He Makes $45K/Month Selling Stuff on Live Stream⏐Ep. #287

In terms of like profit per hour, $1,200 an hour, $1,500 an hour, that is like electric. In the last 30 days, we did $45,000.

We did a livestream a couple weeks ago at my house, my first ever. We made $900 in 90 minutes.

Last year we did $450,000, and that's after fees.

Okay, so you're just seeing online that it's growing, it's popular, and you thought, what the heck, let's give it a shot. You had zero followers, no experience.

Yeah, it was a total leap of faith. In my anticipation, I was like, we're probably not going to sell anything. And so what happened was, is we sold everything and it was like a 2-hour, just like, I'm blown away. It just absolutely crushed it.

What were your total sales for those 2 hours?

$4,500.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

$2,000 profit for one stream. Yep. That's incredible.

And there's no competition for it.

It's brand new. So it's just like blue ocean, tons of opportunity. How can people win there?

The listener listening to this is interested in live selling to make some extra money. If you're interested at all in that, then you're good for it. Here's how I did it. If I can do it, you can definitely do it. It's a huge, huge, huge opportunity right now. They project live selling to be a $2.5 trillion industry by 2033. Get in early, as early as you can.

My guest today makes $175 an hour in profit selling other people's stuff on livestream. He started with zero followers, zero experience. He's never livestreamed before in his life, and he did this all from a storage unit. His first stream, he sold 150 items in under 2 hours, and he started every single item at a dollar. That was a year ago, and now he's doing half a million dollars a year on a platform that almost no one is using yet. So stick around to the end because he will break down the exact playbook for how you can make your first $1,000 in profit live selling, even if you've never gone live before in your life. Even if you're an introvert like me, you're gonna love it. Okay. Well, Kip, why don't you just tell us who you are and what you do?

Yeah. Thanks, Chris. I've been reselling just in general for the past 7 years and most recently started reselling on Whatnot, which is live selling on Whatnot, live auctions. Start them at a dollar, let them run for 10, 30, 20, you know, however long, 20 seconds, and sell it and ship it out. And it's been pretty crazy the last year, just the growth of live selling, seeing more sellers hop on, seeing more buyers hop on. And just every single month, something is different on the platform specifically, but also just live selling in general. So before that, I mean, I had run the gambit of eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Poshmark, you know, the whole nine yards. So what really got me into Whatnot was, or just live selling in general, is I used to sell on Amazon pretty big a couple years ago, and account got suspended for 180 days. And so it was like a forced transition, like, okay, well, I got to move product, I got to make money for my family. And live selling was interesting. I knew it was an emerging market. I tested it out, was pretty blown away. And this was, this was pretty much a year ago. So February 2025. And since then, it's just been off to the races. A lot of failures in between there and now, but a lot of success as well. And a lot of learning.

What types of items were you selling on Amazon?

Pretty much everything on Amazon. We say we just read the data. And so I would sell pet supplies, but I would also sell toothpaste or, you know, really random things. If the data works out, if it's going to be profitable, then I'll make the purchase.

You mean you use these third-party tools to find items that had more demand than supply and that's where you would go?

Yeah, pretty much. You look at the data, see, okay, this product sells 500 units a month. I think if I sold this product, I could get 10% share of that. 50 units a month would be my share. and I can buy it for $8 and it's selling for $20 after fees on that, call it $5. Okay. $5 a unit, 50 times a month. That works out. Let me buy, you know, 3 months supply or 4 months supply. And then you just do that over and over and over again. And it could be, like I said, the data, it could be a pet toy, it could be toothpaste, it could be lighting equipment, it could be anything.

Okay. Did your Amazon account ever come back after getting banned?

Yeah. So it was 180-day suspension due to like a technical thing. I forgot to delete something and there goes, you know, a $2 million business.

$2 million. So yeah, what were you doing per month in revenue and profit at your peak on Amazon?

Revenue was $150,000 a month and then profit was anywhere from, you know, after everything, all the fees, all the returns, everything, probably, I mean, anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 profit a month. So on the low end, it'd be $10K. And then, you know, during the really high peak months, you could get up to $20K.

Yeah. Okay, so this happens and I like to say constraints equal creativity. This is a massive constraint. It's the equivalent of getting laid off unexpectedly, right? It's a big deal.

Pretty bad.

And you told me before we started recording, you know, this was February 2025. You said you have one child that's 13 months old. So this happened around the same time your kid was born.

Yeah, it's funny you bring it up. I was literally in the hospital. My wife had just had the baby and like Amazon account is like calling me like, you know, some overseas person is calling me about my account. And so it was, I, you know, I've said before, it's like the most joyful and like stressful time in my life. Because, you know, if you, as an Amazon seller, you know that like this could be the end of Amazon, you know, for me.

So yeah, man, I distinctly remember like 2 to 3 different times in the hospital with one of my children where something very stressful was happening at work. And, you know, I wish I could say like, yeah, it puts things into perspective, but like, it just, it just, everything sucks more. You know?

Yeah.

Okay, so you hadn't done anything on Whatnot. You're just seeing online that it's growing, it's popular, and you thought, what the heck, let's give it a shot. You had zero followers, no experience, because obviously live selling and selling on eBay are like night and day.

Yeah, yeah, it was a total leap of faith. Total, hey, let's give this a shot. I have no clue if this is going to go well.

Now I know this could be a whole other episode in and of itself, so we don't need to get into the weeds, but what's the 80/20 of how and where to procure profitable products?

Yeah, well, it definitely depends on what category you're going for. Primarily on Whatnot, it's a liquidation platform. Because we're talking about live auctions specifically, call it a 30-second auction, a 10-second auction, whatever it may be, you're essentially demanding a purchase from your audience who's watching you live every 30 seconds. And because you're doing that, your price per, you know, your sale price is going to be significantly lower than if that consumer had time to make the choice and think about it and compare and contrast. So your price per unit is going to be a lot lower than it will be on eBay, than it will be on Amazon, than it will be on these, you know, quote unquote, full price channels. So it's a liquidation outlet essentially. We're typically buying around 90, 80 to 90% off and then looking to sell at 60 to 50% off. And so those liquidation goods, you know, you can find them through relationships who people have contracts with Target or contracts with Macy's or contracts with Sam's Club, whatever. And say, hey, we get all their customer returns for, you know, 95% off, we'll sell them to you for 90% off. And so there's a lot of relationships there. Then there's also those public sites. I can't say enough good things about B-Stock. It's consistent liquidation goods that you can fuel your business from. And so that's a great place to start.

