Introduction
This is my complete guide to Depop Bot (a.k.a. Depop Sales Bot) in 2020.
In this comprehensive guide I’ll cover:
- What is a Depop Bot
- How does a Depop Bot actually work
- Do you need a Depop Bot
- The benefits you get
- Controversy surrounding Depop Bots
- Limitations of a bot
- Risks and concerns
So if you’re interested in using a Depop Bot, you'll love this guide.
Let’s get started.
What is a Depop Bot
A Depop Bot is a software that automates your daily tasks on Depop. The bot can be a desktop software running on Mac/Windows/Linux or a Chrome Extension on your browser, just like Debob - Your Smart Depop Assistant.
A Depop Bot helps you refresh your listings, send mass messages, follow people, unfollow people, like items, unlike items, etc.
Some bots are single-functional, such as depop refresh bot, depop follow bot, depop unfollow bot, depop like bot, etc. On the other hand, some bots are multi-functional which combines several single-functional bots.
No matter how many features a Depop Sales Bot has, its ultimate goal is to save you time and increase your sales on Depop.
A serious seller can easily list hundreds of items in her/his store, and it takes a lot of time to keep refreshing them. Similarly, sending mass messages, follow/unfollow people or liking/unliking items take tons of time too.
Yes, they can increase your engagement on Depop which helps you make more sales. However, they are repetitive and boring tasks that not only take time, but also drain your enthusiasm to sell items on Depop.
Wherever there is repetitive work, there will be robots (or bots)! This is so true that you can easily find plenty of bots out there.
As for Depop, you can also find quite a few bots. Some are chrome extension, while others are desktop softwares. Some have more features, while others have less. Some are lightweight and elegant, while others are slow and buggy.
Debob is one of the most competitive app on the market when it comes to Depop Bots. Yes, I'm biased, but you're not. Try it out and you'll see if what I'm saying is true or not.
How does a Depop Bot actually work
There is no magic, just some code!
Let's say the bot you're using is a chrome extension, then it's just a lightweight app made up of some HTML, Javascript and CSS.
When you hit the Refresh All Listings button, the app will send a series of HTTP requests to the depop server, with some delay between each request to avoid overwhelming depop server.
In fact, when you manually refresh an item, the underlying HTTP request is exactly the same as the one made by a Depop Bot. The only difference is that manually refreshing 100 items requires you to click the button 100 times, whereas using a bot requires only 1 or even 0 click.
For repetitive tasks, humans will never beat bots.
Do you need a Depop Bot
Firstly, let me make it clear, not all depop sellers need bots.
Many Depop users just want to sell the used clothes in their closet. There aren't a lot of clothes, so refreshing items won't take much of your time. And your goal is not making lots of money by selling your used items. In this case, you don't need a bot at all.
However, if you are a full-time depop seller, or plan to become one, you have a lot more work to do.
You need to source your items, take great pictures of them, write accurate and succinct descriptions for them. Uploading listings to your store is just the beginning, you need to stay active on depop, keep refreshing your items, increase your engagement and do a lot of other works.
You never have enough time! So, Depop Bots are created.
If you are a serious depop seller, I definitely recommend you to use a bot. At least, you should try it out.
The benefits you get
A depop bot will provide the following 3 major benefits to you.
Save you time
The most important benefit of a Depop Sales Bot is that it saves you tons of time by doing the repetitive tasks for you.
If I can only list one reason for using a Depop bot, it would be this one. Because essentially, time is the only asset you have.
If you have a choice, you certainly don't want to spend a lot of time clicking your mouse or tapping on your phone to do repetitive and boring tasks.
Depop Bots give you that choice.
Increase your sales
The second benefit of using a bot is that it will increase your sales.
As this article Promote like a pro states:
Great photography + accurate and succinct descriptions + constantly active on Depop = improved chance of selling.
Your engagement on depop is an important factor in increasing your sales.
