The Real Rules of Selling — Things I Learned the Hard Way, Not From a Course

I started selling some of my things on Kleinanzeigen, and honestly, I got much more out of it than I expected.

At first I thought selling would be simple. You take a few photos, write a description, set a price, and wait.

It doesn’t really work like that.

Some things sell almost instantly. I listed a wedding tent — the kind you’d use for an outdoor photoshoot — and within a day someone messaged: “Is it still available?” Wedding decor went the same way. People planning a wedding are searching right now, not “eventually.”

Then there’s everything else.

I had a set of artificial flower decorations left over from my own wedding — never even used, still in perfect shape. I relisted it three or four separate times, about two months each round. Every single time, the same result: nobody wrote.

A similar story with necklaces — I bought 12 of them. In the end I only sold one. But that one sold fast, thanks to a good photo — the woman who bought it just loved it on sight.

Then there were the smart watches. Brand new, sealed, never opened. I figured electronics like that would move quickly — who doesn’t want a smart watch at a good price? That’s exactly where I went wrong, because I hadn’t checked the market first. When I finally did, it turned out there were already around 150 listings for smart watches on that same platform, ranging from the cheapest to the most expensive. I checked my competitors far too late — that should have happened before I ever ordered the product. I tried everything to sell it: relisting at different times of year, dropping the price more than once, changing the photos. Nothing worked.

I also tried selling a 3×3 tent. Listed it in autumn — zero demand, to the point where I thought I’d never sell it at all. I decided to wait until spring. Sometime around April or May, it finally sold, even though there was competition. As far as I could tell, it simply came down to the season being right for that particular product.

That’s when I started paying attention to something more important than price, description, or photos. The product itself matters.

• Who’s your target audience — does anyone actually need this, and do they need it at all?
• What time of year does this product actually get used? Selling skis in the middle of spring or summer, for example, is nearly impossible — but closer to winter, and during winter itself, it’s much easier. A bike sees demand in spring, summer, and autumn, but almost none in winter.

I also tried selling musical instruments, again wrongly assuming I’d be the only one on the market and that people would obviously buy from me. For some reason I genuinely believed the idea of selling on this platform had only occurred to me. It hadn’t — the market was already saturated with the same kind of reselling. As I understood it, for me this is really more of a side income than anything reliable: some months something sells, some months nothing does.

What About Opening My Own Store?

I even considered whether a physical store might be more profitable than an oversaturated online marketplace. But after walking around my neighborhood and stepping into a few shops, I saw pretty much the same thing playing out there. Except offline, you’re also paying for the space itself, electricity, water, internet. People walk in, look at the product — and that doesn’t mean they’ll buy it.

I noticed that quite a few shops in our town have closed, presumably because there simply weren’t enough customers, while rent and electricity are anything but cheap. Add staff wages and advertising on top of that, and it’s easy to go under — especially if the product doesn’t solve any real problem, and the town is already full of shops selling the same thing with nothing to set you apart except maybe the color.

The Rule That Changed Everything

What I learned about selling: don’t try to sell what people don’t need right now.

It doesn’t matter how cheap something is if a person has no reason to buy it. A low price isn’t always the answer. Sometimes people don’t need a discount — they simply don’t need the product, full stop.

A figurine, for example, doesn’t solve any problem — you can only admire it and occasionally dust it off. And even then, it’s not a given that people will buy it often.

So selling stopped being a question of “how do I make money from this” and became “who could actually need this right now.”

When you think only about money, you start from the product: how much can I earn, how many people can I reach. When you think about the person, you start from them instead: what are they doing right now, what problem are they solving this week, would I actually buy this myself if I were in their position.

Of course, price still matters. But the cheapest product doesn’t always win. I once tried selling decor items at a loss, and they still didn’t sell. What matters is whether the person actually needs the product — whether it solves their problem.

A grocery store, for instance, solves a problem: making sure a person doesn’t go hungry. That’s a basic human need to survive. Some products, on the other hand, don’t solve any problem at all — if anything, they just add to it.

What This Changed About How I Sell Now

And here’s something else I noticed: competition shows up everywhere, eventually. Build something that works, and sooner or later other people find their own version of it too — that’s just been true for pretty much everything I’ve tried to sell. If an idea is good enough to make money, it’s usually good enough for someone else to notice and try their own take on it.

That’s part of why I’ve stopped seeing “wait it out” as a real strategy for me. What’s worked better is treating each listing as something to keep adjusting — new photos, a different price, a better sense of who actually wants it — instead of assuming the right buyer will eventually just show up on their own.

It’s made me think about selling a little differently, too. Not as some separate skill I only use on Kleinanzeigen, but as something closer to how I already talk to people in general — how I explain what I do, how I ask for things, how I follow up. I don’t think that makes selling the same as everything else in life. But the two overlap more than I expected before I actually tried this.

If there’s one thing I’d take from all of this, it’s that how you talk about something — pushy versus thought-through — changes how people respond, on Kleinanzeigen and pretty much anywhere else too.

💬 Questions:

1. Have you ever priced something perfectly and still couldn’t sell it? What do you think was really going on?
2. Tell us about your own experience — how did you grow your business, and what did you learn along the way?