The Best Apps for Selling Used Clothing and Household Items | Lifehacker

This week, I was greeted with beautiful mobile notifications: Two of my bags sold on Poshmark and one of my skirts sold on Vestiaire Collective. For a few months, I’ve been obsessed with selling my accessories and clothes on these apps. It’s a big part of the overall decluttering journey I’ve been on for the past year. A lot of the popular decluttering techniques ask you to sort your items into three categories—keep, throw, and donate—but by adding the fourth category of things to sell, I’ve been able to make a little extra money and, hopefully, make the day of some folks out there with the same sense of style I have.

Here’s what I’ve learned about the best apps and approaches.

There are sellers on these apps who do this in a hardcore way, sourcing cool, rare, or expensive items and turning them for a profit. You don’t have to be like that. I’m certainly not. Everything I sell is something I wore and enjoyed. Don’t worry about the profiles that feature professional-grade photos and hundreds of listings; someone out there who wants the thing you’re selling will find it by searching for it and it won’t really matter if you’re displaying the item on a mannequin in studio lighting as long as it’s the right size and price for the buyer. Here are my tips:

Don’t list something unless you’d actually want to get rid of it if it sold. That seems obvious, but this has happened to me: I’ll get a little overzealous, list something I still use, and feel sad when it gets bought sooner than I wanted it to.

On the other hand, don’t list something if you really want it out of the house. You can’t determine how fast something will sell, even if you undervalue it in price and promote it on the apps every day. I have a shelf on one of my bookcases that is dedicated to the items that are waiting to be bought from my digital storefronts; it does take up space. If this impedes your decluttering, the apps might not be for you. Consider a brick-and-mortar consignment shop if the item is truly valuable or just donate it if you want it gone. The free space could be worth more than the money you’d get by waiting three months for the thing to sell.

I still use my items while they’re listed on my apps, but be careful if you choose to do this, too. If something happens to a bag, like it gets a scuff or a stain, it reduces its value and you’ll have to update the listing at the very least. Don’t try to trick people by showcasing something in perfect condition, then sending it to them in worse shape. They can send it back, and this can have an impact on your seller rating.

Take a lot of pictures. You don’t need fancy lighting or a backdrop, but I at least try to set my items on a nice rug and keep other stuff out of the frame. Take pictures from every angle, close-up photos of any damage, and a shot of the date stamp or serial number if it’s a luxury or high-end item. Tags, defining features, and details are important to include. (If you don't do this upfront, be prepared for potential buyers to ask for them later.)

Be open to offers and respond to inquiries. Most of the time, you won’t get the price you ask for, at least not in my experience, but accepting reasonable offers or being willing to lower the price will help you get the thing out of your house.

Always search for the item you’re selling to see what other people are selling theirs for. If yours is a comparable quality, consider listing it for a little less than your competitors to get it sold faster.

If you list the same thing on multiple apps, stay on top of what you're doing. Last week, I sold a wristlet that I accidentally way undervalued on one app a day after listing it for its true value on another. I lost out on good money! Plus, if something sells on one app, you need to immediately remove its listing everywhere else. Otherwise, it could "sell" again, you'll need to cancel that order, and your seller rating may take a hit.

Even though I only really got into this recently, I've done it off and on for a few years with less dedication. I recommend Poshmark, Vestiaire Collective, TheRealReal, and Depop. To me, these four have the best interfaces and are easiest to use for buying and selling. Let’s go over their details.

When you sell on Poshmark, you keep 80% of your sales as long as they're over $15. For anything under $15, you pay the app a fee of $2.95. On this app, buyers can offer lower prices than what you’re listing your item for and you’re free to accept or decline their offers.

Declining gives you the chance to submit a counteroffer, so you may end up negotiating for a little bit, but the app always notifies you of what, exactly, you’ll make if you sell something at a certain price. The app also allows potential buyers to "like" items, enabling you to send private discount offers to all of a listing’s likers at once. Lowering the price of an item is easy, too, and you can share listings to “parties” that match your item’s description. For instance, Poshmark regularly hosts luxury bag parties, creating a landing page for shoppers looking for those, and I share my listings for bags to those parties when they’re happening.

If there’s a downside to Poshmark, it’s that you do need to be pretty active and engaged. Offers expire after 24 hours, you can only share listings to a party when the party is happening, and users expect timely responses to their comments.

Like I said, you can put anything on here. You can sell a Louis Vuitton bag or a Nike T-shirt. Some people sell housewares and handicrafts. I’ve bought a few Diptyque candles and once offloaded a Yankees bobblehead I accidentally acquired on a trip to the Bronx. If you want an app where you can sell everything, not just a certain kind of clothing, it should be Poshmark.

