Whatnot is a live auction app. You go on camera, hold up a putter, and people bid on it in a chat window. Shows run from twenty minutes to several hours, and the top golf sellers do hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on it. One golf seller in Texas passed two million dollars in sales in his first year on the app.
This guide is the version for golf. It covers getting approved, what sells, your first show, what Whatnot charges, shipping, selling without going live, and where to get inventory. We work with Canu, a wholesale network built for live sellers, so the inventory section leans on what we see from sellers every day.
What you need to sell on Whatnot
Anyone can buy on Whatnot. Selling takes an application.
- You must be 18 or older.
- A government ID, for identity verification.
- A payment method on file.
- Links to your social accounts or other selling profiles. If you already sell on eBay, TikTok or Instagram, link them.
- A few photos of the inventory you plan to sell.
Approval usually takes a few days and can take two weeks. Sellers with an existing audience or a clear category get through faster. If you have never sold anywhere, take decent photos of real inventory and write one honest sentence about what your shows will be. "Used putters and new golf accessories, two shows a week" is enough.
How do you sell on Whatnot, step by step
- Apply in the app under Sell. Fill in the form above.
- Pick your category. Golf lives under Sports. Whatnot shows your stream to people who already watch that category, which is why a first show can get viewers with zero followers.
- Build inventory. Twenty to fifty items for a first show. More on what to bring below.
- Schedule a show in the Seller Hub: date, time, category, a thumbnail, and whether items run as auctions, buy-now, or both.
- Go live. Describe each item, hold it to the camera, and run the auction. Fifteen to twenty second auctions keep the pace up. A bid in the last seconds extends the clock.
- Ship within a day or two. Whatnot generates the labels. Fast shipping is the fastest way to build repeat buyers.
- Get paid. Whatnot pays out after delivery is confirmed, minus its fees.
What sells in golf on Whatnot
Golf on Whatnot splits into two kinds of product, and the best sellers run both in one show.
Used clubs are the headline. Putters first, then wedges and drivers from the last five years. Scotty Cameron, LAB, Odyssey, TaylorMade, Callaway, Titleist. Viewers will sit through an hour to bid on a clean putter, and the bidding war is the entertainment. Vintage and oddball clubs sell too, if you can tell the story.
New apparel and accessories are the volume. Hats, polos, balls, gloves, towels, grips, ball markers, headcovers. They sell at buy-now prices between auctions, they ship flat, and one wholesale order covers weeks of shows. This is the half of the show that makes the margin predictable.
A show that works: open with a mid-value club to get bids moving, run new hats and balls at buy-now while the chat warms up, bring out the best putter when the room is fullest, close with a few giveaways and the next show date.
What does not work: used apparel below the premium brands, and anything you cannot describe honestly on camera. Golf buyers know the gear.
The tactics that make a golf show work
Here is what we see from the sellers who do well, show after show.
Start at a dollar and build the frenzy. The best sellers do not open a hat at thirty dollars. They open it at one. The chat lights up, ten people bid, and the price climbs on its own. We have watched sellers with thirty or forty viewers take a hat that retails for thirty-five dollars to fifty this way. Bought at wholesale, that is a serious margin on one hat, and the room is now awake for the next item.
Clubs bring the crowd. Small goods make the money. A used driver or putter is often a loss leader. It gets the room full, because people will wait around for a club. The profit comes from what sells between the clubs: hats, polos, towels, gloves, balls, grips. Ten viewers who each buy a hat is a better night than one who buys a putter.
Expect to lose on some items. Your viewers are there for a deal too. Across a show, items go for about two thirds of retail on average. Some go higher in a bidding war, some go lower, and a few go for less than you paid. That is normal. The night is profitable as a whole, not item by item.
Which is why wholesale is not optional. If you are buying at retail or close to it and selling at two thirds of retail, you are paying to entertain people. Buying at wholesale is what lets you give the room a real deal and still make money on the night. It is the one structural advantage in this business.
The show is the product. As live selling grows, having the best inventory stops being enough. The sellers who keep an audience run a clean, fast, entertaining show: good light, short auctions, names in the chat, a reason to come back Thursday. Treat it like a show you would watch.
Your first show
- Twenty to fifty items. Enough to fill an hour, not so many that you rush.
- A phone stand, a plain background, good light. A ring light is plenty.
- Say the starting bid out loud and keep auctions short.
- Read the chat and use names. Live selling is a conversation with a store attached.
- Have the next show scheduled before this one ends, and say when it is.
- Ship the next morning.
Can you sell on Whatnot without going live?
Yes. Whatnot has a marketplace where you list items at a fixed price without a show, and buyers browse them like any shop. It is a reasonable way to move slow inventory and to be found by search inside the app.
The live show is still where the money is. The marketplace gets a fraction of the attention, and golf buyers come to Whatnot for the auction. Use listings to clear stock between shows, not instead of them.
How much does it cost to sell on Whatnot?
Whatnot takes a commission on each sale plus a payment processing fee. At the time of writing the commission is around eight percent in the United States, with processing on top, and it varies by category and by country. Check Whatnot's seller fee page for the current numbers before you set starting bids.
Beyond fees, your costs are inventory, shipping supplies, and the Whatnot labels, which are charged to you and usually passed to the buyer at checkout. There is no listing fee and no monthly fee.
How much do Whatnot sellers make?
The range is enormous and the app does not publish averages. Part-time golf sellers running one show a week often clear a few hundred dollars a show after fees and inventory. Full-time sellers with a following run several shows a week and do that every night. The two-million-dollar golf seller mentioned above runs it as a business with staff.
The number that matters is margin per item, and that is set by where your inventory comes from. A putter bought for twelve dollars and sold for sixty is a great margin that took two hours to find. A hat bought at wholesale, opened at a dollar and bid up past retail took thirty seconds to reorder. You want both, and you want the second one every week.
Where to get inventory
This is the question that decides whether you can keep going live, so it has its own guide: where Whatnot sellers get their inventory.
The short version for golf:
- Used clubs come from thrift stores, estate sales, trade-ins and lots. Plan on real hours each week.
- New hats, apparel, balls and accessories come from brands at wholesale. That used to mean a brick-and-mortar account. Canu opens it to live sellers: brands list their wholesale catalog, you apply once, get approved, and buy direct from brands like Primo, Hinotori Golf and Kabra Golf. The brand ships to you, you sell it live. Every product is open to browse on the Canu catalog, and wholesale prices show once you enter an email.
Whatnot golf, in one paragraph
Get approved with real photos and a clear plan. Bring used putters for the bidding and new accessories for the margin. Keep auctions short, ship fast, and schedule the next show before this one ends. Source clubs from the hunt and everything else from wholesale, so you always know what Thursday's show looks like on Monday.
When you are ready to stock the new side of your show, browse the catalog and apply for seller access. Approval takes about a day.