One thing about striving towards sustainable style and trying to be pickier about what I keep in my wardrobe is that I’ve expelled quite a few things from my closet. I donate some of those items, but some things I hold on to for clothing swaps or to sell. I like to sell, not just because of the potential to recoup some of my costs, but because the clothes will go to someone who wants it. (The vast majority of clothing sent to charity thrift shops don’t sell. As much as 80% go to textile recyclers.)
I started off selling clothes on eBay, but in 2012 I joined Poshmark. Last year, after 5 years on the app, I became a Posh Ambassador (what they used to call a Suggested User). A friend asked me for tips, so I began writing this guide for her, but figured it would be useful for others.
If you’ve never used Poshmark before, there are some things you should know about it. I think of Poshmark as a mobile app, though you can also open it up on a desktop browser. In that way, it feels like it was designed for ease of use — and I do find it easier to use than eBay. (Yes, eBay has a mobile app, but I’m not a fan of it.) How do the two platforms compare?
1. Listing an item for sale is easier on Poshmark.
On eBay, there are lots of fields to fill out before you get to your item description. Depending on what your item is, it will ask for various details. Let’s say you’re selling some shoes. eBay asks for brand, model, product line, material, color, MPN, occasion, style, heel height, width, pattern, features (ankle strap? bows? crochet?), toe type, and so on. Sure, many of the fields are optional. And yes, these fields exist to make it easier for folks to search. But wow, so many fields. With Poshmark, you upload your photos, write your title and description, and fill out 8 fields, 4 of which are optional.
(Yes, I just got these shoes, and no I’m not actually selling them. Just showing you the interface.)
One quibble I have with Poshmark is that there’s a character limit to the descriptions. Usually this isn’t a problem, but I like to go into detail sometimes, especially if there are features (or flaws) that I want to point out. (On eBay there’s no limit.) So sometimes I have to spend time editing down a listing.
But, overall, Poshmark wins in this arena as I generally think it’s less of a hassle to list there. One handy thing in the Poshmark interface is that it tells you right away what you’ll make from a sale.
2. But photos are generally easier to deal with on eBay.
One advantage to eBay is that its photo quality is better. It posts photos at a higher resolution than on Poshmark. eBay also hosts up to 12 photos, whereas Poshmark allows 8 per listing, though if you really wanted to get around this, you could create a second listing with more photos. Poshmark also crops everything into a square, so ideally, all your photos should fit into a square. You could upload something that doesn’t fit into a square, but then it generates a distracting black background around it. To get around this, I downloaded another app that helps add white space to a background and resizes photos to fit into a square. (UPDATE 5/5/21 – Poshmark now has room for 12 photos, as well as video.)
3. Poshmark takes the guess work out of shipping.
On eBay, you have to figure out the shipping situation. How much does it weigh, roughly? Which service will you use? Will you offer free shipping?
Shipping details on eBay
Shipping is a flat rate on Poshmark through the U.S. Postal Service. At the time of this writing, everything costs $6.49 for Priority Mail, no matter the size and weight, unless you go over 5 pounds. Taking the shipping guesswork out of it means one less thing for me to think about as a seller — and no surprises. I’ve definitely undercharged for shipping on eBay and have been unpleasantly surprised at much something actually cost to ship. With eBay, I have to weigh my package and make my own shipping label. (Or in the olden days, take it down to the post office and stand in line!)
When someone buys your item on Poshmark, a shipping label gets generated and emailed to you. One con, though, is that $6.49 can feel like a lot to pay for a smaller item that weighs less than 13 ounces and can be shipped for less via First Class mail. That high shipping cost can deter someone from purchasing your item. On eBay you can offer different shipping options at different prices. But it does take more work. On the flip side, that $6.49 shipping on Poshmark looks great when you’re mailing something heavier like shoes. Shoes usually cost between $8 and $15 to mail if you’re doing it yourself, so $6.49 is a deal. UPDATE 5/5/21 – Earlier this year, shipping increased to $7.45.
