How I Made $76,473 in 30 Days Selling on Whatnot

[00:00:00]Last month I generated $76,473 on Whatnot with no full-time employees, no fancy wholesale, no paid ads, no Shopify store, only live auctions. In this video I'm going to be breaking down exactly how I did it, where I source my inventory, which categories I sold in, how many shows I ran, and what my actual profit looked like at the end of the month. My name's Isaiah and I've been reselling for the last 5 years. I started out selling on Depop, but I quickly transitioned to Whatnot as soon as I saw all of the opportunity that was on there and the quick money that you can make. Today I run live shows almost every single day on my Whatnot channel at ThriftAddict selling all different types of clothing from kids clothing, women's clothing, men's clothing, vintage, modern, dresses, everything you could think of in the clothing category.

[00:00:40]My total revenue last month was $76,473.

[00:00:44]Throughout the month I did 58 total lives and we sold roughly 10,368 items. So last month we streamed 58 times with roughly 10,000 sold items giving us a grand total of $76,000 in gross revenue sales before fees. The total time that I spent on stream last month was 120 freaking hours. At $76,000 for the entire month and around 10,000 orders, that gives us an average of around $7.60 per item, which means that we're doing a lot of high volume, low ticket items and just moving them as quickly as possible.

[00:01:19]Now, although we did $76,000 in revenue, obviously that is not completely and only profit. Out of the $76,000 in revenue, we did around a 30% net profit margin after all expenses including labor, cost of goods, warehousing cost, my monthly salary that I pay myself, which is around $3,000, pretty low. The number one reason why I was able to do this much in revenue over the last 30 days was because I have access to a lot of inventory. Every single day I go to the Goodwill bins and I also have people at the Goodwill bins picking clothing out for me. So the number one reason why I was able to do this much in revenue over the last 30 days is because that I go to the Goodwill bins or the Goodwill Outlet every single day. If you don't know what the Goodwill Bins are, the Goodwill Bins is a place where you can go and sort through raw and random clothing and pay by the pound for your clothing. So, instead of going to a regular thrift store where you're going to pay $7 for some item, sometimes 20, nowadays maybe 30, 40, 50 for an item to resell, you can go to the Goodwill Bins and hunt for the clothing and pay by the pound. Most bins are universally around $1.70 to $2 per pound. At my bins, it is $1.70 per pound. With tax, it's around $1.80. So, I'm paying $1.80 per pound of clothing from the Goodwill Bins. And I get to curate it and handpick it all, especially for my Whatnot customers and the specific categories that I sell on my Whatnot channel. Every time I go to the bins, I'm focused on finding product that I can buy for around $1 to $2 per piece and sell it for $5 to $20, sometimes even higher. But my main entire objective there is to just get a bunch of volume that I can four, five, 10x my money on when picking it out of the bins. This is a pretty time-consuming process. You're definitely going to have to invest some time at the Goodwill Bins to find the good stuff and stuff that you could sell profitably, but it's definitely worth it because of the low cost per item. On average, each piece that I'm picking out from the bins is costing me around $1.30 per piece. And that's just a blended average that includes women's clothing, heavier items, lighter weight items, kids items. So, my average for every single item is around $1.30 per piece.

[00:03:22]So, while the bins can be kind of overwhelming at sometimes just due to the amount of people in the building, all of the different clothes and all of the hundreds of thousands of different options that come through the bins on a daily basis, it's definitely the best place to go, especially if you are a Whatnot seller and even if you're a Depop seller or obviously eBay seller.

[00:03:39]But I think for Whatnot specifically, it's such an amazing model because you can go there, literally pick out 100 lb in one day, go home and sell it all very profitably the same night that you got the clothing, instead of taking the clothing, listing it, taking photos of it, measuring it, and posting it on a platform such as Depop, Poshmark, eBay, Mercari, which is what I used to do back in the day, and that's very time-consuming. And in order for you to scale, you have to hire a lot of people.

[00:04:04]Uh but we're going to focus on Whatnot in this video because I have completely disregarded any other selling platforms such as Depop, Poshmark, eBay, or Mercari. Every time I enter into the bins as a Whatnot reseller, I'm going in there already knowing the categories and the different shows that I have and that I sell on my page and that do very well.

