Stale Vinted listings: which to relist and what to fix first

Every wardrobe ends up split in two. Some listings sell within days, and the rest sit there for weeks without so much as a message. The usual advice is to relist the lot. It rarely works, because those stuck listings are not all stuck for the same reason. Some are no longer being seen by anyone. Others are seen every day and simply fail to persuade.

Relisting only fixes one of those problems, which is a lack of visibility. This article is about the sorting you do first: which listings are worth relisting, which need something else entirely, what to put right beforehand, and where to start if you have one evening to give it. Vinted does not publish how it orders listings, so everything here starts from what you can read for yourself on each one.

A stale Vinted listing is not always short of visibility

Three things have to happen, in order, for an item to sell. A buyer has to come across the listing. They have to stop on it. Then they have to make up their mind. When no sale comes, the chain has broken at one of those three points, and the cure depends on which.

Vinted gives you enough to work it out. Each listing shows its number of views and its number of favourites, and your inbox holds the questions and offers you have had. Those three clues do not tell the whole story, but they are enough to put any listing into one of four groups.

Four kinds of listing that are not selling

Hardly any views: it is no longer being shown

The view count has barely moved in ages. The listing is still there, but it has slipped a long way behind newer arrivals in its category. This is the one group where relisting is the right answer, with a single condition: check it is filed properly first. A jumper in the wrong category, a misspelt brand or a missing size keeps it out of filtered searches, and re-uploading it with the same mistake sends it straight back to the same place.

Views but no favourites: seen, and passed over

Visibility is not the issue here. People are turning up and carrying on. What they saw comes down to three things: the cover photo, the first few words of the title and the price. One of the three sent them on their way. Relist this one unchanged and you show the same thumbnail to a new set of people who will do exactly the same. It needs fixing first, and the next section says where to begin.

Favourites but no sale: liked, and held back by something

Several people have saved the item and nobody has bought it. This is the most promising group, and the one where good intentions do the most harm. Those favourites are buyers in two minds. Usually the price is stopping them; sometimes it is a missing detail, such as a measurement, the exact condition, or a flaw the photo hints at without showing. Whatever you do, do not delete this listing to put it up again. You would be wiping the list of people closest to buying.

Messages that go nowhere: the listing leaves a question open

Read back through your conversations. If three people asked for the pit-to-pit measurement, it should have been in the description, and everyone who wondered without asking has gone. If the offers you receive all hover around one figure, well under yours, they are telling you what buyers expect to pay. Either way the answer lies in the listing, not in its upload date.

What to change before you relist

A relist puts the listing in front of fresh eyes. They might as well find a better offer. Four things can be checked in a few minutes per listing.

The cover photo

It is the picture buyers see in the feed, thumbnail-sized, squeezed between two others. If it is dim, wonky or lost against a busy background, nobody ever reads the rest. You can retake it yourself with our tips on photographing clothes with no equipment. Or you can hand it to Pikmatic’s photo enhancement, which works on the cover photo alone: it swaps the busy background and the poor light for a studio-style shot, with the item squared up in the frame. The first three photos cost nothing; beyond that it is sold in packs. Before and after are shown together before you choose, and you are free to stick with your own shot.

The title and the fields

A useful title says what the item is, the brand, the size and what sets it apart. “Lovely jumper” matches no search at all; “Grey merino roll-neck jumper, size 12” matches several. Then fill in every field on offer, colour, material and condition included, because those are what bring the listing up when a buyer filters. To go further, see how to go about choosing the words for a Vinted title starting from what buyers actually type.

The price

Search for your own item the way a buyer would, by brand, size and condition, and look at what similar listings are asking. If yours is the dearest on the page for no reason the photo makes obvious, there is your explanation. Picture a jacket at £35 sitting among near-identical ones at £22: it is not short of visibility, it is short of reasons. Either supply them (new with tags, a sought-after style, spotless condition) or come into line.

The description

Add what your messages kept asking for: measurements taken flat, the fabric as printed on the care label, any flaws shown and named. A full description does not bring more people in. It stops you losing the ones already there.

Bump, edit or relist: which one for which listing

There are three things you can do to a listing that has stalled, and they are not interchangeable. Each answers one of the groups above.

• Edit the listing. You fix the photo, title, price or description, and the listing stays the same one, views and favourites included. It is the starting point for anything that is seen but not persuading. Nothing establishes that an edit moves a listing up the results, so do it for what it fixes.
• Pay for a Bump. Vinted’s paid option shows the listing to more people for a set period without replacing it. It suits an item that already has favourites and whose offer is right, especially a valuable one. Across a whole wardrobe the cost soon mounts up.
• Relist it. You delete the listing and upload the item again straight away. It starts over as a new arrival, minus its views and favourites. That is the move for listings nobody sees any more and that have nothing to lose.

Vinted does not offer a free Bump. Relisting costs no money, but it does cost favourites and time. Our full guide to reposting on Vinted weighs up each of those costs and walks through the steps, from saving your photos to checking the new listing.

Where to start: the order for one evening of sorting

With a few dozen listings, the order matters as much as the action. This one runs from the least drastic step to the most.

• Set aside anything in progress. A reserved item, a pending offer or an open conversation is left well alone.
• Deal with listings that have favourites. Review the price, fill out the description, and keep the listing where it is.
• Fix listings with views and no favourites. Cover photo first, title second, price last.
• Check listings with no views. Category, brand, size, condition: once the fields are right, they are ready to relist.
• Relist in small groups. Pieces coming into season go first, and the rest follow over the next few days.

Two things decide the timing. One is the season: a coat is searched for once the heating goes on, a swimsuit when the holiday is booked. The other is the time of day, since a brand-new listing does best if it lands while buyers are on their phones. We have a whole article on the days and hours worth posting on Vinted, and its windows hold just as well for an item you are uploading a second time.

Listings better left out of a relist

Sorting is also about ruling things out. Three sorts of listing come off the list.

First, those with several favourites, for the reason already given. Second, those you have relisted twice already with nothing to show for it: a third go will end the same way, and it is the offer that needs rebuilding from scratch. Third, those where you know, if you are honest, that the price no longer matches the state of the item. No upload date will sell bobbled knitwear at nearly-new money.

Those listings call for a wider look than visibility alone. Our article on why your Vinted items are not selling takes the other possible causes one after another.

Check again a week later

Go back to your notes after a week and compare. A fixed listing that picks up favourites shows you what was missing, and the same fix probably applies to its neighbours. A relisted item whose views climb again confirms it had stopped being shown. A listing that has moved on neither count has told you something as well: neither visibility nor presentation was the problem, which leaves the price, or demand for that sort of piece.

Keep the record from one round to the next. After two or three rounds you will know which parts of your wardrobe respond to a relist and which only shift after a price drop. Nobody can hand you that knowledge from outside, because it depends on what you sell and who buys from you.

When sorting takes longer than selling

With twenty-odd listings, all of this is manageable by hand. Beyond that, the part that wears you down never changes: retyping, one by one, the listings to be re-uploaded. Pikmatic takes that part on. A repost copies across the fields and photos of the existing listing and runs from your own browser. It is included on every plan, with a volume that depends on the plan you choose and is set out on the pricing page. The sorting stays with you: no tool can tell on your behalf whether a listing is short of views or short of reasons to buy.

Before you sign up to anything, read what an automatic repost does and does not do. And before you run whole batches, find out how to automate your reposts at a careful pace, so that the time you save is not paid for by your account.

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