In my experience, selling higher-end items on Poshmark is hit or miss. Yes, I've done it, but people on there are shopping for all kinds of things. I mostly buy baseball jerseys there and save my own luxury resale browsing for other apps. Poshmark doesn't authenticate designer goods the way other dedicated luxury apps do, so buyers are less confident and more likely to lowball you to make up for their lack of faith in your wares. If you have mid-tier stuff, like Lululemon, Uggs, or Skims, Poshmark is going to be especially handy for you.

Vestiaire Collective is meant for higher-end items, which usually means luxury goods, but I’ve seen it include plenty of other quality stuff, like Gymshark. Where this one shines is its authentication process. Much of the time, items you sell will be shipped straight to VC, where a staffer will authenticate them and send them out to the buyer. This extra security is great, especially for really high-ticket items, and VC has low selling fees: You pay 5% on every sale, plus a 3% payment processing fee. You don’t get charged on your first one, either, as long as it’s below $2,000.

VC often runs specials, too, where where you'll pay no seller’s fees on certain brands, for example. Like Poshmark, buyers can send offers, but here, you have two days to accept, decline, or counter them, rather than one.

Overall, this is my favorite app to use, both as a buyer and as a seller—but I avoided selling there for a while in favor of Poshmark because it does require a little more work than others to get your listing up. Still, it's worth it for the low fees and high yield.

Buyers on here are looking to spend on nice stuff, so you won't get lowballed often and items that wouldn't sell on a more mid-level app get way more attention. Selling on VC requires you to measure your bags, take more specific photos of items (including ones that clearly show brand labeling), identify the material your item is made of, and wait—sometimes, in my experience, up to two or three days—for the photos to be approved by a staffer. The nice thing is that the app suggests a price for your listing based on prices similar items in similar condition have sold at, so you don't have to guess.

One warning: VC makes you print your shipping label instead of scan a QR code at the post office, so make sure you do that before you box everything up.

TheRealReal is only for designer, luxury items, and it operates more like a consignment store than direct selling. How much you actually make depends on your “loyalty tier” at the time of sale, so if you’re just starting out, you get 55% commission on anything sold for more than $195. If you earn $1,500 in annual net sales, you move up to a new tier and earn more. You can also just fork your goods over to TRR in exchange for site credit and let them sell as they will. I won’t lie: It’s a little confusing, so only go with this one if you have really expensive items to sell that require authentication and can still bring in a hefty chunk of cash, even with fees.

I use this app almost exclusively as a buyer, not a seller. Since TRR is in charge of the prices, a lot of really nice things inevitably go on a deep discount if they don't get sold quickly. If you want a quality piece that you can wear for a little and then resell, try looking here.

Depop is another site where you can sell anything. It can be fancy, it can be basic, it can be handmade—you can sell whatever. You don’t pay a listing fee, but you pay a 10% fee for everything you sell. That’s it. It’s super straightforward, and what’s also nice about Depop is that it helps you fill out the listing by populating suggestions based on your pictures and text inputs. This speeds up the process so you’re not spending five minutes on every listing, pulling brand names and sizes from drop-down menus. You can offer likers discounts and, like Poshmark and VC, field offers from potential buyers.

I've had success with Depop as a seller and a buyer, but it's definitely a crowded marketplace. I think of it more like a thrift store than anything. You can find fancy things, yes, but they're not authenticated and I've seen pages and pages of very obvious fakes (and, likely, less obvious fakes I didn't bother investigating), so beware. Also prominent are truly basic things, like Forever 21 tops. You may not think the fast-fashion, mall-bought shirts clogging up your closet are worth trying to sell, but you'd be surprised. Someone out there may want them, so try listing them on Depop before donating or tossing them. Set a hard deadline for yourself, though. If it doesn't sell in, say, two weeks, get rid of it another way. Again, selling is awesome, but not if it stops you from effectively decluttering.

I have never sold clothing or accessories on Facebook marketplace, but I do know it's possible. I see listings all the time while I'm browsing used furniture and knickknacks. Don't necessarily start listing there if you don't already use the app to sell other items, but keep it in mind as an option. On FB Marketplace, you can call a few more shots than dedicated clothing resale apps. Namely, you can sell "bundles." I see it constantly: "Bundle of 20 Forever 21 tank tops." "Bundle of 10 bikinis." If you have a lot to get rid of and are happy to bag it up and give it out for a smaller amount of money, this is a solid option. Plus, you arrange to hand it off locally instead of having to schlepp it to a post office or figure out shipping. It's an effective way to clear out clutter and get quick cash in hand.