Every Whatnot seller has a theory about the best time to go live. The weekly earnings report has an answer, and it is different for every shop, because it depends on where your buyers are. The BUYER_STATE column is on every order row. Put it next to the order timestamps and you get two things at once: which states pay your bills, and what time it is there when you press Go Live.
Why buyer geography changes your Whatnot show schedule
A seller in Texas who starts at 8 PM Central is opening at 6 PM for California buyers, many of whom are still commuting, and at 9 PM for New York buyers, who have about two hours left before bed. Ending at midnight Central means 10 PM on the West Coast, right in the evening peak there, and 1 AM in the East, long after those buyers are gone.
So the question is not “what is the best time to go live on Whatnot” in general. It is “where does my revenue come from, and when are those people awake and shopping?”
In a two-year run of sample data, four states produced more than a third of all orders: California first, then Texas, New York and Florida. California alone was close to one order in six. A show timed around Central evenings was reaching that biggest state at the wrong end of its evening.
The long way: build it from the Whatnot earnings CSV
- Stack every weekly earnings CSV into one sheet. Keep only paid
ORDER_EARNINGSrows. - Pivot revenue by
BUYER_STATE(usePOST_COUPON_PRICE, the sale price). Sort descending. Note the share of the top five states. - Add a column that maps each state to a time zone: Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern. Sum revenue by zone.
- Convert
ORDER_PLACED_AT_UTCto your local time, then pivot revenue by hour of day. - Now read the two together. If 35% of revenue is Pacific and your hour chart drops off at 10 PM local, your Pacific buyers were still shopping when you signed off.
It is an hour of spreadsheet work the first time, and about twenty minutes each week after that.
The short way: the Geography and Trends tabs
MARGN.PLUS does this from the same CSV. The Geography tab draws a Sales by State map with revenue and unique buyers on hover, ranks your top ten states by revenue, and opens every order from a state when you click it. The Trends tab shows a Day × Hour heatmap and a Sales by Hour chart, both already converted to your local time.
Read the map first, then the heatmap. A shop whose top states sit two time zones away should start later, end later, or run its biggest drop in the last hour instead of the first.
What to change once you know
- Start time. Aim the first hour at your largest time zone’s evening, not yours.
- Stop time. If revenue is still climbing in the last hour, the show ended early. Extend by thirty minutes and check the heatmap next week.
- Weekend shows. Sunday evenings often outsell weekday evenings in the sample data. Your heatmap will show whether that holds for you.
- Shipping. A concentration of buyers in one region is also a shipping insight: label costs and delivery times differ, and your buyers notice.
Upload one weekly Whatnot earnings report and the map and heatmap are built for you. Compare a week before and after you move the show, and let the report settle the argument.
MARGN.PLUS is independent and not affiliated with Whatnot, Inc. Whatnot is a trademark of Whatnot, Inc.