4. The fee structure on Poshmark is more straight forward, though it’s also higher.
Poshmark has a simple fee structure. For all sales under $15, Poshmark takes a flat commission of $2.95. For anything that sells for $15 or more, Poshmark takes a 20% commission. What’s the cut on eBay? Well, it depends. I don’t actually know off the top of my head because calculating what I’ve spent on an eBay transaction takes work.
eBay charges an insertion fee (though every month 50 listings are free, which is more than enough for me). Then there’s the final value fee on the item itself, usually 10% for clothes, and then a final value fee on shipping and handling. (Yes, eBay takes a cut of what you receive for shipping, though you also get a discount on shipping costs.) Oh, and a PayPal fee of 2.9% when you receive money. I had to make a damn spreadsheet just to track all these fees. Although it sounds like the total fee should be around 13%, in practice it varies. Sampling a few clothing items on my spreadsheet and taking shipping into account, total fees I’ve ending up paying have been as high as 20% and 30%. In general, eBay’s fees are lower, but not always.
5. Poshmark is a time suck.
Built into the Poshmark universe is a social aspect. Like Twitter or Instagram, you follow other people and people follow you. In order for your items to gain notice, you have to share them. You can share them at any time to your followers. You can also share them during certain times of the day to “parties,” real-time virtual shopping events. There are several per day, some themed by type of clothing (shoes and plus size clothing in the example above) or certain brands. There’s one each evening at 7 PT that usually has a theme so broad that anything can be shared to it.
Sharing an item frequently also ensures that it shows up near the top if someone searches for it. For example, let’s say someone is looking for a trench coat from +J, the Jil Sander collaboration with Uniqlo. The coat that was shared an hour ago will show up higher in the feed than the coat that was last shared a week ago.
Poshmark rewards your participation. There’s an etiquette of sharing other people’s items. If I share someone’s item, often the other person will return the favor by sharing one of my items to their followers. You can also connect your Poshmark closet to Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media channels. So there’s the opportunity for your items to be seen by more people if you actively engage on the app.
However, do I really want to spend my time doing more social media? No, I do not. Poshmark can be a time suck. When I first started out on the app, I spent way too much time on it. I joined share groups (where people promise to share items from each other’s closets). Those are hours of my life I can’t get back. If this were the main way I made a living, that’s one thing. But for me it’s not a job.
So I limit the amount of time I spend on the app. I think of it as maintenance so that my items stay fresh and visible. I’ll open up Poshmark and share items if I’m waiting for the bus or in a line to pick up a prescription. If I’m at home, I definitely timebox it and try to spend no more than 10 minutes on it a day. (That’s still more than an hour a week if I look at it every day — and that doesn’t include the time it takes to list an item.)
Of course, there’s no social aspect like this on eBay, and I consider that a good thing. You list an item and then you don’t need to check back in on it. (Well, for the most part. eBay does this very annoying thing where if you set up a Buy It Now listing and don’t accept offers from buyers, it changes it to accept offers without your permission. Bitch, if I wanted this listing to accept offers, I would have set it up that way in the first place! You change it back, and then they’ll change it again. Ugh.)
6. Miscellaneous considerations when it comes to seller protection.
So, it’s time to talk about a sucky thing about selling, which is scammers and non-paying buyers. More than once I’ve had to deal with an eBay buyer who ghosted. When that happens, you have to wait a certain number of days to allow the buyer an opportunity to pay. And then you can file a report to get your final value fee refunded. On Poshmark, users have to connect a credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, or Android Pay, so people pay. Once the buyer has accepted the package (which they have 3 days to do), the funds are released to you.
I’ve heard from other sellers on Poshmark, though, that buyers sometimes scam sellers. They’ll file a claim saying that you sent them a completely different item and send in a photo of that other item. Or they’ll claim there’s some flaw. Poshmark customer service will adjudicate. On eBay, there’s some indication of how trustworthy a buyer is through their feedback and you can block buyers with low feedback. I haven’t encountered that kind of scamming behavior on eBay, but then again, eBay is not a social platform where I might get wind of bad apples. But now, regardless of platform, I take video of myself packing up each item I sell in case I ever need to defend myself against a fraudulent claim.
