Hyperfixating on vinted and what I got out of it
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A few weeks ago, I got into vinted. Like any new hyperfixation, it was my new thrill, my drug and my hobbies all rolled into one.
The backstory to that one is easy. I was meeting my friend a while ago and we talked about how she wanted to get rid off a few things. I like selling things and was looking for something easy to do, so we made an agreement. She would go throught her things and decide on what she didn’t want to keep any longer while I would then put them on vinted for her and see how they would sell.
For me, hyperfixations sometimes start with just spending a lot of time on the same subject or doing a thing a few times in a row.
Now that I have a lot of time and not a great deal of things I can do easily (like going hiking and cycling), I started to research. How could I sell more? How could I sell faster? How should I behave?
bots and automatization (#Ban Risk)
Very quickly, I got into optimization tools that would give the items already online a bit of a push from time to time. Problem was, vinted was actively banning accounts for this. I was not emotionally attached to my account but I had a lot of items online and did not want to be banned. Vinted has gotten stricter in the last two years with enforcing their rules, I think. First of all, in this time, I have been contacted twice for uploading things and some other stuff has been put on hold. One got erased. I remember a set of ski underwear being flagged and put on hold, but to this day, I do not know why. In the picture, I was wearing the set, but I was covered from head to toe. It obviously was tight, thought. Was that too revealing for vinted?
I will never know. After vinted had gone over it, it was published after a two-day-hold and quickly sold shortly after.
The other case was a pair of trousers I was wearing in the picture, too. That one got flagged for the item not being in the first picture (because you could not see my feet). I could do nothing but erase and reupload, reworking the pictures so a lay-flat one was in the first did not help.
I also got investigated for automation while I was not using any. I very often have to pass bot checks on other websites too, thought. I moce throught them quite fast and I am also a very quick read. Maybe I am too fast for them?
I was also very active on the site at the time, selling a lot and writing with people, responding to offers and so on.
In the beginning of my hyperfixation, I was very into tools and tried 3. Free ones, of course. A week after, one got discontinued, so I did try the successor.
I read and listened and watched videos on how to do vinted successfully.
Using one bot for a day that automated pushing things up and reuploading got me a temporary hold for 48 h. Using a bot that crosslisted things on kleinanzeigen or ebay did not.
I have to give it to that one content creator on youtube who said that anything that is not an influence on vinted’s own system won’t get you banned. I think he is right. The crosslisting tool also had a nice revenue tracker, too. The only downside was that all tools only work in the (in my eyes ancient) google chrome and my favourite browser is firefox.
So, to conclude, I would not try do use any tools again that influence vinted/ my account directly, but crosslisting is nice.
I sold 3 items via kleinanzeigen and none on ebay. The crosslisting from vinted to ebay was more automated and easier, thought.
My best tips for more sales and higher turnover
Here is what really worked for me:
- good pictures, obviously, but okay ones can do well, too
- Ironing your things gets you better prices
- Listing things in the evening, I had the highest success rate around 8 pm
- Writing to people who liked my items when I was preparing to ship (Just like: Hey, I am shipping with xy tomorrow, if you would like to buy this quickly)
- Good lighting in the pictures deserves an extra credit because it worked so well.
- Relisting things that did not sell after 3 days was worth it.
- Using the system gives you a boost.
- Always accept offers
I did get away a bit from that last one, because I now have some higher-value items left. I also am selling more of my own stuff and I find it hard to let that go because of both emotional attachment and knowledge of the original price. I was not that attached to my friend’s stuff.
What did not work
Some classics from the internet failed me. Those were:
- Listing things on the weekend got me nothing, views were even less that during the weekdays.
- I read that the best time/ days for listing were Wednesday evening and sunday evening, as well as lunchtime. I cannot say that is true. Evening generally worked better.
- Pictures with me wearing the items did not sell any better or faster.
- Sending people offers got me nowhere.
- I tried one of the paid features, but it did almost nothing for performance and nothing for sales. The picture below shows that.
What genuinely confunded me, was this:
- Items I expected to do well did not sell
- Items that were broken somewhow sold
- The price does not seem to matter a lot in a certain range. Selling things on the upper side of 10 Euro is quite hard. 20 is almost an atrocious price.
- It is much harder to sell trousers. Shirts sell really well.
- People in Germany seem to have a kmack for buying in the morning.
The prices for some items are so low that I am convinced vinted users are destroying their own market. Shirts and tops especially.
Problems I had:
I had one case where I put two parcels with their respective (and correct, I checked!) labels into a postbox. Only one got sent somewhere, I think, and it somehow to labelled the wrong thing in the process. The person who then received it had not bought it and was nice enought to send it on to the one who had. However, the other parcel did not show. The aforementioned receiver thought to be kind to me and did claim in-system that everything was fine (which it was not, the second item had gotten lost) and then proceeded to ask me for her money back via paypal. She would not help me with finding the parcel either and had ruined (with her in-system-claim) any chance for me to go throught vinted. To top it off, this was my friend’s item. I was distraught for two days. This also effectively ended my hyperfixation.
My friend said not to worry. I am still waiting for the posting service to get back to me because of the lost item. I am curious if they will.
Another bug was my own fault: In the beginning, I did not print every label and got confused and the parcelbox with two, which resulted in my sending one of to the wrong person and immediatly cancelling the order on my phone while then going on to buy another label for the parcel I still had from which I had accidentally used the label for the wrong parcel. That last one only took 2 days to get back to me and then I could finally send it on it’s way. So, the only thing that happened there was me losing out on revenue.
Conclusion:
Funny hobby that makes you money if you play your cards right, I would recommend it for that – but it can also stress you out big time. I wouldn´t really recommend the automation tools and bots I used.
Do you sell on vinted? What experience did you have?
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