Experiments in Reselling
Around this time last year, I got an itch to try reselling things online. I had done The Artist’s Way all the way through in 12 weeks for the first time in summer 2022, and I had a lot of personal breakthroughs. One of those was that I started thrifting regularly.
I love thrifting. I love slightly worn-in, new-to-me sweaters and random self help books or notebooks or puzzles. I also generally hate buying new stuff because the endless consumption of stuff is so bad for the environment, and I almost always feel guilty when I click that order button on Amazon. Also, I live in Florida, so it’s hard to justify spending money on sweaters. And I LOVE the lottery that is the thrift store. Exhibit A, look at this great painting:
It perfectly matches the pillows in our living room. As I was gazing at it hanging on the wall at the Salvation Army thrift store, an employee appeared next to me and confided, “I dream about this painting.You’ll regret it if you don’t get it.” And then she sighed and walked away. So I had to buy it.
We have a for-profit, cash-only thrift store with no fitting rooms about a five minutes drive from my house. It is fantastic. I think that they sell liquidated merchandise, because they always have AG jeans, Banana Republic work pants, and lots of other mall brands that I’ve worn over the years. I had a baby in 2022, and my pants size has been inconsistent. I started buying pants from the cash-only thrift store, but I was never sure if they would fit, and even if they did, there wasn’t a guarantee they would fit for long. I had consigned through Thread Up a couple of times, but they weren’t taking new inventory at the end of last year, so I took to adjacent corners of the Internet to see if there was a good alternative for rehousing my growing collection of just-a-little-too-[fill in the blank] pants that would let me make back the money I’d spent on them.
I ended up reading a bunch of blog posts and Reddit threads about reselling, and I got fired up. I started listing things wherever and however. I sold $60 worth of children’s clothes to a guy from Offer Up whom I met at a 7-11 across town. (I did not get murdered.) I sent a confused lady from Mercari two pretty nice sweaters for $6 plus shipping. I dusted off my old eBay account that I had used to buy a bunch of overpriced old books and pried some novels and textbooks out of our own over-crammed shelves to list.
As I tried different things and started to make sales, I got a little more systematic about things. I now have a pretty well-oiled machine that I’m hoping keeps chugging along through 2024. I’ve sold over 150 items and net over $1000 in profit this year and hoping to at least keep or maybe exceed that pace a little bit in the next year. Here are some takeaways:
Where I list.
Vendoo. Vendoo is a very cool product that helps you to pretty easily crosslist things on multiple reselling websites. I think they support eleven platforms. It has a bunch of subscription options based on the number of platforms you share to and the number of new items you list in a given month. I have done different things, but the plan that works for me most months includes:
Three platforms (eBay, Mercari, and Poshmark)
Twenty-five new items a month
The importing add-on, which lets me build the listings in eBay and then import them into Vendoo’s form, which then partially populates some of the forms for the other platforms.
The delist and relist add-on, which will let you really easily delete and relist an item on your platforms. People say that this can matter a lot on platforms like Poshmark that lets people sort items by new listings. It also makes managing listings easier within Vendoo, because it will automatically delist a sold item from other platforms.
Offer Up and Facebook Marketplace. People can be pretty flakey, but I find it SO gratifying to sell things locally because of the reduced carbon footprint. I pretty much only do this with things that can’t easily ship, like a desk chair, or an enormous Finding Nemo-themed baby bouncer, or a bunch of extra rolls of Ikea shelf liner.
What I list.
You can read a lot of posts by people who are a lot more strategic and experienced than myself about what the hot ticket items are. But here are some categories of things I’ve sold, mostly out of stuff that we already owned:
Pretty much any clothes, shoes, or accessories in decent shape from a brand people recognize. Mens, womens, childrens–I’ve sold a lot. Anecdotally, it seems that the men’s clothes and shoes that I’ve sold have all sold pretty quickly.
Pretty much any books or puzzles.
Random small appliances (like an essential oils diffuser we never ended up using) or home decor.
Stuff that friends and relatives and neighbors and coworkers are getting rid of and are okay with you profiting from. My mom passes on clothes to resell pretty frequently. (Thanks, mom!)
VERY rarely, like less than five times, I bought something at a thrift store to flip. But I just knew that little Hannah Anderson dress would sell for more than $2.50…
I’m hoping to get into selling more toys this year, because we have WAY too many of them lying around.
How I list.
You don’t need the whole step-by-step. But here are a couple of things.
I have a patch of wood-patterned vinyl floor that I regularly clean for a space to take photographs. I photograph as many things as I can as a time, as this is nearly impossible when my toddler is around.
I use image searching on eBay and Google to try to find existing listings that I can duplicate. I finding pre-existing listings for items that are functionally the same something like 80-90% of the time, which is wild to me, but extremely cool—and it saves so much time. EBay has a ‘Sell one like this’ button on every listing. Super handy.
What I learned (about reselling and about myself).
It takes a while to build momentum.
The more you list, the more you sell. I’m sure that there are things that you could list that no one would ever buy, but it is shocking to me some of the things that people are interested in. I read some blog post about how to increase sales that said to list ten new items a day, which I thought was kind of silly, but it really is a good strategy. I shoot for ~1 new listing a day, and if I keep to that, I usually make at least a couple of sales a week and am happy with that.
I like fixing things. I have accidentally bought clothes with rips at the seams or missing buttons, and I’ve learned how to repair things. This isn’t just for reselling, but it feels great to extend the life of objects. (I always note in an item description if I’ve had to do this, of course.)
My hourly rate is ABYSMAL for a job. If I were trying to do this full time, I would have to work much more strategically, and I probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much. The little dopamine hits from likes and sales and the satisfaction of giving objects new places to live are enough.
I care more about things moving out of the house than about getting the best price for them. I try to keep track of what I paid for things I’ve thrifted so that I don’t lose money on them if I decide not to keep them or the kids never wear them, but then I’m good with letting things go.
It feels so magical how random strangers from the Internet will find my paltry offerings and give me money for them, and often they are so nice and so grateful. I love thinking about these things in their new homes. I imagine the Alaskans doing the 1000-piece puzzle of Florida birds on a long winter night; the lady from Devils Lake, North Dakota, near where my grandma is from, dressing her baby in a navy lace dress and floral headband for a summer wedding; and the dude who bought the Vans khaki pants skating around southern California and working an IT job.
I hope, anyway, that these things aren’t just ending up in a landfill across the country and that contributing in small ways to a culture of reuse does some good in the world. I am sure that there are ethical downsides–for example, I am still facilitating hyper-specialized consumption of things that people probably don’t strictly need in most cases. But I hope I am growing in loving and caring for a few of the objects in our world for more than their exchange value.