So you need to keep listing new items (same as refreshing existing items), keep following others so that they follow you back, keep liking others' items so that they like your items too, etc.
All of these activities can increase your sales, and they can all be done by a Depop Bot.
Increase your followers
More followers lead to more sales. Because every time you list a new item, it will appear in more people's feed.
A bot helps you gain thousands of followers in just one or two days by keeping following others. It is that simple. People tend to follow you back if you follow them.
And guess what? According to the Matthew Effect, the more followers you have, the more followers you are likely to get!
Controversy surrounding Depop Bots
There's always a lot of controversy when it comes to Depop Bots.
Are sellers allowed to use bots? Well, it’s not illegal, but it's not hard to figure out that Depop never wants you to use a bot.
While Depop's Community Guidelines don't state that users can't use a bot, its Privacy Policy says:
Although the Depop API is publicly available, we do not permit third parties to use this for any purpose at present.
Yeah, you got it. A Depop Sales Bot is using exactly the Depop API.
Almost all big platforms have a follow limit or rate limit to prevent bots from mass following people, mass unfollowing people or batch processing other tasks.
For example, instagram has a follow limit of 7,500 people (depop has a follow limit of 7,501 :D), and you can only follow 40 ~ 60 accounts per hour on instagram. As for Poshmark, if you share items too fast, it will automatically pops up a CAPTCHA to make sure you're not a bot.
As you can see, these platforms are aware that there are various bots running on their platforms. They are imposing various restrictions to avoid bots causing damage to their platform, or spamming their users.
In other words, as long as you don't abuse bots, don't damage their platforms, and don't spam other users, your account will be safe even if you are using a bot.
Limitations of a bot
It's impossible to make a Depop Sales Bot do whatever you want it to do.
First, Depop will enforce various limitations. Both humans and bots cannot bypass them. For example, Depop imposes a cap on the number of your following. Thus, you can only follow up to 7501 people even if you are using a bot.
Second, even if the platform doesn't impose certain restrictions yet. Rational developers should also take the responsibility to impose limits on their bots. For example, at the moment Depop doesn't have a very strict rate limit, but it doesn't mean that a developer should make her/his bot batch process tasks as fast as possible. This puts a lot of pressure on Depop's servers, and it can cause them to fail or even go down.
A well-designed bot should explicitly let the user know what the interval is between two tasks performed.
If a Depop Bot processes lots of tasks in just a second, I'd recommend stopping using that bot. That speed will get you in trouble sooner or later.
Right now there aren't as many restrictions on Depop as there are on other platforms, but I'm sure Depop will impose more in the future, just like Instagram or Poshmark.
I'm really looking forward to Depop putting more limitations on its platform. Only then will bots be able to run on this platform in a truly friendly way without breaking it.
Risks and concerns
The biggest concern of sellers is, will my account get banned? How risky is it to use a Depop Bot?
Well, all I can say is that a good Depop Bot will minimize the risk and won't allow you to do things that abuse the platform. It's like a real person you hire to tirelessly help you refresh your listings, follow/unfollow others, like/unlike items. Imagine if you hired a real person to do all these things, would you still be worried about getting your account banned? I think probably not.
Of course, not all Depop Bots are good and well-designed. Keep that in mind when you're using a bot. Once you notice that something is wrong with the bot, stop using it immediately.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading this post. I hope that you have learned what a Depop Bot is, how it works, the benefits of using it, and its limitations.
I believe that after reading this post, you also know if you want to use a Depop Bot or not. If the answer is yes, why not give Debob a try. I'm pretty sure you'll love it.
Photo credit
Some of the photos used in this post are taken by the following people, thanks to them for sharing their work!
- Woman holding an iPhone: Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
- Colorful code: Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
- Clothes in the closet: Photo by Burgess Milner on Unsplash
- Writing your own bucket list: Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
- Save you time: Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash
- WALL-E: Photo by Lenin Estrada on Unsplash
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