90 for FedEx.
So now, depending on the size of your item, if your item weighs two pounds but you’re able to fit it in a USPS priority flat rate for only $7.50, I think it is, it would be less expensive for you to ought to ship it on your own as opposed to paying for a FedEx label at $9.90 or a priority label for $11 through Mercari. You can also use a program like pirateship.com to look at your rates before you list the item on Mercari, so you can decide from there whether or not it would be beneficial to use a more carry label or just ship it on your own.
But as a, for instance, I’ve been listing a lot of cosmetics on Mercari lately and I know for a fact, it’s less expensive for me to ship it on my own through PayPal because most of the cosmetics are only about four ounces and weight and so I know that I can ship it for a little under three dollars as opposed to the Mercari label that would be $4.25.
But if you opt to shipping on your own without using a Mercari label, you are still expected to enter that information into Mercari for tracking purposes. Mercari is going to want to know what carrier you used and what tracking number you have. Something else, it’s also really nice is there no penalization for when you decide to ship the item.
Mercari does want you to ship the item within three business days of the sale but whether you ship one hour after your sale or three days after your sale, it doesn’t have any sort of an effect on your seller status or your seller ranking. So just make sure to ship timely, that way you keep your buyer happy also because you don’t receive your funds until the buyer gets the package and accepts it.
So the faster you ship the item, the faster the buyer receives the item, the faster you get paid. So now let’s talk about getting sales on Mercari. So Mercari is not a very social app but if you just list items and forget about them, you do tend to run the risk of your items becoming lost in searchability. If you have an item that a lot of other people are selling, this is very similar to Poshmark, in the sense that the newest listed items are going to appear higher in search when people search for them.
So the only way that you’re able to keep your listings fresh is to go in and revise them that will freshen up your listings and boost them up and search a little bit. You absolutely don’t have to go to the hassle of doing that but it is a good practice to do it, maybe every few days or at least once a week. That way, your items are not getting pushed down too far into search.
A really nice feature is that a lot of buyers are welcomed on their home page by brand new listings that are similar to purchases or items that buyer has made in the past. So when your listing is freshly listed or freshly revised, buyers actually see those brand-new listings right when they open the app.
So let’s say I’m selling some mascara, if a buyer has recently purchased mascara or shown interest in mascara by searching it and looking for active listings then if listed a brand new listing of mascara, then my listing might be recommended on their Mercari homepage.
So that’s just another benefit to try to keep your listings fresh because you want to show up on someone’s homepage as a recommended listing and your listings don’t do that if you’ve just listed them and forgot about them for weeks. You cannot run storewide sales like you can on a platform like eBay but you can promote your listings one at a time.
You can promote them publicly by dropping the price or you can promote them privately by sending out private offers to people that have liked your item and this is a very handy tool to try to drive sales on your items but do keep in mind you can only send out the same private offer once. Offers only last for 24 hours and every time you send out a new offer, it has to be lower than the last one so do keep that in mind if you choose to go in and send out offers multiple times a week.
Because depending on your price, you’re just gonna have to keep lowering it and lowering it and lowering it and it might get to the point where you aren’t gonna make any profit. If someone buys it at that offer and if you get to that point, you’re going to have to end that listing and relist it as a brand new item. So that you kind of wipe the slate clean of offers but when you do that, you’re going to lose all of the likers on that item and that very first offer has to be at least 10% off the price.
Something else that I really like about the functionality of the app is you can chat with potential buyers. If there is a buyer who’s interested in one of your items, they are able to send a message to you directly and ask you questions about the product or you can use that chat functionality to go back and forth and go she ate prices or you can even create bundles for someone. So if someone comes into your Mercari store and they like multiple items, they can request you to put multiple items together into their own bundle and if you do that for people, you will have to create a separate listing.
As far as I can tell as of right now, I have not been able to see a way to combine orders on Mercari. If the function exists, I haven’t seen it or I don’t know how to do it so if someone wants to purchase multiple items from you, you will have to create its own listing and send them to that listing to purchase it because if they’re buying individual items and you’re combining shipping and shipping it together.
You will probably run into some problems if you’ve opted into having Mercari send you labels because every label is going to be different. You cannot change the tracking information because you combined it all into one but that’s starting to get a little more into advanced territory but I want it to at least bring it up because I have been in the position where I’ve had people come to me and say that they’re interested in multiple items and what I had to do is I had to create their own private listing.
In the title, I would just say reserved for and put their name in there so that nobody else would go in and buy it because that was the only way I was able to ship all of the items together with the same tracking number especially because they were shipping labels that I had Mercari sent to me. And if they would have just bought the items individually, I would have had numerous shipping labels and I wouldn’t have been able to combine shipping. It starts to get tricky when you get into that area because you cannot combine orders on Mercari yet.
Now let’s talk about some things that I don’t like and then we’ll talk about my absolute favorite thing about Mercari and why I continue to list on the site. So the biggest thing that I really don’t like about Mercari is that your listings are not searchable within your own account so if you’ve crossed posted a listing to other platforms if it sells and you need to delete it off of Mercari, you are forced to scroll through all of your listing to find the item and deactivate or delete it.
You cannot just simply enter a search term into your store and have the item pulled up. If this function exists I haven’t seen it yet. I haven’t found it and if you know that this search function exists please put it down in the comments below and help me out because I really don’t like having to scroll through all of my listings to find that one item that needs to be deleted.
