For those of you who have been following me for a bit, you know that I sell on Poshmark and am pretty active in the reselling community. Between Instagram, Facebook, and all of the platforms I use to sell my items I keep myself busy!

Every time I sell an item, however, I always get the question “okay, but how much did you pay for it?”. When resellers on Instagram share their sales reports, people always make comments about the fact that they don’t tell us how much they actually spend on their inventory. On top of that, there are fees. Each platform has their own way of handling fees, but for today’s post I will be focusing only on Poshmark.

In the following paragraphs, I will go into the details of reselling on Poshmark that others might not be honest or open about. I will give you the pros and cons of each topic, and at the end I will give my honest opinion about the platform in general, as to whether or not I believe selling on Poshmark is worth it.

The Financials

I want to start with the financials because not only is it the largest of the topics I will be covering today, but because it is usually the most important to people. That way if I start to loose you along the way, at least you will read about the financials first.

As I mentioned earlier, each platform has their own fees that they charge. You can’t just sell on a platform for free; there will always be costs involved. Poshmark’s fees, comparatively speaking, are quite high. For any sale $15.00 or less, Poshmark will take a flat fee of $2.95. For anything over that amount, Poshmark takes a whopping 20% of the sale.

For example: Last night I sold a beautiful designer dress for $200. After fees, I received $160. To me, this was a huge success! I had never sold something for that much on Poshmark yet. The fees broke my heart, however.

The good news? Poshmark handles the shipping. HOWEVER. If you send an offer to the people who liked your listing, you MUST select a shipping discount, which will be taken from your earnings. You have two options: to offer $1.80 off of the price of shipping, or the full $6.79. Yes, no matter if you buy one thing or a gazillion things, poshmark charges the buyer (or you) $6.79. This may seem like a lot if you are purchasing a tank top or a small piece of jewelry, but think of it like this: You (as a buyer) are getting 1-3 day expedited shipping. Also, if your items weigh 100 pounds, you are making a deal on shipping.

Remember those offers I had mentioned? You can send a prospective buyer an offer of at least 10% off of your asking price (plus the required shipping discount). I will be writing about my strategy for sending offers in a later post. Offers can be a good thing because it notifies the prospective buyer of the offer, and they can choose to accept, decline, or ignore it. Some people are annoyed by offers though, especially if you send an offer immediately after they liked your item. Me personally? As a buyer myself I ANTICIPATE offers! If I like an item, it’s because I truly want it. When a seller sends me an offer, I know A) They really want to sell it and B) I’ll be saving more money!

So what about buying inventory? If you are a reseller or are interested in becoming one, you have to spend money. There’s no way around it really (unless you dumpster dive or ask for freebies). You can do what some sellers call “retail arbitrage”. Retail arbitrage is when you go to a retail store (duh), purchase an item and resell it (hopefully for more). This can be good or bad. Some people buy a whole bunch of things only to realize that there is no resale value whatsoever. Luckily, there are certain scanners and apps you can use to see what the resale value of a particular item is.

Another method that many resellers like to use is thrift flipping. Basically, they go to a thrift store, like Goodwill or Salvation Army, buy items, and resell them for more. This is (from my experience) the easiest way to make fast money. Although I do partake in retail arbitrage from time-to-time, thrift flipping will always be my go-to. A blouse can be purchased for $1-$7, and flipped for $25. Smaller sales are the quicker sales, so stocking up on these lower-cost items is a good way to earn money fast. The profit is much higher as well!

Going back to the example of that beautiful dress I sold yesterday: Remember I said that after fees I earned a total of $160? Well, I paid a whopping $3.00 for it at Goodwill. THREE. DOLLARS. This result isn’t typical, but it does happen!

Bookkeeping

How exactly do you know if you’re making money? Well, you will need to keep a spreadsheet with your expenses and profits. Is it a lot of work? It can be. It can also be quite easy for some people. It really depends how in-depth you want to be with your finances. When I first started keeping track of my expenses (I didn’t at the beginning, and I wish I had!), I would write down every single detail. I would itemize everything, say how much I paid for each individual item, whether it was on sale, tax costs, blah blah blah. That began to get really difficult for me to keep up with, especially since I have a full-time job on top of reselling. That being said, I eventually changed things up and started only putting the amount on the receipt, and added profits as I sold items. This made it easier for me, especially if I found a flaw in an item and had to get rid of it. It wasn’t necessarily a loss! I will probably make the cost of that item back in another sale.

Organization

Once you start building up your inventory you will need to find a way to store it. If you are living in a small space, that may be difficult to do. When I was in Texas for a couple months, my family and I lived in a 3 bedroom dorm style apartment. It was the strangest thing to me, as I’ve never stayed in a dorm before! Anyway, each room had its own bathroom and walk in closet. I decided to keep all of my clothes in my dresser, and use the closet for my “office space”. It was just big enough to fit the desk in, and I was able to hang up all of my inventory. It wasn’t glamorous, but it did the job! It was out of the way and didn’t bother my family which was a good thing.

Now that we are in a home, we have an extra bedroom that I use as my office space. I need a larger space like this because I plan on doing reselling full-time in a year or so. I have a desk, photo backdrop, lighting equipment, racks of clothing, and shipping supplies in the room. I also keep some other things of mine like yarn and my sewing machine, but the room is almost 100% for reselling. It works for me, but it may not work for you. If you don’t plan on reselling full-time, you probably won’t need that much space.

Preparing The Clothes

When you buy clothes from thrift stores, it is ideal to wash the clothes before listing them. This will cost money too, because you will use laundry detergent and whatever other expenses come from doing that. You also would benefit from having a Tide pen and some stain-remover, scent-free Febreeze, and basic sewing supplies for small repairs.

Once the clothes are ready to go, you will need to photograph them. This could take time, especially if you really want your photos to look good! If you don’t have lighting equipment, you will want to use good natural lighting. That limits you to certain times of day.

After your items are photographed, you will need to measure the items and add the measurements to the listing. Doing so will reduce the amount of “they don’t fit” one-star feedbacks.

Shipping The Clothes

After listing the items you aren’t done! You will need to answer any questions from potential buyers, and accept offers. Then come the sales!

Hooray!

Once you sell an item, you must ship it. You can buy poly mailers online, or you can use the free priority mail packages that the USPS offers. I choose the free option, personally.

It is best to package your items with care. Some people use tissue paper and stickers, some people use ribbon or twine, and some people just throw the item in a box. The choice is yours.

Receiving Feedback & Difficult Buyers

It is inevitable. You will deal with a difficult customer. You will get one-star reviews for things beyond your control. You will have people demand more pictures and measurements. People will be rude and not use their “Please” and “Thank-you’s”.

This is just how it goes.

But for every meany head, there are about 30 wonderful buyers! Don’t take the negative feedback personally, some people just refuse to give 5 stars. Kind of like those teachers that refuse to give A’s. It just happens. When you realize that you still got their money, it makes it all better.

My Final Opinion

Now that we’ve come to the end of this post, it’s time for me to give my 100% honest opinion on whether or not selling on Poshmark is worth it. If you are detail-oriented, business-motivated, or just needing some extra cash? I say YES! It is worth it.

If you are looking to quit your job and resell full-time, I say SORT OF! It is sort of worth it. I believe that if you want to make full-time income reselling, you should broaden your horizon and use multiple platforms. I would also supplement with other streams of income like blogging.

I hope that you have enjoyed this post! If you did, please make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to know about my newest posts, and leave a comment below with your opinion on whether or not selling on Poshmark is worth it.

If you are interested in starting with Poshmark, use my code SALTYSHREDS for $5.00 off of your first purchase!