Poshmark has become one of the most popular ways to buy and sell fashion online since it launched in 2011. Selling second hand clothes can be a productive – even lucrative – home business, but only if you do it right. Otherwise, it can include a lot of work for very little profit. But with over 4 million users on Poshmark, your audience is out there, and this guide from Cash Net USA will help you get up and running.
So far, over $1bn has been earned by sellers on Poshmark, and with the reselling market in general expected to be worth $41bn by 2022, you can see the potential rewards available. One woman alone has made over $500,000 on Poshmark, so here’s how to get started on the road to making a living selling on there:
Getting Set Up
Creating an account on Poshmark is as straightforward as you would expect from a popular app, and you get started in the same way as a seller as you would as a buyer. If you’re likely to be selling as well as buying, you can enter your dress and shoe size and select the designers you’re interested in, as well as connecting with any other users you may know.
What To Sell
The most critical decision you’ll make on Poshmark is what to sell, as nothing else you do will matter if you are trying to sell items that no-one wants to buy. Here are some tips:
- Sell clothes that can be worn right away. Buyers are most likely to want clothes that are in season, so if it’s summer, don’t waste time trying to sell winter coats. Items that are on trend will also be more likely to sell than those that are so last year, so be tactical about what you sell and when.
- Sell clothes in a condition that you’d be happy to receive them in as a seller. If it’s something that will only last one wear before falling apart, it’s going to damage your reputation as a seller.
- Don’t sell too cheap – You have to make sure that your desire to sell quickly doesn’t mean you are underpricing your items and barely making enough profit to make it worthwhile selling them. Don’t forget that you’ll be paying seller fees on Poshmark, so you need to factor these in.
Listings
When you’ve got good products to sell, you need to know how to list them in the best way to make sales. This means taking good photos of them, so getting the best light and using a neutral backdrop to emphasize the clothes the best way possible. It’s also a good idea to make sure that your best items appear at the top of your listings, to give the best impression when people first land on your page. Pick out the top 5 products you have and optimize the photos and descriptions to get them looking as good as they can.
Being helpful is another way to make your page and products stand out from the crowd, so make the extra effort to offer proper size measurements for each item so that buyers can be certain it will fit them. Even better, why not offer style suggestions like recommending outfits that would go well with an item, which can help make it seem versatile and therefore good value.
Making Sales
If you’ve got an impressive page with attractive products, then you’re well on the way to making lots of sales and turning Poshmark into a way to make real money. However, there’s still more you can be doing to ensure that you’re converting interesting views into actual sales. Here are some suggestions for making the most of these opportunities:
- Use bundle discounts. If someone wants to buy something from you, they might be interested in buying more than one thing, so make sure they’re aware that they can get a discount for buying multiple items. Offer set percentage discounts and advertise them clearly on the product pages.
- Be ready to negotiate. On Poshmark there is the expectation that buyers and sellers can haggle, so you might need to lower your price from time to time. For this reason, make sure that there’s some room to comfortably do this when you set your original prices, then you won’t be affecting your bottom line.
- Get customer service right. Recurring customers – your superusers – are what any business needs, and you’ll have a better chance of repeat business if you deal with them the way you would expect to be treated. Reply quickly to messages, send items when you say you will, communicate when there might be delays, and do things that show the extra effort, like including handwritten messages and reserving items for customers who can’t pay immediately.
- Build connections. Like most apps and web businesses, Poshmark has created its own community and holds parties multiple times a day, where you can share your item and it can be shared by others. Make sure you reciprocate where you can to show that you are willing to play your part in the community. These parties can be a great way to widen your reach and expand your network.
All of these tips will help you build a page and a range of products that look great and are appealing to the millions of buyers out there on Poshmark. The only thing left is for you to get started building up your business.