And to do that, you just need a resale certificate and some Googling skills, basically.

100%.

All right. So what does that first month look like? What do you buy? Why do you choose it? How much money do you make, if anything?

Yeah, great question. And I had no clue what to sell on the platform, right? And we're specifically talking about Whatnot right now. About 45 days ago, we started selling on TikTok as well, which I'd love to talk about. But specifically for Whatnot, which was about a year ago, we reached out to one of the suppliers that we had purchased some Amazon goods from and just said, hey, this, you know, account thing happened to us. Do you have anything that is liquidation that would be good for Whatnot? He said, yeah, I actually sell to a couple of Whatnot sellers and I think this load would be pretty good. And it's kitchen appliances, small kitchen appliances from a big retailer. It was Macy's and it's X price per unit. I think it was maybe 400 units and I generally don't know what I paid for each unit, but customer returns. And so it was like coffee makers, it was vacuums, it was espresso machines, air fryers, toasters. You know, all these things that I actually had an interest in. Like whenever I go to Marshalls, when I go to TJ Maxx, I'm always in those sections. Like what kind of coffee maker can I get? What kind of, you know, stainless steel pan can I get? I like that stuff. So I was interested in this. I thought this would be pretty good. The price point was right. And I had not seen that on the platform before. So I wanted to bring something a little unique. And so, you know, of course I looked into these categories. I looked at the top sellers. I looked at the formats that they were selling. I definitely watched the different, like, personalities and what— whenever I was watching a stream, I would constantly just kind of summarize, like, if I scrolled off or if I, you know, closed the app on my phone, it was like, why did I do that? Because there's a lot of moments when I don't do that. And so it's like, was it something the streamer did? Was it something the— just I didn't like the items? Was it the price point? Was it— and it usually, you know, you learn from those things. So that was the research I did as far as like, can I have success on the platform?

All right. So Tell me how your first livestream went with those appliances.

Yeah, so it's like, okay, well, we'll livestream them, should be pretty straightforward. I'm going to figure out how to pack it. I'm going to figure out these things after it. I'm not like worried about that stuff. I know how to pack products and I'm not going to let that hold me back. So we get these products in. One thing I didn't anticipate was that these are customer returns and so they're actually going to need to be tested because there's a lot of coffee makers that don't work. There's a lot of toasters that don't work. There's a lot of air fryers that don't work. And I'm not trying to sell those products to these people. You know, that's just not a good experience for them. And so that took significantly long.

You're brand new to this category, so it could be 5% were returned because they were defective. It could be 95%. You just don't know yet.

Exactly. I had no idea. I do remember the price per unit was so low. I'm like, I think this is good. Even if I throw away half the load, I think I'm probably okay.

Okay. All right. So you, you did think to start testing these before you sold them or you learned the hard way?

I did think to start testing them. Yes. And I didn't see, you know, other accounts like testing the products. And so, you know, they're like a lot of the other accounts that were selling it were just like, hey, they're customer returns. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And that's not an experience I want to give my people or my customers. So we tested them, took a very long time. We, I kind of had to systemize it like, you know, is it A grade? Is it S tier? Is it C tier? Is all the parts here? You know, so I brought in my family. Thankfully, they knew that I was in this stressful state, you know, with my Amazon account being shut down. So they were super duper helpful and I didn't have to pay them. So that helped. But long story short, we get to the show and I start, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start them at a dollar, which is crazy because these are, you know, $200 espresso machine or it's—

What was the first thing you sold?

Probably a toaster oven. Let's say a toaster oven. Yeah. I had a lot of toaster ovens, which I'm like, who's going to buy a toaster oven via live? But they did.

Yeah. So you had— you created a brand new Whatnot account, is that right?

Yeah, brand new Whatnot account. I set my name up.

Followers, subscribers?

Yeah, zero. Zero. Just brand new to the platform. Pretty much brand new to the category too. There's only— I think there were only like 1 or 2 sellers in the whole category of like appliances. And so, you know, everybody who's tuning into us, they either A, haven't even shopped kitchen appliances before, or B, they definitely haven't seen us sell them. And so in my anticipation, I was like, we're probably not going to sell anything. We're going to be live for like 2 hours. We might sell a few items, but I'm going to figure out how to ship these things. I'm going to, you know, figure out how the platform works. I don't expect success in the first one. And so what happened was, is we sold everything and it was like a 2-hour, just like, I'm blown away.

So I have to know, like, how many people were watching? And like, to me, it's just crazy that someone with no followers, no subscribers, no anything, no history, track record, reputation can create an account, start live selling, and Whatnot is sending you people. It's like TikTok, right? They're just swiping, looking, and, you know, it's like shoe, shoe, Pokémon card, card shoe, toaster oven.

Yeah.

Huh.

Yeah. And I think it was a big surprise to a lot of consumers because they'd never seen those types of products on Whatnot. And it's really exciting whenever you see something on Whatnot. Like, food has just become a pretty new category. Like, in the past 8 months, it's been pretty new. And so at the beginning, it's like, oh shoot, I never thought I could buy cereal on live platforms, but this is fun, right? It's a little addicting. And so people tuned in and they, they were interested. And yeah, we caught their attention pretty quickly with some of the products that we had. Because they just hadn't seen that before.

How many people were watching it like in the beginning, like first 10 minutes versus at your peak?

Yeah. So at the beginning you want to start out strong because there's a little bit of a boost, especially at the beginning of your show. If you start making sales, they're going to push you to other people. You know, we started probably with 20 people, then 40 people, then 50 people, then 60. A lot. Yeah. I mean, we got up over 100 people in our first few shows for sure, because it was just number one, the prices were really good because we were selling things that, you know, we didn't have a following. So everybody to us is new. They're a little hesitant to bid. So the price Prices were really good, which drives up viewership. You started at a dollar, which is instantly engaging. That's what's really engaging about just about live auctions in general is that if you start at a dollar, you have people's attention because— and that is an $80 item.

