How Online Reselling is Becoming More Than a Casual Side Hustle

Many online sellers now operate like full ecommerce businesses rather than casual side hustles.

Once considered a way to make money on the side, online reselling has recently become an economy in its own right, with some sellers managing thousands of listings across different platforms.

Scale, however, has made reselling more tedious than it’s worth at times. Given how many platforms some sellers appear on, eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, and Facebook Marketplace, it’s little wonder that selling has become as complex as it is. 

Bear in mind that managing even a single listing requires a seller to put the listing up, communicate with potential buyers, sell the listing, and update inventory so they can repeat the process. When sellers have to follow that same procedure dozens or hundreds of times in a single day, time can quickly grow sparse, which can make it harder for a reseller’s business to grow in turn.

Automation and Diversification

The issue of scalability has expanded to the point where some companies are building software exclusively to address that problem. One such company is Crosslist, a platform that allows sellers to create listings once and distribute them across multiple marketplaces through a centralized workflow.

Platforms like Crosslist are becoming increasingly important among resellers because they enable automation and inventory organization, reducing the need for manual oversight so business owners can spend more time sourcing products, communicating with buyers, and growing operations.

Making it easier to sell across multiple marketplaces also helps resellers access different buyer demographics and, perhaps more importantly, keeps them from having to rely on one market. This flexibility may allow resellers to pivot more easily if they decide they want to emphasize one market over another.

Larger Trends Within Online Reselling

The increased use of platforms like Crosslist suggests smaller resellers may be trending toward operational tools similar to those used by larger online retailers. This move may indicate a growing desire for consistency at scale, especially when considering that reselling is currently approached more like a job than a hobby.

Although it’s possible that this emphasis on scalability could make some resellers less accessible as they manage more inventory, there are some positive aspects to this development. Currently, the ecommerce market is thought to be growing as a result of greater demand for secondhand shopping opportunities and stores that enable sustainability-focused buying habits.

As the front end of many reselling businesses continues to expand, business owners will need to make sure they acquire ways to build scalable back-end workflows as well. Without a strong digital infrastructure capable of supporting more buyers, resellers may encounter a new barrier to long-term success within the space. If back-end support continues to act as a limiting factor to growth, it could become the next competitive edge resellers have to consider.

Complicating Ecommerce

While the ecommerce ecosystem remains dominated by giants like Amazon, smaller resellers have formed something of a subculture that, despite originally being little more than a side hustle, has become notably competitive. Already, that competition has led to the creation of platforms like Crosslist in an effort to automate and diversify operations, so there’s little doubt this pocket in the industry will continue to adapt in response to new competitive pressures.

It will be interesting to see what those pressures could be, especially as resellers begin to emulate large online retailers, but what may be more important is how these developments will affect consumers. Competition is thought to be healthy for customers and businesses alike, so it’s possible that smaller resellers will do a better job than enterprises at recognizing and responding to popular demand.

Regardless, online reselling’s expansion serves as a case study in what happens when a market grows and how that growth can spur innovation.

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