3 Minute Marketplace #2 | Week of 21 September 2026
A big week in live selling, a significant Amazon pricing update, and a deadline coming up fast for sellers who want to capitalise on one of the biggest shopping events of the autumn. Here is everything that landed this week and why it matters.
Whatnot Cuts Fees as the Live Selling Battle With eBay Heats Up
Whatnot has introduced a tiered commission structure that automatically reduces rates as your sales grow, reaching as low as 3 percent for the highest volume sellers. Commission is charged on the item price only, not the full transaction value including shipping and taxes, which makes the effective rate lower than many competing platforms even at the standard tier.
The timing is not a coincidence. eBay Live is expanding in the UK and Whatnot has just made the commercial case for building volume on their platform significantly more compelling. The more you sell, the cheaper it gets, which creates a growing incentive to stay and build rather than split attention across channels.
Whatnot Launches Live Analytics and New Seller Tools
Also from Whatnot this week, a significant update to the seller toolset. The new Live Analytics panel gives sellers real-time metrics including sales per hour, orders per hour, average watch time, and audience insights showing how much previous buyers have spent and how the audience splits between new and returning viewers.
Pre-bid outbid notifications are also live, alerting buyers when they are outbid before a show starts and driving them back to place a higher bid before the show goes live. Since the feature launched, pre-show pre-bids are up seven percent. For sellers investing time in detailed listings ahead of a show, this is a more direct commercial payoff than it has ever been.
Amazon Tightens Reference Pricing Rules
Amazon has updated how it validates Was Price and RRP across its stores, and the changes are significant for sellers who rely on reference pricing to drive conversions. An RRP now needs to be substantiated either by sales at that price as the Featured Offer on Amazon, or by verifiable pricing at another retailer recently. RRPs that cannot be supported by either will be suppressed from listings entirely.
Was Price calculation has also changed. If more than half of a product’s 90-day price history is below the non-promotional median, Amazon will now include promotional sales in the calculation, making it harder to maintain a high Was Price while running frequent or deep discounts. The UK changes are already in effect. Germany and other EU stores follow in September.
Get Ready for Prime Big Deal Days Even If You Are Not Running Deals
Prime Big Deal Days returns on 6 and 7 October 2026, and the deadline to prepare is closer than it looks. Even sellers who are not running official deals will feel the halo effect of increased buyer traffic across the platform, and the sellers who are well prepared will capture a meaningful share of that traffic while those who are not will miss it entirely.
Review your listings, check your stock levels, and if you run advertising consider increasing your campaign budgets for the event window. The two weeks before 6 October are the most valuable time to make changes that will be indexed and active when the traffic arrives.
Link Lowdown
A collection of links to stuff I think are worth sharing.
Snapstall — Snap a photo of an item and get two ready-to-post listing packs back, one tuned for eBay and one for Etsy, each with marketplace-specific titles, tags, descriptions, and a suggested price with the reasoning behind it. Useful if you are listing volume and want a faster starting point than writing from scratch.
Digital Product Quality Check App for Etsy — A tool for Etsy sellers to audit the quality of their digital product listings before they go live. Worth a look if you sell digital downloads and want a structured way to catch issues before buyers do.
We will be back next week with more news, updates, and practical guidance for marketplace sellers.