Okay, that's what I was going to say. So if you were to keep swiping and you were to see an $80 high heel, are they not usually starting that at a dollar? Is that not common?

Um, it depends on kind of the seller strategy, how many followers they have. What, what performs the best at live auction, the live auction level is high perceived value items. And so you just mentioned an $80 heel. Heels, I know because I sell women's fashion now, heels are low perceived value. You know, you don't know, are they worth $20? Are they worth $100? Are they worth $300? Are they worth $5? You really don't know by looking at it. And so to your example, yes, you'd want to start at $1 or, you know, if they're higher retail, you could start at higher if they're, if the value you know, made sense. In the example of like kitchen appliances, I learned the high perceived value thing pretty quick, because we would have a Ninja air fryer that has all the bells and whistles. This is a probably $299 to $300, you know, almost $400 air fryer, then we'd also have a basic Ninja air fryer that's probably worth like $150. The price points would be almost identical, if not sometimes in favor of the one that is cheaper. Because to the consumer, when they have a 10 to 20 to 30-second, you know, time frame to make a decision, they're not factoring in all the different features that this one has, all the different—

they don't have time to do research.

No, they don't at all. And so what they see is an air fryer that has a perceived value in their mind, call it $120 probably. Then they have a Ninja air fryer, so maybe that's a little bit higher, a little bit nicer brand. So anything— let's say they're valuing it at $150— anything under half of that, right? $75. That's a steal of a deal to them, whether or not it's worth $100, $200, $300, $400. So focus on those high perceived value items. And with that kitchen electronics show, man, that— I learned that so much when we'd have different toaster ovens, really nice toaster ovens, cheap toaster ovens, they'd all go for about the same.

Hmm. So with that knowledge intact, then it's kind of influences how you go purchase the next batch of items, right?

Yeah, 100%. We're looking for high perceived value items at, you know, liquidation pricing. And so one of our biggest traps is you get emotional and you try to purchase a brand that you really like, that you think is expensive, that everybody should like. You bring it in, nobody's heard of it. And to them, it's just a t-shirt, or to them, it's just a dress, or to them, it's just sweatpants, right? They don't know the actual value of the product. And even if you tell them the MSRP or the retail, it's like, Yeah, but it's the same reason why stores on Fifth Avenue have such a big experience. They smell good. You meet people who, you know, they have a, you know, the store associate is because they're trying to raise your perceived value of the products in there. And whenever you're live selling, you don't necessarily have that experience. Like you bring up this brand, maybe it is really nice, but the consumer doesn't have that experience that they know it's nice until they're told, you know, until they know, until it's established in their mind. So yeah, we're, you know, we're sourcing those high perceived value items.

That gives me an idea. You mentioned like the in-store experience on Fifth Avenue. There are probably people doing this, but if I were live selling anything, I think it would be really cool to have your background, like be wearing a tux and have your background look super high end. Like even if you're selling protein bars, Pokemon cards, doesn't matter. Like I just feel like that would make a difference as opposed to like selling from a storage unit like so many people do. Not that there's anything wrong with it.

And I, and I, well, I think it's both and, right? I think if you're selling from your warehouse, selling from your storage unit, people feel like they're getting a deal because there's no other costs associated. Like, this is a steal of a deal. You know, it's, it's the thrill of the deal. It's the thrill of the hunt. So there's that aspect. If you're, you know, making a really high-end experience, it's just a different, it's just different. People like both. People like, yeah.

Okay. So when you say you sold everything in that first auction, You mean all 8 pallets? You sold everything?

Yeah. No, everything that we had tested. And so it was a slow testing period, but we were testing for a few days and probably had 150 items. And, you know, that's all we could even store because I had a pretty small space. When you get them out of the pallet, it takes up more space. And so I was like, well, this is literally all that we can sell right now. And, and so that's what we did. And we sold it all in, I think it was an hour and 45 minutes, which is really short in terms of live selling.

Now, how extensively do you test? Because like a toaster, it's like, cool, you push it down, glows red, good to go. But like an espresso machine, it's like, are you making espressos with this thing? You know what I'm saying? Like, how extensively?

Well, that's exactly what we ran into specifically with coffee makers is like, you can't— I'm not going to run a pod through this K-Cup machine, you know? So with the coffee makers, it was like, hey, this turns on. It holds water. That's as far— that's as much as we know. And then with things that we can test, like you're saying, toaster oven, it's like, I know that this gets hot. I know that it works. Things with blenders, like you can test a blender. Vacuums, you can test a vacuum. So coffee makers specifically, we just couldn't fully test. And there was a couple of them that consumer got in. It's like, hey, it's leaking. It's like, okay, well, I didn't know that. So here's your refund.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's like, hey, it turns on.

Yeah, this vacuum works great. It sucks.

This vacuum, literally, this vacuum sucks. You will love it.

Okay, so how many items, give or take, would you say you sold? 150?

I think it's 150. Yeah, in an hour and 45 minutes, which, yeah, which that sounds about right.

That's fast, man. 45 seconds, give or take?

Like, yeah, about an item right now. We target about an item a minute, but yeah, I think probably back then it was a lot faster because we just, yeah, I was around the item, you know.

So what was, what were your total sales for those 2 hours, if you remember?

$4,500.

Holy crap.

Yeah, maybe I have some other numbers wrong, but I did look at the revenue. $4,500. So we purchased the lot basically on an average price per unit. And so the items that we sold that day based on our average price per unit, I think we made a little bit of money. And then after the shipping supplies and everything was based, it was pretty much break even. However, whenever you purchase a lot based on average price per unit, you know, you have some really crappy items, you have some really great items. And so you really don't know until you sell it all what, what's the deal here, because it also came with like some salt shakers. You know, I can't get $14 or what— I don't remember what I paid, but it was probably like $12, $14. I can't get $14 off of those.