[00:04:22]For example, I do a kids vintage show. I also mix a lot of kids modern into that show as well because I start everything at a dollar and the moms love it. Our kids community on Whatnot, our kids clothing community on Whatnot, is huge.

[00:04:34]It's definitely one of the best, for sure. If you haven't been to a show and you have some kids, you definitely need to come into that show. Another category I sell in is the women's contemporary category. So, this category is going to be modern branded clothing, nice trendy styles, Nike, Aerie, Offline by Aerie, Lululemon, Alo, American Eagle, all different types of brands like that that are cozy, comfy styles. I sell on a women's contemporary show. I also do a lot of niche categories such as boho, grandma core, if you've ever heard of grandma core, they're these grandma sweaters, Y2K women's, women's vintage, women's vintage dresses, and the list just goes on and on and on. So, every time I'm at the bins, when I have 20 different categories that I sell in, it allows me to pick up a lot more clothing instead of just focusing on, say for example, a lot of the bin bros, men's vintage. Another reason that I love Whatnot as well is that you are able to pick up different styles of clothing for different categories and test them automatically. So, for example, this last category that I started selling, boho, which is bohemian hippie style clothing, Free People, just flowy, linen, cotton material, stuff like that.

[00:05:37]I know boho is extremely popular. I didn't see too many people doing it on Whatnot at a big level. So, I went to the bins, I found a bunch of boho, I did my first show, and it It great. We did over a thousand dollars in sales. That is the reason why I love Whatnot because you're able to test anything, any different category, any different type of product. You can make your own product in your house.

[00:05:56]You could literally make candles and then go on Whatnot and test it and see how well it sells. So, Whatnot is absolutely amazing for testing different products in different categories. I found some of my best categories simply by curating a show, trying it on Whatnot even though I didn't expect it to work at all. I just wanted to test it and now I do those shows multiple times per month and they're responsible for six figures in revenue alone on my channel just from adding in one different category. So, one of the number one reasons why live selling works is because a lot of people, probably you behind the screen right now, are afraid to put themselves on camera. They're afraid to go on camera and speak and go on a live show. It's very intimidating.

[00:06:32]I feel like everyone during their first live show was definitely intimidated. I was a little bit nervous and intimidated. It almost stopped me from not doing the Whatnot show. I just didn't want to go on and deal with different people in the chat, people coming in saying random things cuz you could say anything in the Whatnot show.

[00:06:46]So, I think that is one of the reasons why it's so good. Although the barrier of entry is super low and anyone could start selling on Whatnot at any time, a lot of people are not willing to do it because it is extremely uncomfortable and a little bit confusing in the beginning. Meaning that the people that are willing to do it will be heavily rewarded for doing so. One of the main reasons why I believe I've had so much success on Whatnot is because I am all about value. I do not want to do small shows with 50 pieces, 100 pieces. Every single time I do a show, it's with minimum 200 to 300 pieces, sometimes a little bit less depending on the category. But, when it's less, I do those shows extremely quickly. I've been able to sell at an average of over 100 items per hour and if you come into my shows, you will see why. Everything is extremely quick. We run sudden death auctions, meaning that there's a 10-second timer on the auction. Once the 10 seconds is done, the auction is over and the bidder wins. Versus running non-sudden and auctions, at the last couple seconds. It's going to keep adding seconds every single time someone buys, which slows down your shows, and it's just not enjoyable to watch as a viewer. Speed is probably one of the most important aspects of selling on Whatnot because you have to think people are at home. They're sitting on their phones. They're watching you. And if you're only showing 20, 30 items an hour, even 50 items an hour is very slow. Unless you really just have amazing stuff, then people will leave your shows and they will go to someone that is running similar stuff or the same stuff at a faster speed. Every time I go on to live, I'm trying to sell 100 items an hour minimum. Obviously, sometimes it's a little bit slower depending on what you're selling, if you have to do measurements and whatnot, but speed is extremely important. And this speed is how you can make the most amount of money possible. I'd much rather sell 200 items an hour and make $1,000 hourly on Whatnot than sell 30 items per hour and make $300 an hour.

