Selling used clothing on Poshmark is a great way to make extra money. Some even turn it into a fulltime business. My current experience with Poshmark is that over the last few years they’ve made it very hard to make a fulltime living using JUST Poshmark. I won’t go into the evolution Poshmark has taken over that last 18 months or so, but just so you know, I list everyday, at least 5 items, mostly more, and have 900+ items in my closet. I average 2-3 sales a day. That didn’t used to be the case, it was much better, but in today’s environment, 2-3 is good for Poshmark with my type and size inventory which makes selling on multiple platforms a MUST.
In this post I’m going to cover selling on Poshmark and the things I think are important to actually get sales. I won’t include live sales, I’ve never done them on Posh. I did do them on Instagram, in a Facebook group, and on WhatNot but I didn’t like doing them so I made the decision to stop. So, since I don’t do them, I won’t cover them, but you might consider adding them if you’re trying to increase your total revenue.
When it comes to selling on Poshmark, there are a lot of things I would have never known if it hadn’t been for Facebook groups and YouTube. It’s hard to remember every little piece of advice I’ve learned over the years because it’s become so engrained in my daily routine, but I’m going to try and lay it out here.
I’m not going to explain how to use the app or set-up your account, I’m only going to layout the things I think are most important to actually get sales on Poshmark. I’m sure you can learn how to use the app by just using the app, it’s pretty simple, with exception of bundling, and I might cover that separately in another post.
So, let’s start at the beginning, you’ve just purchased a haul of used clothing.
The Most Important Things To Know To Run a Poshmark Business
Washing – When you first start reselling you need to decide if you’re going to wash your items before selling them. I started reselling during the pandemic and previous to that there were stories of bedbugs in the news. This led me to the decision to wash everything. In fact, I also use Lysol Laundry Sanitizer but I think I’m going to drop that.
There are a lot of people who do not wash. There are also a lot of people who say to just steam because that sanitizes. To me it seems steaming everything is more time-consuming than washing but to each their own. I know many of the items I bring home probably don’t need to be washed, so whatever you decide to do is fine, just be sure you’re fine with it.
The cons to not washing is that most thrift stores and even some estate sales have a musty smell. You might start smelling that in your home if that’s where you store your inventory. Also, some customers aren’t nice and if they get an item that has an odor, you might get a nasty review. On Poshmark bad reviews are of no consequence as no one sees them, they don’t post them. So it’s not too much of a problem unless your star rating goes too low. Again, no one but you sees the star rating but I wonder if it’s tied to how often you’re items are seen in search.
Lastly, you need to think long term. Unless you’re doing this for a fun side gig, you will most likely want to expand to other platforms. Other platforms aren’t as nice as Posh when it comes to reviews. On eBay for instance, too many bad reviews can cost you money in higher fees.
Photos – I’m a bit of a fanatic on photos and probably go way overboard to make them look good. But we’ve come up with a system that works for us and don’t spend too much time on them now. I used to do flat lay on a table and climbed a step ladder for every photo. Up and down, up and down, up and down, I finally bought a dress form and use that now.
We also have a big white piece of plastic that we purchased at Lowes that we use as our backdrop and for our flat lay items like jeans. Then I take the photos into Photoshop and correct the white balance. That brightens the photos and makes all the colors correct. We use my iPhone and I haven’t found a white balance feature on there. The process in Photoshop doesn’t take long, I’ve set up actions to automatically do the repetitious stuff like ‘rotate’ and ‘save’.
I don’t think you need to be fancy with your photos but you do need to be fanatic with your lighting. If you have a place where you can hang your items on the wall, maybe use a Command hook, that will be fine. But lighting is everything, without good lighting you’re colors won’t show correctly and your items will look dingy. That’s the last thing you want since your photos are the thing that gets people to click on your items instead of someone else’s.
When taking your photos you want to show all sides and all tags as well as any flaws. We take front, back, left side, right side at a 45 degree angle. There are always at least 2 tags if none have been removed. You want to show the brand label, the size, the fabric content, and the wash instructions at minimum.
Measuring – We add measurements to every listing. Because we bag every item prior to storage, it would be a real pain to get measurements only when asked, plus it would cost us a new bag as the ones we use do not reseal (they are cheaper than resealable bags).
People like to see measurements, I know, I forgot to add them on a listing the other day and within hours someone was asking for them. Because I add the measurements it’s rare that I have to open an item for that purpose. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes there’s a person who wants a measurement I didn’t take, but it’s rare, like once a month, if that.
If you want to sell your items, don’t make the customer ask, instead provide. Just think about how many people want measurements and don’t want to hassle with asking (that’s me). Don’t let those customer slip away because you don’t want to spend 30 seconds doing measurements.
All measurements are provided by laying the item flat and measuring from side to side. It seems most people who shop for clothing online understand the measuring system but I do give a brief explanation saying, “Measurements are flat-lay from side to side.”