So back to the napkin, $30 per unit. You sold 150 of them in almost 2 hours. And you said, you know, you try to buy these 80 to 90% off retail. So these are on average $150 to $300 items that you're selling for $30.

Yeah, um, that makes me think about it. I remember looking at the average retail price, and that's what kind of got me over the edge. It was like, it was probably $160 average retail price. Yeah.

And so if I'm you, I'm looking at this like, all right, I, I basically just got a free education. I didn't make any money here, but I didn't have to pay $100 grand for an MBA. Like, now I feel very confident about Whatnot. Now My next pallet is going to be 3 times as profitable. Like, now I know this, now I know that, now I have reviews, now I have stars, now I have followers, now I have credibility. Like, it is only going to get easier from here on out. Is that what you're thinking?

100%. Because now I had followers, I understood how shipping worked. I understood that people didn't really care too much about the testing. They wanted me to go faster. You know, they wanted the speed. And I realized, too, that a brand new sealed product goes for pretty much the same as a, hey, this is customer returned, it's open, but it looks great. So I learned those things. I learned that the high perceived value aspect, that this toaster oven went for the same as this toaster oven, even though this one's way nicer. So yeah, free education, learned so much, and I grew my audience, right? So I know that those people are going to come back. And I did a test the other day, right? So we did those in February, and I was talking about it on stream the other day, and people are like, yeah, I actually remember finding you in February of last year, and they're still watching us today. Which is mind-blowing to me.

Yeah. Do you remember how many followers you got from that first stream? And then second question is, how many followers do you have today, a year later?

Yeah, I probably had about 400 to 500 after that first stream. It was pretty successful. Like I said, I really think being in that new category really helped, and we were running giveaways, which helped— excuse me— help you get followers. Today on Whatnot, we have 40,000 followers, so we grew about About 1,000 a week, 800 a week. Yeah.

And how many hours of live streaming a week have you done on average since then?

Oh, that's a good question. I know we've done over 250 lives and an average live is about 3 to 4 hours. So it's about over 1,000, about 1,000 hours of lives.

And what, what is your revenue, your gross revenue been since then, since that first stream?

Yeah. So last year we did $450,000. In gross revenue. And that's after fees. Yeah, don't worry about the fees. So that's after fees.

So that's basically March 2025 through December 31st, 2025.

Yep. Yeah. About $150,000 of it was in like November and December or maybe even— well, the bulk of it was in Q4.

And then what about year to date 2026?

Year to date 2026. I know in the last 30 days we did $45,000 in revenue. Um, yeah, on pace for a little bit of growth.

Yeah. Okay. And then what was your profit last year? And then your, your last 30 days profit on that?

So yeah, profit last year is about $100,000. And so that's on that $450,000. There's some great buys in there. I mean, about 30% of that is from one, like one liquidation purchase. And then, you know, we had hundreds of others that were pretty much either a wash or like kind of successful or not successful. So we had one really good buy last year that really propelled us. And then in the last 30 days, $45,000 revenue, about $12,000 profits. Well, I was looking at it earlier. We're about 30% margin. And the thing with live selling is it fluctuates so much.

Yeah.

And whenever you look at the— and this is what I tell all new sellers is like, the product that you are selling is actually your live show. It's not the individual products. And so we'll look at a live show as a, you know, as the product. So, okay, this stream made $800, this stream made $600, this stream made $200. And when I looked at the average stream profit, it was about $680 in pretty much since the last like 8 months. So every time we go live, we'll make $680 on average profit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And how long is your average stream?

4 hours. Yeah, we shoot for 4 hours.

All right. So $175 profit an hour. Yeah, for a single person business, or are there more people involved?

Yeah, so I have somebody who packs all the orders, and then we have a couple streamers. So I stream occasionally, but I have two other streamers that stream for me as well.

Okay.

But it's one person. The way that I like to do it is one person running the stream. I don't like the overhead of multiple people running a stream.

Yeah. How do you compensate the other streamers?

Yeah, so I look at the market of like, what is the— who's the person that I can get for this role or want for this role? And what are their other options for getting a job? And so for me, I wanted to find kind of college-age girls, or I mean people who like clothing, because we sell clothing and fashion now. So who like clothing, who like apparel. And so they're most likely going to either go get a job at a boutique or go become a server or something like that. And so I was like, okay, that's a $15, $16 hour job where I'm at. I'm gonna pay $17 an hour plus 1% commission. They can earn up to $25, $30 an hour if it goes well. They average about $21, $22 an hour, which is great.

And they're probably thrilled with that.

Yeah, because they come in for 5, 6 hours, you know, it's not a super long shift. You're on camera, you're on social media, people are following you, people are hyping you up. It's a fun role to be a boss for in a way. Yeah, because those people are fun. You kind of want to give them a space to be themselves. And yeah, and then they take it like, I mean, whenever I try to sell women's clothing, I do horribly, right? But they love it. So they do really well. Yeah.

Do you worry about signing non-competes with them? Or is that kind of a non-factor?

I haven't worried about that. I think it's so locational that I don't know if they even wanted to do like, I don't know if there's any other—

Well, they got to source the stuff.

Like, yeah, it's like that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't worry about that at all.

Yeah. Yeah. People would think like, oh, they're just going to start live streaming on their own. It's like, Okay, yeah, if this happens and that and this and that goes right and this goes right and this goes right and they have the temperament for it and they want to be a business owner, like, yeah, there's a lot that goes into it because I'm sourcing this product and, you know, sometimes you put up $20,000, $30,000 on an order, you know, that you plan to sell over the next couple of weeks.

And I just know that that's not realistic for a lot of people. They don't want to do that.

Yeah. Okay. So $175 profit an hour, that's after you know, paying for your employees and everything. They're happy, you're happy, it's fun, it's high energy. What is there a type of person that excels at this? Because I would have thought high energy extrovert, that's the way to go. But then my friend Braden, who does this, like, he's not— he's like me. Like, he's quiet, he's soft, he's soft-spoken, he's an introvert, and he's making hundreds of dollars an hour live selling protein bars, right? Yeah. So what are your thoughts on like personality type with this?