[00:08:36]Volume is also extremely important as well cuz for example, if you're only running one show per week, right, with 300 items in it. That means over the month, you're only selling 1,200 items.

[00:08:47]And let's say you have a $7 average, that's what, $8,400 in sales. Versus me, every single time I go live, which is every single day, minimum one time per day, I'm selling 300 pieces a day. Over the course of the month, it's around 9,000 items. And then some days I'll run an extra show here and there, which brings me to around 10,000 items for the last month. So, volume is extremely important as especially when you're shopping at the bins because every single time you go to the bins, you're leaving stuff behind. You're leaving profit on the table. And every single time I go to the bins to source clothing, I'm trying to find the new items that I don't normally pick up that I could start picking up and add into my shows because I don't want to leave behind any profit on the table whatsoever. So, the reality of the situation is that none of this is easy.

[00:09:32]To make $76,000 in a month with a small team of two people on Whatnot, it's not easy. To stream every single day. It's not easy to get enough product to be able to do this amount of volume is not easy. Okay, it requires getting up every single day and driving like a robot, like a AI, straight to the bins, staying at the bins all day long around people that are, you know, bin bros and just people arguing and being aggressive for no reason over this clothing. It requires loading up the car with 500 lb every single day, then driving it 45 minutes back to the warehouse, taking all of the clothing out of my car, putting it in boxes. Then you have to sort all of your clothing into your specific categories, you have to build up those categories, then you have to hang up all of your items, then you need to live stream all of your auctions, and not everything sells. So, when I run a show with, you know, 300 pieces when I'm starting, let's say I have a starting bid of $7 per item, a lot of the times in a stream I'll have, you know, 30 to 50 items that don't sell. So, you have to take the item off the hanger, replace it with a new item, sell that one. So, then after you're done live streaming, you actually have to ship the items so that your customers are happy. Then after all of that is done, you're finally able to pay yourself out, which is very [clears throat] rewarding after all of that work. I don't think there's too many things that you could do right now as far as business opportunities go and side hustles where you can get on live stream every single day and clear $1,000 within 2 hours of just being online. So, it is a lot of work, but it's 100% worth it and I think that anyone can do it. If you have the confidence to get on camera, even if you don't have the confidence to get on camera and do a live stream, you need to just force yourself to do it because you will become extremely comfortable on the stream. If a month goes by, if 2 months goes by, and you definitely should not spend the next year or the next 6 months or the next month contemplating whether or not you should get on Whatnot because you should do it. And once you get on Whatnot, you will be extremely thankful that you did get on Whatnot and you did start selling on Whatnot because, honestly, we're definitely early on Whatnot right now. Like if you go and just ask any random person on the street, I'd say around eight out of 10 people have no idea what Whatnot is, meaning that there's a lot of opportunity for you to get on there, build your own brand, sell your own products, and make an absolute killing on whatnot.

[00:11:37]And I know everyone freaking says it.

[00:11:39]You see Gary Vee shouting in your face every single day that you need to get on whatnot. It couldn't be closer to the truth. It's 100% fact. You need to get on whatnot. The fact that I was able to make generate $76,000 in revenue, around $25,000 in profit, is insane. Just from going to the bins. Not to mention, the money is only one aspect of it. The people that you could meet on whatnot, the networking that you could do through the whatnot app, people that could be interested in your company, interested in you as a person, as a personal brand, is insane. I'm currently in Florida right now because I had a lady that had storage units, 50 storage units full of product, that wanted me to fly out here and sell her stuff. She didn't want anyone else to come sell her stuff because she would go into my live streams and she would see the energy in there and she would see how quickly I'm selling the items and how many people I had in my shows and how invested the community that I have is into thrift app. The biggest The biggest mistake that I ever made on whatnot, well, number one is not starting earlier. I should have definitely started whatnot earlier. I heard about whatnot a year before I started and I just wrote it off. I looked at it and I was like, "Nah, I don't want to go through the onboarding process because at the time you had to go through an onboarding process, go through a Zoom call to actually get approved to sell on the app." Now, anyone can download the app and start selling immediately. So, I just wrote it off and I never did it.