The closest thing to having that ability is basically just bringing up my store on the desktop and doing the find function and searching for keywords that way but it would be so much easier if Mercari had a search function within your store because then you could more easily find the items when they’re listed in your store.
I’m not even sure if what I just said made sense, you guys get me, and you know what I’m trying to say. So as the seller, you would basically have to try to figure out some sort of a search function for yourself. Maybe it’s a very specific kind of hashtag that you put in the listing to help you keep track of your inventory but that would be completely on you as an advanced seller on the site to try to find a workaround for that.
The other current downside term of Mercari is the ability to contact customer service. So whenever we have issues with eBay, we could just pick up the phone and give a bad call and be like hey what’s up I got a problem but on Mercari, you kind of have to search the frequently asked questions for an answer or send them an email. They’re kind of hard to get a hold of; I’m really hoping that’s something that Mercari changes in the future. Maybe making customer service a little more easily accessible but I mean up to this point I haven’t had any issues with buyers or real technical difficulties on the site.
So I personally have not had to reach out to Mercari but I have heard other people tell me that they have had to reach out to Mercari because they’ve had issues and the entire experience wasn’t exactly a pleasant one. So I can just sit here and cross my fingers and hope that I don’t have to try to reach out to Mercari in an emergency kind of situation because it doesn’t sound like that’s a very good process to go through. And the last thing that I don’t really care for about Mercari is just it’s something that they might change in the future but for now, it is quite obvious that Mercari is an app that was basically designed for people to just sell a couple items around their house and then maybe purchase things from another person on the site using their credits.
The site isn’t exactly set up like eBay or Amazon would be as a seller to list multiple items and sell multiple items you know, like I was mentioning before there’s no search functionality within your store. It just doesn’t really seem like Mercari is set up for a business owner. If that makes sense, it doesn’t seem like Mercari is really catering to entrepreneurs and people that are wanting to have a full-fledged business on Mercari and because of that, I don’t see Mercari as being a platform that you could solely sell on full time.
It’s just at this time, I just don’t see Mercari being a primary platform for anybody but as a secondary side hustles to the main platform, I definitely see potential but the functionality is just too amateur. In my opinion, now, could Mercari change that in the future? Sure, maybe they could. Maybe they would start to see the potential of giving all of these other functions so that full-time sellers or business owners can really utilize the app to the full benefit that it could have but then if that happens, we might have to worry about things like store subscription costs or insertion fees just like we have with eBay because as they change functionality on the site, they might start invoking more fees because of all of these updates.
So until then, we just kind of have to take the good with the bad and just use Mercari to the greatest benefit that we can in its current state. Now, it’s time for my absolute favorite thing about the Mercari app and Wyatt will continue to list on it. It’s because of the potential for items to sell lightning-fast. There have been more times than I can count on my fingers and toes I have listed an item on Mercari and it has sold within minutes, rarely does that happen on eBay and it’s because of all of the integrated promotional features that Mercari has that I previously mentioned you know, brand new listings are showcased on buyers home pages. So referring back to a tube of mascara, if a buyer has looked at similar listings and maybe made a purchase or didn’t make a purchase if I list a tube of mascara on to Mercari when that potential buyer opens their app and goes to the home page, my brand new listing is going to be showcased on Mercari and that buyer will be like, oh that’s what I was looking for and it’s such a great price let me buy it right now.
So that’s part of the reason why things can sell so fast on Mercari. Also because if someone is looking at a listing, if they scroll down to the bottom, there will be similar listings on that listing hopefully that makes sense. If I can maybe paint a little bit of a picture so if someone is looking at a tube of mascara and they’re scrolling down the listing, at the very bottom of the listing, there will be similar items that are listed on Mercari. So if someone has opened up a listing for mascara and maybe they’re not too impressed with the color or maybe the color wasn’t what they thought it was or maybe they’re wanting to know what other options there are out there if they just continue to scroll down, your item can appear at the bottom of the page and if they like your picture, if they like your price, they’ll click on yours and possibly buy it without even having to search for it.
You also have the ability to promote items within minutes of it being liked on Mercari. So let’s say I list that tube of mascara on Mercari within 5 minutes, somebody hurts it, they give it a like, as soon as I see that like I can go drop the price a couple of dollars depending on how much I have it originally listed for, they get the notification that I dropped the price just for them and then they buy it.
Now, do I recommend that’s how you do business? No, but if you’re really wanting to drive sales, that is absolutely a way that you can get a sale within minutes of listing it but all of that being said, rarely do I get more sales on Mercari than I do eBay but when you put those two together, it is very possible to at least double the amount of sales that you get on any given day because some people are exclusively Mercari shoppers. Some people will just sell their own items and then instead of transferring money into their bank account, they’ll just keep the money in their Mercari account as a form of credit to buy items that they want for themselves.
So some people prefer not to shop on eBay, they prefer to shop on an app-friendly app like Mercari. So when you cross-post your items to multiple platforms especially one like Mercari, you just basically double your buyer pool and it costs nothing to cross-post items to Mercari so why not? All right, you guys, thank you so much for watching. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up so that I know that you like videos like this. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to put them down in the comments below.
All right, you guys, thank you for reading this article. Leave any question you have below and I will answer them for you.
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