Yeah. So whenever I look for, I think Looking for an employee who's going to be a streamer is a little bit different than just somebody who should start live selling. I think if we're talking about the listener listening to this who is interested in live selling to make some extra money, if that— if you're interested at all in that, then you're good for it. Um, because you're going to run into a lot of other issues outside of just being live that you're going to have to overcome. And if you're capable of overcoming those things, then you can be successful. You'll be on stream and you'll understand quickly Okay, this is what I did to get the most out of this one. Okay. My audience— people want to shop from people they relate to. So no matter who you are, what type of person you are, people will relate to you and then hopefully make a purchase from you. It's the business side of things that is tough. And if you're listening to this and you're interested in that, then you're good for it. If you're hiring a streamer, I'm finding people who have a natural interest in the product because as a business owner, I have a natural interest in the product. It can make me money. I understand what I paid for it. I understand what I need to get out of it. But that comes with stress that I don't want to put on a streamer. I don't want them to have to know my cogs. I don't want them to know, hey, we need to get a couple bucks out of this one. You know, I want that to be pretty natural. I don't want them to go on camera and like sell, sell, sell. You know, I want people— they want to bring people in, have fun, be themselves. So I'm finding somebody who has a natural interest in this product, has a lot of energy, is extroverted, or at least can turn that, turn that on. And then somebody who can take feedback. Feedback's super duper important. Especially when you're putting yourself out there on camera, right? Hey, this show didn't perform as well. You know, don't take it personally. Like, let's figure out why. And I think what's really helped with that is that I'm a dude who's sold women's shoes. And I obviously am not the consumer. I obviously have no special interest in women's shoes, but I was able to be successful with it. And so here's how I did it, you know, then I'm talking to the streamers about those things. And it's like, if I can do it, you can definitely do it.

Yeah. How long did it take you to have your first month that made you $10,000?

Probably— well, I think it was about 4 months in. 4 months in, made $10,000 profit, had a couple losses after that, and then 6 months till now, it's been pretty steady, $10,000-$15,000 a month.

What did you do right on that great purchase that you had, and what can people learn from that last year?

Yeah. So, you know, we're talking about liquidation goods. And you learn quickly that every brand, every retailer has overstock, has customer returns. And so you have, as a buyer, I think it's really easy to be kind of the thrill of the deal, right? Oh my gosh, I think this product's going to be really good. Let me get after it. And maybe it's in an auction format and you end up paying way too much. You're on B-stock, you end up paying way too much. And that is super common.

Buy with math, sell with emotion.

Buy with math, sell with emotion. There's no better example than that than live selling because you're literally selling with emotion whenever you understand how much you paid for all these things. So that's the biggest thing is just, you know, I purchased a lot of clothing and footwear before and then, you know, I think our average buy cost probably about $10, $15. Then we got this load that was $5 and that was, I mean, that was $5 a unit and that really propelled us. And so, you know, on paper it's like, oh, buy cheaper stuff, but also it was just a really good deal that I was patient for. That I had negotiated. And, you know, obviously took a risk on it. It was, it was, you know, thousands of pairs at $5. You never know.

Shoes?

Yeah, shoes. Yeah.

Okay. And what are some mistakes that you've made that people could learn from on buying?

Yeah, I mean, it's buying with emotion, you know, where you see the brands and certain auctions that you want to bring and you, you see other people selling them on Whatnot. You're like, man, I want to, I want to sell that brand because that brand does well for them. It'll do well for me. Then you end up paying too much for it. And it's not your audience, might not be your audience, right? Or, you know, it's all about that perceived value. It's not necessarily just about your emotion whenever you see the product and I should buy it. And I mean, as simple as it sounds, it's like find cheaper products that have the highest perceived value. You know, like jewelry is a really exciting category, really good category, especially for listeners here. If they're into fashion or anything like that, jewelry would be the place I would go. Because it's small, you can do it in your house, you can do it in your apartment, and it has a super high perceived value. You know, how much is a gold necklace? You know, I don't know, could be $80, could be $100, could be $200. You don't know, but the consumer sees it as a gold necklace and probably thinks it's pretty expensive.

Now, for after your first livestream, you had 400 to 500 followers. They followed you for kitchen appliances. How important is it that you stick to that niche? Because now you have followers in that niche. So I'm thinking that's one school of thought, like, I guess this is, this is my niche now. The other school of thought is Whatnot is an algorithm. They're going to show me people, strangers, every single time. How much weight to give to either school of thought?

Yeah. And I think that's a constant question that I have as well, is like, should I keep doing what we're doing or should I try to bring new culturally relevant products to our audience? And I found that as your audience grows, like, you can bring them places with you if you think they're interested and you can ask them anecdotally on stream like, hey, are you interested in XYZ brand or are you interested in XYZ product? And people will oftentimes say yes, they really like you as a streamer, like the way you do things. Maybe they like the products. I'm sure they do like the products, but at the end of the day, they're following you for more than just the products you have because they can go buy the products anywhere. So a good example of that is we again started selling kitchen appliances, moved to selling women's fashion apparel, things like that. And then about 6 months in, I was like, I want to try food. I've seen people do food. I want to try food. So I was talking to my audience, hey, I'm going to try food. Make sure to bookmark this show. So I had the show up on our account. They can bookmark it, then they get notified whenever we go live. And that's kind of a good barometer. Like if people bookmark it, that means they're interested. So I had enough people bookmark it. I'm like, okay, let's go make this purchase. So I purchased some food and over 50% of the buyers in that show, the food show, were returning customers. And I had never sold food before. And that could be seen as a good or bad thing. I view it as a good thing because I had my audience and I was able to leverage them into a new category that they probably wouldn't have purchased beforehand. As well as I got 50% new buyers from a totally new category that they would never see me, you know, selling women's fashion. And so I'm all for it. I'm all for changing categories, switching it up. As long as you— I think as long as you do that anecdotal evidence of like, hey, are you interested in this? Yes or no? If so, go ahead and bookmark this, you know, or something like that, so that you at least are, you know, have the pulse, you know, your finger on the pulse of what your audience wants.

