NEBRASKA DEALER SELLING COINS ON WHATNOT

On a Sunday night in mid-May, Bjorn Bergstrom went down to the basement of his coin shop in Kearney, Neb., switched on his livestream and put a coin on the screen for thousands of strangers to bid on.

He had set out to test the limits of a rapidly growing new shopping economy built for today's social media culture.

Bergstrom, 41, spends most nights on a live-shopping app called Whatnot, where hosts like him auction collectibles in real time to an audience that simultaneously banters and bids on his goods. He would leave his webcam on for a full week, three times as long as his previous record.

He figured the more time he was there, the more new viewers would wander in. After all, his best viewership is in the night-owl hours when there is little else to pull people from their phones. And his fervent regulars might support the occasion with more purchases, too. That could help him reach his goal of selling $2 million worth of coins in a week.

These livestreams double partly as a community when people live their lives more than ever online. That is an opportunity for sellers.

"People don't want to hear an advertisement," Bergstrom said. "People want human stories they can follow."

Bergstrom is one of the platform's top U.S. coin sellers, moving roughly $8.4 million in his highest selling month this year.

Before the weeklong marathon, he and his team mapped out a schedule so the stream would never go dark while orders were packed, labeled and shipped. He and four co-hosts rotated, with Bergstrom anchoring the prime hours and bleeding into some of the others' time slots.

Bergstrom stumbled into livestreaming after a decade running a coin dealership in Kearney (population 34,000). Experimenting with Whatnot started as a way to combat a slowdown in business in 2023. Now in year four, he employs about 30 people.

To learn how to captivate an online audience, Bergstrom studied MrBeast-style creators on YouTube and TikTok. After all, no one needs to buy collectible coins.

One common event across Whatnot, and on Bergstrom's show, is what's called a sudden-death auction. He posts a coin on the screen beside a countdown clock with as few as two seconds on it, and whoever holds the high bid when it hits zero wins.

Bergstrom releases coins in unpredictable bursts so buyers stay glued to their screens.

After $125,000 in giveaways and the other costs of running the stream, Bergstrom says the marathon cleared roughly $155,000 in profit, less than in a quieter week.

Still, his channel had drawn 717 first-time buyers and moved about 20,700 items. The livestream ran 177 hours and 10 minutes in all, receiving at least 26,000 comments, including emojis, according to Resellbot estimates.

To read the complete article, see:
How One Man Makes Millions Selling Coins Live on the Internet (https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/one-man-tries-to-make-2-million-selling-coins-at-the-internets-outer-limits-ad9b6f4f)

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