Like many others out there, I’m always looking for a way to make a few extra bucks. Also like many others, I don’t want to work hard to do it. That being said, I recently got back in to selling clothes, only this time, in addition to Ebay, I decided to give Poshmark a try.

I quickly started getting sales on Ebay, but that was almost expected being as I sold there previously, and have 100% positive feedback (oh gosh, did I just jinx myself?) I had heard about Poshmark, from TV commercials, blogs, and my Instagram followers, however I’ve never given it a shot before.

I’ll admit, the main reason why I never began selling on Poshmark was because of the large percentage of the sale they take. (For sales $15 and under, they take $2.95. For sales over $15 they take 20%) But, when I did a little more research, I found out that shipping is completely out of the hands of the seller! That means that when a buyer pays shipping, it doesn’t go to the seller. Instead, it goes to Poshmark. After a sale has been made, Poshmark will email you a pre-paid shipping label, and all you have to do is print it out, stick it on the package, and leave it for the mail carrier (or take it to the post office). That, my friends, is why now I hope to completely switch over to Poshmark, and leave Ebay for my non-clothing items.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. After about a week of waiting and listing on Poshmark, I finally got my first sale! It didn’t come before annoying the crapola out of my husband though, bringing up my hopes and dreams of my first sale. Needless to say, he was glad it finally happened.

Here’s what I learned, and how I improved my Poshmark closet in just one week:

Pictures, duh.

I know, you hear it all the time; pictures are sooooo important, blah blah blah. Well, it’s true. At first, I had my husband take pictures of me wearing the clothes, but he took them at such an angle that I looked like I had really short legs and huge arms. I love you babe, but you need some photography lessons! If you’re going to have someone photograph the clothes on you, make sure they are at level with your body, not standing up and pointing the camera downward. This will avoid the awkward misshapen body shot. After putting up with those pictures for a few days, I decided to just go the old fashioned way, by hanging the clothing on a hanger on a nail in my wall. When I started this however, I took the pictures first on my dresser (that looked crappy), then on the wall in my walk-in closet that I use as my “office”. It worked out just fine, but the pictures were super dark and changed the color of the item. I eventually tore down my husbands flag that he has (had) hanging on our living room wall, and used that space instead. There, the lighting was just perfect, and as a result, my pictures now depict the actual color of the item.

Also with pictures, poshmark doesn’t really allow you to make the size of your pictures smaller, so make sure you take the picture far enough back that you can crop it to fit the size. You can zoom in on the picture, but you can’t zoom out.

Share, share, share!

Okay, this is probably the most important part. You need to share like crazy. After you start following a couple different brands and closets, you can share whatever items are posted in your feed to your followers. Do this. Do this all the time! Usually, the person who’s item you shared will return the favor and share yours. Sometimes those people have tens of thousands of followers!

Participate in Posh Parties

These parties happen about 3 times a day, and you will get a notification when they are starting. If your items are relevant to the party, go ahead and share all of those items to that party. Don’t worry, if an item is not relevant, Poshmark will tell you. Sometimes, I’ll re-share my items a while later, waiting long enough to not annoy anybody. This works. Trust me. Lots of people check out these parties.

Do not list all of your items at once!

This one I learned the hard way. When I started out, I listed all of my items as fast as I could. But that only left me to the same group of people who saw my items. If you space your items out, different people will see them (and share them!), and that is a very good thing. Instead of taking my items out of my closet and re-listing them, I just found a little bit more inventory, and listed those slowly.

Talk about it on your social media

I can’t really use Facebook as an example from my experience, my Facebook friends don’t usually care when I start one of my new adventures. I do, however, follow like-minded people on Instagram, and a couple of those lovely people went to my shop, followed, and shared every one of my listings to give me a boost. I truly believe that is the reason I got my first sale.

Those were the steps that really contributed to getting my first sale on Poshmark. I honestly believe that if you take these tips to heart, you too will get your first sale really fast, maybe even faster than me! Keep at it, and don’t give up.

Also, if you don’t yet have a Poshmark account, go ahead and use the code RINSTYLE upon registration. You will get free money on your first purchase! Who doesn’t love free money?