Wk5: “Crosslister” – Update 1

November 5, 2026

At least it connects

The first thing Crosslister pulled in from my eBay account was Temple of Modren, a gaming module I got through a Kickstarter from my former coworker Mark Tassin. I wish I had more friends who played games this geeky. Preferably, with me.

My eBay listing had five photos and a description. Crosslister showed me a pixelated thumbnail and a few fields that technically covered my original ask. The one time I give it a nugget and hope for a fully working solution in the first build. Welp. Not this time.

That was my miss in discovery. We’d agreed to import my eBay listings without agreeing on what data the import had to bring over. In hindsight, keeping the first pass small may have helped. I got my developer account, connected my real seller account, and had a live app I could almost test.

The cron job had plenty to do

When I first clicked Import eBay, Crosslister said the import had started. What it had actually done was put a job in a queue. The job was waiting for cron, which is how I run all my automations (for now). I suspect there’s a better way. I was about to collect some evidence.

One of my favorite movies as a kid was Conan the Barbarian. It had Arnold, swords, giant snakes, damsels in distress, and Crom! Everything a teenager in the 80s would want in a film really. I am wondering maybe Arnie said “cron” the whole time…

Once crom, I mean cron was running (I think), it had plenty to do. Find my active eBay listings. Go back for photos, descriptions, and the rest of the listing details. Check for new orders. Pull the financial activity so I could eventually see what I’d made. All reasonable jobs on their own. Together, with nobody deciding who went first or checking whether the same job was already in line, it was a free-for-all. The finance checks were piling up faster than they could finish, and the inventory import I was sitting there waiting for had to get in line behind them.

The queue needed a couple of basic rules. If a finance check is already waiting or running, one is enough. If I click Import eBay and sit there looking at the screen, maybe let that job go first. After a few changes here and a few there, we got all 34 products in. The import updated the existing records without creating a single duplicate.

And I’m still getting those damn cron emails. I thought I turned them off. I’m going to try that again. I can’t believe we used to run entire workflows by emailing each other processing updates. I guess Slack is the new email. Progress?

I want to fix the listing where I’m looking at it

I know some of my listings could be better. If I’m looking at one in Crosslister and see a title I want to clean up or a category I want to change, I want to do it right there. My bar for the editor is simple. If eBay lets me change it, I want to be able to change it in Crosslister. The whole reason I’m building this is to cut down on the number of systems I have to touch.

The work starts before eBay

After a thrift run, I sit down with my loot and the paper receipt. I scribble down which item goes with each line because, on a good day, the receipt tells me the department and the price. Once I’ve cleaned everything up and peeled off the price stickers for photos, trying to work backward from the receipt is a fool’s errand.

I want to do that on my phone while everything is still in front of me. Record where and when I bought each item and what I paid. Scan a barcode, when there is one, to get a head start on the listing. Today I often search eBay, filter to recently sold items, find the closest match, and click Sell one like this. Then I clean up the title and description and add my usual notes about checking the photos for condition and sending offers. Finding a good match saves me work, and I still get to decide what the listing says.

My spreadsheet is also how I figure out whether any of this was worth doing. I’ve gravitated toward smaller items because they’re easier to ship. I still find terrific vintage board games, but if I have to make a box and guess what it’ll cost to send, the margin can disappear fast. Even with small games, I’ve backed off when I can’t see about $10 in profit per item. Sometimes I buy something truly special anyway because I want it to go to someone who’ll really appreciate it. I’d just like to know when I’m doing that.

Sherry would like her time back

Sherry has more than 400 Poshmark listings. The first work she’d hand over is the sharing, liking, and following back she feels pressure to keep up with to stay visible. Those actions are easy to count. It’s harder to point to what another round of them did for her business. Time is money, and she has better uses for hers.

Where I landed so far

Crosslister is live, my eBay account is connected, and real listings are coming in. I still have to test the sourcing workflow with my own inventory. Tomorrow I’m planning to connect Amazon. I have a few things listed there that aren’t on eBay, and a lot more the other way around. That gives me a real catalog to compare as soon as I get connected.

The test I set at kickoff still stands. I want to sell something on a marketplace where I wouldn’t otherwise have listed it, then see Crosslister take down the other listing so I can only sell it once.

I better make something cheap to get that sale!