Yeah. I mean, it's a lot like this podcast, you know, people connect with people, not businesses. They want to buy from other people. I like, I like to say this podcast is Chris Koerner pushed out to the world, not just like AI ideas, not just side hustle ideas, not just like it's whatever I'm interested that has anything to do with business. Yeah. And sometimes that's a business that primarily women would start, sometimes men, sometimes AI, sometimes line striping. If I find it interesting, then that energy will come through and I'm going to attract people that like learning about that stuff through my lens and voice and life history, right? So I don't get hung up so much on the, the industry or the niche that I'm covering, but rather, am I interested in it genuinely and authentically? And that's never steered me wrong.

And it's a huge benefit too, because like, if you had an AI podcast, and what if AI became uninteresting, you know, then what, who wants your podcast? And it's the same thing with us. Like, yes, we sell women's footwear and apparel, but What if I can no longer sell women's footwear and apparel for some reason? You know, are you still going to follow me? And, you know, same thing with you. It's like you have a leveraged audience that you can bring them in different ideas that you want to do. It keeps it interesting for you, keeps it interesting for them. Same thing with live.

Yeah. Now what about the food live that you had? What kind of food were you selling and how profitable was that?

So the food that I sold was— I purchased it from B-Stock from Costco auctions. So we had a lot of like protein, energy drinks, snacks, candy, some pantry items, anything you'd find at Costco. And what I love about live selling is that you can kind of sell the unsellable. And what I mean by that is like customer returns or individual pieces of food. You can sell that on live because the customer sees you build the box or they see the product that they're about to buy—footwear, food, whatever it may be—and then they associate a value with that and make the purchase, you know, especially if you start the bid at a dollar. And so that's what I love about it. If you were to buy a food lot and try to sell on eBay, you'd be listing these things for hours and hours and hours. Some wouldn't sell, some would sell. It just is— I mean, nobody would do that. That I think— I don't think you would. But on live, you're able to do that. And so what, yeah, what we did is we bought— brought in all these, uh, customer return food, which sounds really gross. Thankfully, it's like a 40-pack of Monster that the consumer took a Monster out, they drank it, they didn't like it, they returned it. So then you get 39 Monsters, right? And they're all brand new.

I didn't know Costco was allowed to sell that stuff. I thought they had to destroy any returned food.

Yeah, on Beastock, there's everything.

They're not destroying it. No, they're not.

When I think they— I'm not trying to put them on blast here, but I think they should have some of it because we got like 15% of our lot was a recalled, like, beef jerky. So we're not going to sell that, but they sold it to us. So we had to dispose of that and kind of eat the cost there, which did affect—

I need to take another bite of my beef jerky here. It's good stuff.

This stuff was so good though. We were eating it in the warehouse like crazy. And then like somebody was like, why do we have so much of this? And then they just Googled it and saw it was like recalled. Like, oh no.

How much profit did you make per hour on the food one compared to your normal $175?

I know after we sold everything, it was about 30% margin on the food as well.

Which is even better than your average margin.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's super exciting because— Yeah. Yeah. So we were about 25 to 40 and then average about 30. But yes, it's like, you know, we're selling something that is hard to sell elsewhere. We're leveraging our audience. We're leveraging the format of live selling to sell something that's really difficult to sell. And that's super exciting to me because that opens up opportunity, buying opportunity. Then you can go out and source product that nobody else wants, but you can get it super duper cheap because you're selling it in a unique, unique way.

Now, answer me this. Let's say you take two people. This hypothetical question. One is just like a, you know, low energy, not super exciting guy or gal. The other is like just an expert live seller, skilled, energetic, funny, quick on their feet, just like very, very skilled. You give them both brand new accounts starting from nothing. Nobody has heard of either one of them. One has a lot of experience. Let's say they— yeah, one has a lot of experience, one has no experience, and they're just kind of boring. You give them the same items. Zero follower accounts, what percentage more does the energetic experienced person sell? How much of a difference does the person and their attitude, energy, and experience make?

If you are starting at zero, I think it's almost everything. I think that person with no energy will, I mean, struggle to do anything. Truly, that person that has all the energy will, I mean, will have success. Yeah, I mean, that's just that. They will. And if you were to take that person who will have success and then take them to the average, it's 20 to 30% increase above the average if they're an exceptional streamer, if they're exceptional at their job. And I see that between our streamers. Like whenever I hire different streamers, we see just, okay, they're given the same products where they're obviously on the same channel. This show was 20% more revenue because that streamer was just better. Yeah.

Okay. Second hypothetical, you take two expert streamers, high energy, they're both amazing on Whatnot. One of them has 50,000 followers that they've built up over a year like you, and the other one has no followers, but they're both very good, very experienced. How much of a difference does that make? Because I would think, you know, Economics 101, more, you know, more demand, stable or low supply equals higher price, right? I would have to think that that's the case. But how much of a difference does it make if it's algorithmically driven? It definitely makes a difference.

It doesn't make a difference in like the linear term that, okay, this person has 50,000 followers, so they're gonna do, you know, 50,000x better or whatever. The percentage, let's say it's percentage. If you're starting at zero, the first month is a struggle no matter what. After you get your first 2,000 to 3,000 followers, you can compete with pretty much anybody. A 3,000 follower page can compete with a 50,000 follower page. A 50,000 follower page can compete with a 100,000 page. Yeah. It might be a few percentages. Some shows might perform a little worse. But at the beginning, you're putting in that first month. If you're at zero, that person's at $50,000, the $50,000 revenue is probably going to be 50% higher, especially. Okay. Yeah, pretty, pretty.

I would think it's like, it's like any newsletter or social media platform. Like if I had 100 newsletter subscribers, they would be so loyal to me. But with 100,000, they're just not, right? Yeah. So conversely, if you have 50,000 followers on whatnot, and you get 500 streamers, and let's say you x that to 500,000 followers, it doesn't mean you're going to 10x the number of streamers. No, it doesn't work like that, right? Not at all.