Another con to Poshmark is that there are buyers who go around low-balling you. They’ll offer $5 for something, which is just ridiculous considering the $2.95 commission. No, I’m not going to pack this up and go down to the post office to mail it to make $2. Buyers can make offers on eBay as well, but you can set a minimum to reject offers immediately that don’t meet your threshold. That’s a time-saver.
7. Which platform to use depends on what you’re selling.
In general, I’ve found that clothing sells better on Poshmark. However, certain things sell better on eBay. You have to consider which platform the audience for your item likely uses.
My mother asked me to sell some of her barely-used Coach bags. I listed them on both platforms and for whatever reason, most of them sold on eBay, not Poshmark. Men’s clothing also sells better on eBay. While I bet Poshmark has taken a lot of business from eBay when it comes to women’s clothes, men have not migrated to Poshmark as much. (Poshmark added men’s and kids clothing categories in 2016.) Certain brands like Madewell sell quickly on Poshmark.
Work clothing (like dresses) sell better in my experience on Tradesy, another site that I tried. UPDATE: I no longer use Tradesy as sales have been slow there for me and the return policy means things can get sent back to you. A buyer returned an item and I learned that while Tradesy will cover the cost of shipping the item back to you, the seller is out the money spent shipping it out to the buyer in the first place. I have now lost money on this transaction.
(An aside on Tradesy: I find its interface more clunky than Poshmark and it also has a convoluted fee structure that requires some work to figure out how much of a cut it took. Like a consignment store you get more value when you keep the money as credit to spend on the site as opposed to withdrawing it. Also, you can’t write your own titles on Tradesy, which irks me. Tradesy creates titles based on info that you enter in its fields.)
Poshmark is also only available in the U.S. — and limited to clothing, accessories, and new makeup. (Um, I’ve seen someone trying to sell a showerhead on Poshmark, but that’s against the rules.) So if you think an item will do better with an international audience, use eBay.
If you have something that’s highly coveted, then selling on eBay might be the way to go. People go to eBay to search for something specific. My vintage items sell better on Poshmark, and I think that’s because more browsing happens on the app. eBay buyers seem more serious than Poshmark buyers to me, yet I’ve made more sales on Poshmark. Overall, when it comes to clothing, I prefer selling on Poshmark to eBay and Tradesy due to how straightforward it is, even though I have to maintain it.
I started this post with the intention of writing some tips on how to sell, but I’ve already written more than 1,800 words! I’ll stop here for today, but I’ll share those tips in an upcoming post.
Brand new to Poshmark? Consider using my code, MELISSITA, when you sign up to get $10 off your first order.
UPDATE 1/17/2019 – Part 2 of my Poshmark guide, with tips about how to sell, is now up!
UPDATE 3/31/2019 – Some recent experiences with eBay have really soured me to the platform. eBay continues to to change the format of my Buy It Now listings to ones that accept offers. Another thing that happened recently is that eBay restricted my account so that I can now only list 15 items for sale at a time. Why? Because someone else opened an account that led them to believe that I had opened a second account (which is against their policies). I absolutely did not open a second account and was alarmed that someone may have stolen my information!
When I called eBay about it, they wouldn’t tell me what type of information was similar. Was it my email? My personal information? Something financial? They just kept saying, “Don’t worry” and that they would file an appeal. Yet I haven’t received any notification of an appeal. The other account has now been shut down, yet my account is still restricted. I looked on some forums and apparently this is not an uncommon occurrence. I have been selling on eBay for more than 15 years and have an excellent feedback score, yet when I report fraudulent activity — someone who has enough info to pretend to be me — they don’t seem concerned and continue to punish me by restricting my listings. It’s time to take my business elsewhere.
UPDATE 6/11/19 – Poshmark has added a new category: home decor, which includes bedding and bath. Glad to have another marketplace that’s not eBay when it comes to those types of items.
