As an online seller and a small business owner you have probably discovered that there simply aren’t enough hours in a day to get all of your work done… let alone get a bath… cook dinner? LOL, "there’s leftovers in the fridge or we can Uber Eats something".

You are not alone! Today I am going to share with you how to get the most listed so let’s get right into it!

Let’s say this is the awesome assortment of stuff you got in that needs to get listed:

The very first key to listing as much as possible is to batch list. Separate your items into Like-Kind:

When you batch list you will be able to essentially reuse the exact same listing over and over. For example:

All three of the listings shown above are mens long sleeve button-up dress shirts. They are all Liquidations and they are all from M*CYS. This makes listing these three items very simple because all of the information in the listing can be copied for each of these three listings, the only variable is the brand and the quantity. The same applies to these wallets:

And so on.

The next key to getting as much listed as possible in one day is to batch photograph. If you are photographing small items, you can take your photos much faster by putting multiple out on a table instead of photographing one individual item at a time:

The longer the table, the more you can quickly click, click, click away at photos. If you like to use backdrops this will allow you to stage multiple scenes (Read our blog post 3 Cheap and Easy Photography Backdrop Ideas for eCommerce):

At our warehouse we have approximately 75 FEET of table tops! We built them out of pallets:

Want to see our photo room? Watch our Warehouse Tour Video.

Obviously this isn’t realistic for a home, but if you’re working out of your basement, pick up a cheap 8 foot table (in some cases it is even cheaper to buy two 6-foot tables, which gives you even more space!).

If you’re working out of your living room, do you have space to upgrade your kitchen table to a bigger size? If you work at your house, during the warm months you can easily set up a couple sawhorses outside with a sheet of cheap particle board over it to create a big makeshift table. Throw a table covering on it and your photos will come out amazing in the natural sunlight. I have never seen photos look nicer than in real daylight.  (Check out our post: 8 Cheap & Easy Table Covering Ideas for Online Sellers)

After you get all of your photos for the batch list, create a “skeleton listing” (the basic details that are going to apply to all of the batch), such as Male / Female, Size, Long Sleeve, Brand or whatever other details are needed, like “Ships from Ohio!” or “Ships Next Day” or whatever. If the site you sell on allows you to “duplicate listing” then you’re all set to begin listing. If you sell on a site that makes you create every listing from scratch, save your skeleton listing as a Microsoft Word document (Docs.Google.com is also awesome and FREE. If all else fails, use Notepad). Now all you have to do is copy the skeleton listing, fill in the details that have changed (such as size or color). This will help you fire off listings way faster! Don’t ever type every listing from scratch!

Next, after you do your listing, shelve all of the items from the batch at the same time. Never shelve each listing AS you list it. You are wasting so much time walking back and forth! If you have to walk, even across the room, to get to the shelves, get yourself a basket, a rolling cart or anything that will allow you to bring all of it from “point A” to “point B” in one trip instead of 5. Being that I have suffered life long injury to doing things improperly, I strongly encourage you to use a cart instead of something you have to lift and carry. Amazon has super cheap, slim rolling carts that won’t take up much room in your home:

Rolling Carts can also be used to pull your orders! We will discuss this more later this week.

Hopefully you are using Shelf Locations to inventory your merchandise (If you’re not using shelf locations, read our 3 part series! ( Part 1: Shelving Basics Part 2: How to Label Inventory / Assigning SKUs Part 3: How to Assign Shelf Locations) When you bring your merchandise on your rolling cart to the shelving, use a notepad to write down the shelf location of each item. Once you have everything shelved and all locations noted, go back to your computer and enter all of the shelf locations.  Be sure to read Part 2 of this series, How to Ship the Most in One Day because we go into a lot more details.

And the final key is to designate specific time blocks to batch photographing and listing. Our specific schedule is photography (and videos) occur daily from 8am - 10am. Creating the listing is from 10am - 12pm. Shelving the merchandise is 12pm - 2pm. If I was working alone I would have shipped from 5:30am - 8am and again from 2pm until it’s done. But, thankfully I have staff that is able to ship from 7am until 3pm daily. If you need to respond to customer inquiries, set aside one or two specific times to do this. If you are stopping what you are doing every time there is an inquiry to rush a reply back to the buyer you are going to end up getting less listed because you will end up needing to stop to ship. Instead, reply to inquiries immediately after your listing is done, but before you start shipping and again after shipping is completed. Once you reach the point that you can hire staff to respond to inquires right away, GREAT! But until then, wisely designate time blocks for “Customer Service”. I guarantee you that a customer is completely fine with waiting 6 hours for a reply.

IN CLOSING

If you follow this advice you will be able to get at LEAST 20 items listed per day. Once you get used to the set schedule you can learn How to Take Your eCommerce Business to the Next Level.  But until then, read Part 2 of this series, How to Ship the Most in One Day