And there's a lot of people who have— who treat it very community driven. And that's what I think Whatnot is really excelling at, is kind of building your community. And so like we have 50,000 or we have 40,000 followers. I know of streamers who have 10,000 that I am jealous of their audience because they are so tapped in. Everybody who watches them is like them. They know how to source exactly for them, their audience. And so yeah, I mean, it's a very community-driven thing. It's not a numbers game at all.

How do you cultivate that?

Well, it's something that I missed early on. And it's because I started selling women's fashion and apparel, right? People struggle to buy that from me. They tune into the stream, their instant thoughts are like, oh, this guy's just trying to get money out out of us. And I get it, like, that is what it seems like because I'm obviously not the consumer. I think if you're a true consumer and if you have a passion for that product, people will relate to you. And I think that that's how you do it. And then you bring them along as you make new purchases. Hey guys, I learned this this week. Are you interested in these products? You know, people join your stream. Hey Stacy, you know, how's it going? Thanks so much for being here. I think those things go a long way. I mean, there's good things that go a long way, especially whenever you have a passion for the product and you can relate with your audience.

Yeah. I don't know if you talked to Braden, but we did a livestream a couple of weeks ago at my house. My first ever. I'd never streamed. We sold protein bars. It was a protein bar I'd never tasted before. I tasted it first on the livestream. They didn't know who I was, right? Most people. I was cold to that audience, but we made $900 in 90 minutes. That's awesome. About a third of that profit selling protein bars. Yeah. And you know what surprised me about that? Two things. When we were done, I was spent, right? I'm an introvert and I did not appear to be an introvert on that. Like I turned it on, but I was spent. And the second thing is it was so fun. I had so much fun. I was sweating. It was just, it was fun, you know? 100%. Is that your experience?

Yeah, yeah. Especially early on whenever you don't know what to expect and then it exceeds your expectations and it's kind of the thrill of making a sale and then maybe you say something else and it goes a little higher or maybe, you know, you blunder and you say something dumb and you know, you're just like, I cannot believe I just said that. But totally early on, my max was 2 hours. I've got my max up to like 4 hours. And then it's just like, I can't do this anymore. I have had— I have some streamers that have done 6-hour shows. And they're like, yeah, I could have kept going. So there's just people who are out there like that. That's why— but no, totally. It's so much fun. The thrill of making a sale, connecting with somebody on the audience, and just like that, you don't know what to expect. Even today, when we have a big audience, like, I don't know what to expect. This show could go poorly. Yeah. So that's just so much fun.

What's the best show you've ever done with regards to revenue and profit?

Yeah, we— so we did a 12-hour stream once, which was crazy, like, you know, multiple streamers. And so that was our highest revenue show. You know, we started at 11 AM, we ended at 11 PM, sold like 600 pairs of shoes, filled up the whole warehouse. It was a lot of fun. So that was crazy. In terms of like profit per hour, we've probably had— oh, I know for a fact we've had, uh, we've had some earnings. Let's say just revenue, $1,200 an hour, $1,500 an hour, and then on, you know, 30% profit on that, so $400, $500 an hour in profit. That, that is like electric, and that, that can happen. How does TikTok differ from Whatnot?

Do you see a lot of opportunity there?

Yeah, I see a lot of opportunity on TikTok. Number one, I mean, it's the biggest— I think it's the biggest app on in the US. I think I looked it up and there's 180 million active monthly users on TikTok, which is half the US. And so it has significantly higher usership, right, or viewership than Whatnot. The main difference between the two is like Whatnot is more community and high buyer intent. Like you can make a ton of money with 10 people in your show. We've done it. Lots of people do it. On TikTok, that's not going to happen. We typically have 100 to 200 people in our audience on TikTok, but the numbers are roughly the same, right? There's just the, the intent of the shopper is a little bit lower. Um, another thing with TikTok is it's highly sophisticated is it runs off of the TikTok Shop platform. And so TikTok Shop, they've integrated analytics galore and it's beautiful thing. While you're live, you can see what's the average viewership, like how long have they been watching? You know, you start your show, it's 5 seconds. Then after a few hours, it's 30 seconds. Then after a few more hours, it's a minute. You can see how many impressions you get. You can see the impression spikes. Maybe I did this thing and now the algorithm thinks I need to be targeting to these people. After your show, you can look at the demographics and see, was this targeting the right people? Who are these people that I'm targeting? So it's a very, uh, sophisticated platform. I think it's a little bit more for experienced sellers, but it's a huge, huge, huge opportunity right now. That's pretty much all we've been doing the last 40 to 50 days because they just released live auctions on TikTok. And so I wanted to figure this thing out. I wanted to figure this thing out. So I dedicated the last 45 days just TikTok Shop or TikTok Live.

What's the playbook for winning on TikTok from what you've learned so far? It's brand new, so it's just like blue ocean, tons of opportunity. How can people win there?

Yeah, there's a lot of people selling footwear on TikTok Shop, and I think that's great. You can go on there and sell footwear. There's people selling Nike, Adidas, all this thing, and it's easy to fall into the trap of, oh, I need to do what they're doing because they're having success. I went live, it was 2 days ago, selling soccer jerseys. Number 1, I don't know anything about soccer. Number 2, I've never seen soccer jerseys sold. I got a good deal on them. I thought with the World Cup coming up, it might do alright. But I just want to test it out. And it's one of those things where if this does well, I know that this is pretty easy to get because it's hard to sell these elsewhere, especially in the US. So, and it crushed, it just absolutely crushed. So everybody in there was super stoked on I've never seen a soccer show before. This is the first time I've seen soccer jerseys. When are you going to do these again? Do you have these teams? Do you have these teams? Prices were— I was very happy with the prices in terms of I look up on eBay and see, okay, this jersey sells for $45. And I just sold 200, or I just sold 100 of them in 2 hours for $30, you know, so that is very exciting. Our average sale price on that show was after fees, after shipping, everything, what we received was $22. And you know, you look on eBay, most of them sell for $40 to $50. So there's still After fees, after shipping. Yeah, they're getting an insane deal. But also I'm selling 90 in a 2-hour span at this price. That is—

what was your unit cost on them? $12. Yeah. Wow. So you made $10 profit per unit. Yeah. $2,000 profit for one stream. Mm-hmm. Yep.