[00:12:51]So, that's that's the biggest mistake, for sure, is not starting earlier. But, the number two biggest mistake is ordering wholesale from the wrong suppliers and working with the wrong people. At this point, I've spent well over six figures on inventory, buying from rag houses, buying from different wholesalers, middlemen that have all of this clothing because obviously, going to the bins is a lot of work. It's a lot of labor. So, I automatically start thinking, I need to find supply. I need to get more supply where I'm not going to the bins every single day. Because if I was doing five shows instead of one show per day, obviously, my revenue and my profit would be higher.

[00:13:28]But you have to be careful working with people in this industry, specifically the second-hand clothing industry, vintage clothing, modern clothing, Lululemon pallets, whatever you're getting, because a lot of them are scammers.

[00:13:40]>> [snorts] >> Just less than 2 months ago, I bought a pallet from a dude down here in Florida for 10,000 that I've probably I've spent over $50,000 with this dude prior to that order, and I got completely burned on the order.

[00:13:50]The pal- the pallet of clothes, 1,000 lb of clothes, was completely unsellable, and I lost all of the money on that pallet, just 8K down the drain.

[00:13:58]So, you have to be very careful when you're working with people that claim they have access to large amounts of clothing, or you can buy a clothing bale, or you can get wholesale kids vintage clothing, or you can get wholesale Lululemon, because honestly most of them are freaking scams, okay?

[00:14:12]And that is not saying that there's not good people out there that do good business and warehouses that you can work with, because there are, okay? And that's what I'm trying to find right now. But I would say that your regular Joe Schmo that's doing wholesale on Instagram, and you see an Instagram ad from him, you're going to be disappointed when you get the product, okay? I Like I said, I've ordered over six figures in wholesale, and I've probably only had three out of over 10 orders, all big orders, where I've been actually pretty happy and most importantly, made profit, you know? Uh a lot of these wholesale orders, like for example, full transparency, my last wholesale order, I spent 18,000 on this wholesale order. I had to go through all of the clothing, hang it up, prep it all for a show, sell all of the clothing, ship all of the clothing, and at the end of selling all of the wholesale, I made $0 profit. I broke even on the order. Whereas if you took $18,000 and you just went to the bins every single day from open to close for 1 month, you could spend that $18,000, and I guarantee you could make 70, 80, 100K off of that 18,000 at the bins. So, I'd say in your beginning stages, be careful. Don't be so quick to jump on ordering pallets, ordering wholesale, ordering bales of clothing because the chances are you're not going to make a lot of profit and you're going to be disappointed and your time would be better spent going to the bins. And going to the bins and selling on Whatnot is a great way to build your capital so that you can invest into relationships with legitimate rag houses, warehouses, and wholesalers that you can do good business with and build a healthy relationship with them over years doing business back and forth with each other.

[00:15:46]All right, if you enjoyed this video, please make sure to subscribe because I'm going to be documenting my entire journey as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a Whatnot seller, as someone that has aspirations to launch my own reselling platform, live streaming platform. Make sure to follow me @brifthab on Instagram so you can see behind the scenes. I post a lot of short form content over there. You can also find me live on Whatnot with the same username @thrifthab multiple times per week, almost every single day. I'm currently in Florida when this video is being posted, but I will be back within the next 4 days and we will be live every single day. So, another tip right here. One of the best ways that you could learn and get better at Whatnot and make even more money is literally go and study other Whatnot pages, go into their shows, see what they're selling, see how much they're starting their items for, look at their thumbnails, look at their titles, and that's exactly what I did like an addict. I was just looking at other people's Whatnot channels all day long getting all of the information that I could from their Whatnot channels. And that's how you grow and that's how you get better. In the next video, I'm going to be breaking down exactly what I would do if I was starting a Whatnot channel with no followers. That video will be posted next week, so make sure to subscribe and turn on the notifications so you get notified when I drop that video.

[00:16:51]Everyone, my name is Isaiah. Thank you for coming to this video and watching. I hope you learned something and I hope I can teach you a lot more along the way and I hope we can learn from each other.

[00:16:58]Everyone, have a good one.