- Live selling enables entrepreneurs to earn six-figure sales with minimal startup costs.
- Success in live selling relies on building community and engaging viewers during livestreams.
- Extroverted personalities and interactive shows boost sales on platforms like Whatnot and Palmstreet.
It doesn't take much money, equipment, or even expertise to start live selling — an increasingly popular strategy that e-commerce entrepreneurs are using to move product.
It combines livestreaming and e-commerce. Sellers host live "shows" and chat with their audience in real time, while viewers can buy directly from the stream without leaving the app.
"I didn't even know how to run an auction," said Clinton Benninghoff, who started streaming on the auction-based live shopping platform Whatnot in 2024. During his first show, which he set up on his iPhone and hosted from the brick-and-mortar golf shop he runs, "everybody in my stream was actually telling me how to stream."
Less than a year later, in February 2025, he sold over $100,000 worth of golf equipment in a single, six-hour live show.
Casey Wehr, who works full-time in private equity, started selling sports cards on Whatnot with his 10- and 11-year-old sons after they pitched him the idea over dinner one night. Within a week of agreeing to try out the side hustle, they were up and running from Wehr's home office.
"Everything doesn't have to be perfect," he said. Their approach was, "let's just turn it on and see how it goes and then adjust from there."
Over the last two years, their store, Krunk Cards, has generated millions in sales, and Wehr has hired a team of five to source inventory and offer more live shows, which last anywhere from four to seven hours.
Casey Wehr started streaming on Whatnot with his two sons, who discovered the platform and convinced him to use it to sell sports cards.
Croutesy of Casey Wehr
The key to live selling: Connecting with your audience
A good product can only get you so far in the live selling space.
Whatnot is as much "an entertainment app," said Benninghoff, as it is a marketplace. To succeed, it helps to be extroverted. After all, you're spending hours at a time talking to potential customers.
"You're building this community of people that are following a personality," he said. "To have a big viewership and a big community, you've got to engage with those people. You've got to make them feel like they are family — not just a person buying items from you."
For Benninghoff, who's also a part-time pastor, setting up a camera and talking to strangers came naturally.
"I'm very outgoing. I love to talk to people and meet new people," he said. It was the juggling of multiple pieces that took some getting used to. "The biggest learning curve was how to run an auction and stay engaged with people that are asking questions in the chat while holding up the item at the right angle and just doing it all at the same time."
Harry Luu, a mathematician who quit his day job to cultivate and sell rare plants on a live selling platform called Palmstreet, agrees that, in the live selling space, it helps to be a bit of a performer.
He had experience managing large, virtual lectures in his previous job at The Berkeley Math Circle, "so just talking to a void in the camera and finding ways for engagement through a screen was baked into my profession and baked into my livelihood at the time," he said.
As Wehr puts it, "building excitement throughout the show only increases your odds of success."
He and his kids build excitement by doing live "sealed wax openings," which is when someone buys an unopened box or case of cards, and they open it on camera in real time.
"What's fun about the sealed wax is that it's a community event," he said. "It's fun to open product just when you go buy it from the store and take it home, but there's a whole other level of excitement opening a box with 100 other people in the room."
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