That's incredible. Yeah. And it's— and it's— that's one of the things where, okay, now I'm going to go try to find some soccer jerseys, you know, now I'm going to try to find these unique things. But back to your original question of like, like what's the playbook on TikTok is it is, it is such a new blue ocean, like you're saying, that if you bring anything that you think is unique or that you see on there, I think you will have success with it. Obviously, there's some outliers, but if you bring something unique that you like, that you got a good price on, that you think other people would enjoy, the audience is out there for it. They didn't even know you existed until you go live. And there's no competition for it. For soccer jerseys, there's no other stream doing this stuff. People are interested in it. They're going to make that decision to shop with me. Yeah.

What about just like a playbook for winning in general? Like first principles, Whatnot or TikTok, how can someone make their first $1,000 profit live selling? Yeah, great question.

Our average sale price over all channels, everything is $16. That's after fees, after shipping everything. So what we— what hits our account is $16 a unit. And so it's very easy to get sucked into the trap of buying things for $12 to $15 a unit, thinking you can sell them for $30 a unit. And there are audiences, there are channels on TikTok and whatnot that can do that. But in general, this is an impulse, impulse purchase that you're asking a consumer to make. And so it's going to be that impulse price anywhere between $10 and $20. And so source products. Ideally, if you're able to source something that's less than $5, do it. 'Cause then you can start it at a dollar, you can get that instant engagement, and all you need is a few different bids and you're profitable. You know, if something sells for $10, you're profitable, and all that takes is 10 different bids. You know, if you break even with only a few bids. So that is what I really like, especially starting out. Go for a low buy cost and learn, learn really quickly what people like. You're gonna get an audience in, they're gonna say, hey, do you sell XYZ? Then you're like, oh, maybe I should go source XYZ. But start small, start with your buy cost being super low, and think beforehand about how you're going to fulfill it or how you're going to increase the perceived value of it, how you're going to fulfill it. Super duper important, just operationally, right? Because you can sell 100 items an hour. So now you have to fulfill, you know, if you go live for 2 hours, you got to figure out a way to fulfill 200 items and then do it again the next day and then do it again the next day and do it again the next day. So there's that piece of it. But then also the perceived value of it. If you are buying things at $2, $3 a unit, maybe you can bundle them together. Maybe you can sell 3 together and that increases the perceived value. Value. Or maybe you can, you know, hey, you can buy this item plus I'll throw this thing in for free, and it increases that perceived value. So think about those creative things to get those bids a little bit higher, and then also help people overcome that shipping objection at the beginning of the show where it's like, I don't want to pay $6 for shipping for a $3 item. Well, let's bundle 5 of them together. So now you're paying $6 in shipping for a $15 item or things like that. So overcome that shipping objection early, source low, low cost items and then figure out how you're going to fulfill it before you go live.

What tools do you use for fulfilling, like USPS flat rate boxes? Do you use tools like Pirate Ship or ShipStation or what?

Yeah. So TikTok and Whatnot both have the integrated shipping platforms. They buy the label, they have all the deals. And so you actually don't— you're not on the hook for too many of those things. You get the boxes, you just get the supplies directly and you print the label and you're good.

You ship internationally at all? Yes.

Yes. Yeah, and that is mostly kind of beholden to the platform. Like, are they allowed to shop? Then yeah, we'll ship it. It'll calculate the shipping price for them.

So yeah, what categories should people avoid at all costs? At all costs?

I think if you're planning to sell on Whatnot, I think fashion is a very difficult category to sell. It seems easy on the surface, but I think it's very difficult. Brands matter a lot. Cultural relevance matters a lot. Style matters a lot. Matters a lot. And those are things that you don't think about to begin with, and they're really hard to overcome. Avoid in general, they always say vacuums, right? Vacuums are the worst because they're, you know, they're already used and they're big and heavy to ship. But I truly think like fashion and apparel on Whatnot, it seems like, oh, everybody's doing it, so I'm going to do it. But I think if you go against the grain, if you bring a category, bring a product that's different and unique to either platform anywhere, that is what will be your path to success.

Anything else that people can do to better ensure their success that you— anything we should have covered that we didn't?

Yeah, I mean, man, great question. At the end of the day, live selling is a business model, so anybody can have success doing anything. It's just like, are you given the right principles? Are you given the right framework and just like tips and tricks from other people to kind of craft your business? Because there's people who sell sell— oh man, I love this— there's people who sell luxury bags on Whatnot. They consign it, so they're a consigner. They have the biggest audience for luxury on Whatnot. They average $25,000 an hour in sales when they're live because the audience already knows them. They know that it's authentic. They've already overcome the barriers of trust, and so they're able to sell these luxury products just one after another, one after another. And that's not something I can do. I don't know exactly how they do it, but I do know the principles that they use in order to hit that. We have this Live Selling Academy that we built alongside Shannon Jean. I think that anybody who's interested, anybody who's interested to take those first steps, I think that's gonna be game-changing for them. It's gonna help you go from 0 to 1, you know, in a month instead of 3 months, instead of 4 months. And we actually designed a promo code for them that's for specifically for your audience as well. So, uh, www.liveselling.academy/tko. And so you're gonna get 2 months for $20, which is a 2 for one. So it's normally $20 a month, you get one month for free. Yeah, beautiful.

Well, we will link to that. Where can we find you?

Is Twitter the best place? Yes, Twitter's, Twitter's probably the best place. I'm @kip_roland, K-I-P underscore R-O-L-A-N-D. And I also have a newsletter that is— we just talk about live selling in general, how to have success, how to go from zero to one as well, just in a newsletter, totally free.

We'll link to that as well.

But yeah, it's a huge opportunity, uh, they they project live selling to be a $2.5 trillion industry by 2033, which they average is 41% annual CAGR. Pretty impressive. And I think get in early, as early as you can. That's why I'm trying to just figure it out. Over the past year, I've just been testing, right?

Yeah. Kip, this is amazing. I'm fired up. I love this chat. I love this industry. Thank you for sharing all this.

Yeah, thanks for, thanks for the opportunity. You're a lot of fun to talk to.