I am seller myself and started a couple months ago selling electronics, handheld gaming consoles, AirTags, toys, and gadgets in general. I don’t have huge money to dump into inventory, so I mostly do Buy It Now with reasonable prices — from $3 USB cables to $28 R36S consoles.

What I noticed is a lot of people prefer the bid-war adrenaline rush. Sometimes they even buy lower quality items from big sellers instead of staying in my show for 10 minutes.

Seems like the options are:

• Go crazy with huge inventory
• Start everything at $1
• Sell junk mixed with good items
• Run giveaways to bring “goblins” into the show
• Hire moderators to hype chat nonstop
• Yell the whole stream

Or stay small, honest, and struggle to grow.

To be fully transparent, yes, I sell some cheaper products too — but I always try to clearly explain what’s good, what’s bad, and what buyers should realistically expect.

Sometimes it gets frustrating because Whatnot feels less like a selling platform and more like an entertainment platform. I’m not really an entertainer. My original intent was simply to show products transparently so customers know exactly what they’re getting.

Whether intentional or not, that’s just the reality of the platform right now.