If you already sell — on Instagram, at a market, on another marketplace, out of a shop — you are not starting from zero. You have the two things that are hard to get: stock and people who already buy from you.
Do not close anything to do this. Run Metzee alongside what you have until it is earning, then decide.
Week one — get sellable
1. Open the store
Six screens, about five minutes. How to open a store.
Use the name people already know you by, because your store name is also your display name across Metzee. If your Instagram says one thing, say the same thing here.
2. Send the documents
Do this on day one, because one of them gates selling entirely: you need a GSTIN or an ECO enrolment number before your store can sell at all. The enrolment number is free to get.
Everything else — FSSAI if you sell food, business registration if you sell as a business — is narrower. How to get verified.
This is the step that quietly costs people a week, because it is the only one with someone else's timeline in it.
3. Set up delivery and payouts
- Your zones and rates: delivery zones, delivery prices
- Pickup, if people can reach you: how to offer pickup
- Your dispatch deadline, honestly: dispatch deadline
- Bank account: setting up payouts
4. Bring the stock across
If you have a spreadsheet or can export one, import it: Title and Price are the only required columns, 200 rows at a time, and everything lands in Drafts so nothing goes on sale by accident. How to import a lot of listings.
Make a template first for the settings a spreadsheet cannot carry — delivery option, format, timer — or you will open fifty drafts to set the same thing fifty times.
Your existing photos mostly transfer. Photos you shot for Instagram are usually square and well lit, which is most of the work. Check the first photo of each item reads as a small square, since that is the thumbnail. How to photograph an item.
Week two — start selling
5. Put up twenty items, not two hundred
Enough to look like a shop, few enough to fix after you learn what sells. Price them as you price them now. Do not discount to "launch" — you have no idea yet what this room pays, and a cheap first week teaches buyers to wait.
6. Bring your own people
This is the part that makes moving work, and the part most sellers skip because it feels like asking a favour.
Share your storegives you the link and aQR code— for the market stall, the parcel insert, the shop counter.- Post it where your customers already are. One post saying "I'm on Metzee now, live every Friday at 8" outperforms any amount of paid promotion in week one.
- Make a followers-only discount code. It gives people a concrete reason to follow, and followers are who turn up to your shows. How to run an offer.
A hundred people who already trust you are worth more than a thousand strangers. Paid promotion is for after that is spent. How to boost a show.
7. Do a rehearsal, then one real show
Start a rehearsal sells nothing and shows you everything. Then schedule one show, announce it to the people you just brought over, and run it even if six people come.
How to schedule a show, how to go live.
What transfers and what does not
Transfers: your stock, your photos, your pricing judgement, your packing habits, your customers if you ask them, and your reputation as something you can point at.
Does not transfer: your ratings and reviews. You start at Starter with no reviews here, whatever you have elsewhere. There is no way around that and it is the same for everyone — the first ten sales are the price of entry. How to get verified explains what the tiers unlock as you go.
If you are moving from a physical shop
Two things are worth knowing:
- Pickup is your advantage. You already have a place people come to, and collection costs you no courier and no packaging. How to offer pickup.
- Your daily capacity is real. If you are serving the counter and packing parcels from the same pair of hands, set the cap honestly rather than discovering it. How to cap your day.
Questions people ask
Should I list everything I have?
No. Twenty items, learn, then widen. A shop of two hundred items with nothing selling tells you nothing about which two hundred to have.
Can I sell the same stock in two places at once?
Yes, but keep stock numbers current — overselling and then cancelling is the one thing that damages a new store fastest, because cancellations are measured.
Do I need to go live?
No. Buy-now listings work on their own. But shows are what Metzee is for, and a store that never goes live is leaving most of the room unused.
How long before it earns?
Realistically a month to the first steady week, and the variable that moves it most is step 6 — whether you brought your own people.
What if it does not work?
You have lost some listing time and nothing else, because you did not close anything. That is the reason to run both.
More: how to sell on Metzee, your first live show, what it costs to sell.