7. Selling From Home Without Publishing Your Address
Your address is hidden by default, buyers see only a first name and photo, and anyone can be blocked. Here is how it works.
This is the question we get asked most often by people thinking about a stall, and it is usually asked slightly apologetically, as though it were an unreasonable thing to want.
It is not. You are putting your home on a public map. Wanting some control over that is the sensible reaction, and the controls exist.
Your exact address is hidden by default
You do not have to do anything to keep it private. Your address is hidden by default: set your pin where the stall really is, and buyers see an approximate area instead, offset 300 to 800 metres from your real location. If you would rather show your exact address, you can make it visible in your stall settings.
By default, a buyer sees a shaded circle rather than a pin, a lock note saying the exact address is private, a regional label such as "Near the Adelaide Hills" instead of a street address, and how far away you are. The Directions button is hidden too. If you choose to show your address, they see your full address, the exact pin and a Directions button. Either way they can tell roughly where you are, which is all they need to decide whether you are worth the drive. What they do not get, unless you choose it, is a street number they never asked for.
One practical approach: leave the exact address hidden on the map, and share directions yourself in the in-app messages once someone has actually ordered. You control how much you reveal and when.
Buyers are not anonymous, but they are not fully named either
Buyers appear to you as a first name and a profile photo, never a full name. Their last name, email address and phone number are never displayed, and the same goes for yours. That is deliberate in both directions. They are identifiable enough to hand an order to, and not so exposed that a stranger learns their identity from a bread transaction.
If someone is a problem
You can report or block anyone, at any time.
It is worth knowing where that control is before you need it, which takes about ten seconds and is the reason it is in this post. Almost everyone selling at a gate will never use it. Knowing it is there is the point.
The rest of the sensible advice
A few other things that help:
- Take payment in the app where you can, so there is no cash sitting in a tin at the end of a driveway.
- Use pre-orders if you would rather know who is coming and roughly when.
- Set hours you are actually around for, so you are not receiving visitors at dusk.
- Put the stall where you can see it from the house, if the layout allows.
What this changes
It makes selling from home a decision about your produce rather than a decision about your privacy.
Exact address hidden, payment in the app, hours that suit you. That is a stall on your terms.
Ready to put it into practice? Your stall is free to start at sidestall.au.
Next in this series: reviews and the verified badge, and how trust turns a drive-past into a stop.