Here’s a table of the measurements I provide:
Tops & Dresses
Women
- Bust – 1/2″ below arm seam
- Waist
- Length from shoulder to hem
Men
- Chest – arm seam to arm seam
- Length from top of collar down back to hem
Pants & Shorts
Women
- Waistband
- Hips – at bottom of zipper
- Rise
- Inseam
- Ankle
Men
- Same as women but I leave out the hip measurement.
Skirts
- Waistband
- Hips
- Length – waistband to hem
I provide these measurements in the description of my listings but a lot of people use a little whiteboard to record the measurements and then snap a photo to include with their listing photos. Still others lay a measuring tape across their item and take a photo. I used to do that but it was more work, so I stopped.
Now I have little forms that I print (6 to a page and cut up). I pin the form to the item after the photo has been done. The form stays with the item until it is packaged and stored. We record the weight, cost, and any flaws on the form and all that info is available when I sit to make the listing.
Pricing – It’s important to get your pricing right and there are a lot of things to consider.
- Competition – you don’t want to be the lowest price but you don’t want to be the highest either. When your item is too low, people subconsciously think there is something wrong that you aren’t telling them. When it’s too high, well, they just won’t buy it. Be sure to check your competition’s SOLD listings, not the available ones when doing your research.
- Discounts & Offers – 85-90% of my sales are made with either an offer from the buyer or one coming from me. It’s important that I allow room in my pricing to give these discounts. I always give 10% off when someone “likes” an item. Then, every day I send out 20% off offers to everyone whose previous offer has expired. When I list something for $24, I expect to get between $15 and $19, if I get more, it’s a plus.
Listing – Consistency, you have to have it. I’ve found over the years that being consistent on listing daily really helps your sales. I didn’t figure this out on my own, YouTubers and people in FB groups opened my eyes to the fact. But I have proven it to myself over and over again. If I don’t list, sales slow down, every single time.
Listing headings need to include keywords that people would be searching. Always begin your listings with the brand, then what it is. After that I add whether it’s men’s or women’s and the size. Following that, until all the space is used, I add color and other descriptors.
Clear and accurate descriptions that include the condition of the item and measurements are a must. Be as descriptive as possible about the condition and show a photo of all flaws. For items in perfect condition I say, “Very good pre-owned condition. VGUC”. I never say an item is in excellent condition, it’s just too subjective and I’m hesitant that I might have missed something.
It wasn’t until I started listing 5 more items than I sold every day that things started coming back. But it’s hard. Sometimes after a weekend I have to list 20 items (because I sell on multiple platforms). My goal is to get back to 1000 items by the end of March, wish me luck.
Offers – As I stated in the pricing section, offers drives sales on Poshmark. It’s important to send offers to likers (OTL) on a regular and consistent basis. The best way I’ve found to do this is by using PosherVA. I don’t think I could run my reselling business without this little app, it’s really worth every penny I spend on it.
I set PosherVA to automatically send a 10% off offer 3 minutes after someone ‘likes’ an item. I used to do this manually, but it was a constant grind. If I didn’t do it right away, the messages goT lost in my feed. I had to have phone notifications turned on but Poshmark groups like and shared notifications together so I got a notification every time someone shared my items as well. Too many notifications, a real pain.
After I got PosherVA, I turned off notifications for likes and shares, so nice.
The other thing I do every day is send a 20% offer to all likers. I use PosherVA to do this as well. It allows you to set up bulk offers. This works great because handling offers is one thing Poshmark does really well. If a person currently has an open offer (all offers are good for 24 hours) or has already received a 20% off offer, Poshmark will ignore the offer. All offers you senD need to be 10% less than the last offer or Poshmark ignores it. And it’s by person, Poshmark keeps track, it’s really great.
So, I can send a bulk offer to every one of my likers and only those who are eligible to receive the offer will get it. Works great!
Sharing – Sharing… it’s got to be the best and worst thing ever. On one hand when you share one of your items to your followers, that item moves to the top of the search if the customer is using the default sort of “just shared”. Most people don’t mess with the sort, so this means your item has a great chance of being seen.
On the other hand, you have to share. It’s a pain and very time consuming if you do it manually. Poshmark has improved the process over time but it’s still time consuming if you have a large closet.
This is where PoshVA shines. I set it and forget it. It shares for me 24/7. You can’t believe how happy this makes me. Another monotonous task done for me.
Poshmark limits sharing and if you go over their limit they put you in ‘sharing jail’. It’s no big deal, you just can’t share for a few hours. I used to get put in jail all the time when I was figuring out how to set PosherVA. But I finally got a great setting. I have PosherVA set to share every 10 seconds with a cap of 13000 shares per day. As long as the setting stays there, I don’t go to jail.
You have to be careful when they send an update or you need to reinstall for some reason. Recently I was getting put in jail almost every day, then finally saw that it defaulted to ‘medium’ speed after I reinstalled and that was way too fast so I was hitting the limit. I reset and all is good again.
Poshmark is a great app for selling used clothing. I’ve covered a lot in this post and it’s no where near all the things you learn as a reseller. I will be posting more as time goes on and hope you follow. Good luck on your reselling journey.
