My Accidental Journey into Reselling

During the pandemic, I started an Etsy sticker shop that is now closed due to the lack of sales. If you have any interest in my firsthand experience with that in particular, my second ever piece on Vocal was about it.

This kind of started my addiction to selling things. However, the Etsy shop became not worth the effort after a while due to a number of factors. Every listing had a monthly fee, stickers are priced too low to see significant profits when sales aren't high, and it is a competitive market on there.

I ended up switching to reselling items online. This first started when I was cleaning my room of old stuffed animals (I love claw machines and end up unintentionally collecting a lot of plushies from my wins) and thought that I could try to make some extra money.

It's now been a few years since I started, and I primarily resell old items that I find cleaning, or items that my family finds while cleaning (and I give them a cut of the profits).

General Advice

1. Invest in a thermal printer. I bought a thermal printer and thermal paper so I can print my shipping labels on sticky paper without a hassle. It is so much easier than printing it on a printer and taping it to the package. I drop off my packages at my work's mail system so I don't have to go to USPS. I recommend this if you decide to do this long term.

2. Measure everything and be as detailed as possible. Customers want the ease of shopping and don't want to reach out with questions. You also avoid returns by being as detailed as possible. People who buy used clothing online know their measurements, and by including pictures of your items with measuring tape, they can figure out if it will fit them. Additionally, showing any damages and stains in the images will prevent returns as well. Customers need to know what they're buying.

3. Base your prices off of similar items that have sold, not what's for sale. eBay is the best for this. Use the camera feature to search a picture of an item, click the "sold" feature, and base your price off of what someone has sold in the past. Looking at current listings shows you what hasn't sold yet, and those will be your competition.

4. Save your packages. If you do a lot of online shopping, collect your empty packages so you don't have to buy any new ones. Rip your old shipping label off and it is as good as new to be reused.

Choosing Your Platforms

I currently use three reselling platforms. I started with Mercari, and when listings would take forever to sell, I decided that it would be a good idea to cast a wider net of customers and list on eBay as well. Then, clothing items would be stagnant, so I recently started on Vinted.

I keep listings of everything on all three platforms (except I only do clothing on Vinted) and make sure to delete listings on platforms once they sell in other places.

Here's my experience with all three!

Mercari

I started selling on Mercari first, and back when I started, they didn't charge fees for listings/sales. You got to keep 100% of the profits. This has changed since then, now Mercari takes a percentage of the sale.

I post everything on Mercari. While eBay and Vinted are better at selling certain categories of items, I use Mercari as my main hub. It is a lesser-known platform, which does mean fewer users, but that also means there is less competition.

Listing Process

The listing process on Mercari is super simple. You can upload your pictures, provide a description, and answer the prompts about the item's category, quality, and brand.

The shipping does require you to put measurements for the package sometimes, but it first asks you if an item fits in a shoebox. If it's yes, it'll calculate it for you. If it's no, you will need to provide measurements for your package. To be honest, I've inputted numbers in there without even knowing what package I am going to use yet and have had no issues so far.

Shipping

Mercari remains my favorite platform of the three that I use because the listing making process and the shipping costs are the best. The shipping fee is listed for the customer, they pay for both, and their payment goes directly towards your shipping label.

I bought a thermal printer that I can print my shipping labels from. You can also print them with a printer and tape them to your package. This is because my workplace has a USPS drop-off. I never use UPS or FedEx because of this, so I do not have any experience in those situations to describe.

In my experience, you will need access to a printer for these sales. Honestly, I have never tried it any other way-- but I believe you can also be provided with a QR code for your shipping label. You can go to your local post office, they scan it, and print it for you. Some post offices have kiosks for this, too.

Payment

Mercari collects your balance and it sits in your account until you withdraw. You can also use this money to buy things on the site, which is what I save it for. You can withdraw for free and wait a few business days, or pay to get it same day.

eBay

eBay is, by far, the most used reselling platform out there. eBay is the best for selling more well-known items. If you attend a sports game or concert and they're handing out free themed items for that event only, you will get a sale for it within the day.

Listing Process

The listing process on eBay is easy only if the item you are trying to sell has been sold on the platform before. It forces you to find a similar item before creating a new listing. When you use this, it copies most of the information from the other listing so you don't have to input it. All you need to do is the images and price, but I would definitely double-check that the information is accurate.

They also have an AI description tool that writes descriptions for you. It uses all of the information from the listing.

Shipping

eBay is not my favorite for the shipping fee. No matter how light the package is, it consistently charges my customers $8 shipping when Mercari charges $5 for the same thing. Something weird that eBay does is that it charges you separately for the shipping label, instead of taking the money out of the sale. So, if the customer pays for something and it is $20 with $8 shipping, you receive $28 (before the fees are removed). Then, later, you have to pay for the shipping. eBay does charge the buyer less for the label than the customer pays sometimes, which is nice in the sense that you get an extra dollar occasionally, but this process has too many extra steps that makes Mercari preferable.

eBay does send you the shipping label after you pay, but like Mercari, if you do not have access to a printer, they also provide you with a QR code to bring to your local post office so they can print it for you.

Payment

I recently found out that there's an option to change my payments to weekly or biweekly, it's currently on daily. This change would be preferable since the shipping labels are charged separately from the sale. If you have it on daily, you will get the payment for the sale and then the next day have to pay out of your account for the label. While the transactions pend in your bank account, you temporarily have less money.

Vinted

I only started using Vinted a couple of months ago because I had listed some clothing items on both Mercari & eBay that were getting no traction.

Listing Process

Vinted's listing process is easy, but not as easy as Mercari's. It requires you to list the measurements of clothing items, which isn't too bad. As a clothing reseller, you should be listing the measurements on the listing through images and the description anyway.

Shipping

One thing that I do like about Vinted is that as the seller, we don't have to worry about the shipping prices. You can select if the item is small, medium, or large, and you don't even need to see the shipping costs.

Something that Vinted does that makes it different from the others is that they can ship with SpeedX. This makes international shipping easier and cheaper, allowing me to open up my customer base to shoppers outside of the United States. The only downside to this is that the SpeedX package drop-off locations appear strange at first. When I got my first SpeedX order, I was very confused by the shipping instructions. You are given a map of SpeedX drop-off locations and they consist of random small businesses. My closest one is for a drive-through dairy store. Someone on Reddit said that they had to go to a restaurant and hand the package to the chef in the kitchen. There are limited drop-off locations, so if you live in a small town, your closest one may be far away. The customer will pick the shipping method, so if you can't access a drop-off point, there is an option to turn that off in your settings.

The USPS works the same as eBay & Mercari.

Payment

I am still learning Vinted, but to my understanding, you build a balance similar to Mercari. Vinted also offers to "bump" your listings, where you pay to have your listings promoted. You have to buy in advance for either 3 days or a week.

Other sites, like eBay, will take the fee for promoting a listing out of the payment for the sale, instead of making you pay to promote before it sells.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoy reselling my old items. Even when I have listings up for a dollar and I make cents, I get satisfaction from it. It's nice knowing that these items found a new home.

I have only tried buying items from thrift stores and reselling for higher prices a few times, and it's worked, but not as well as I'd hoped. I know that this is a lot of people's side hustles or even full-time jobs, so they've truly got it figured out. The key for them is picking the right items at the thrift stores, which isn't my strong suit. There is discourse behind this method of reselling, as I've seen people argue that thrift stores are meant to provide cheaper options to individuals with less money, and reselling takes away the value of that. I am neutral on the subject. If that is someone's full-time job, they need the money, too.

If you're looking into getting into reselling your old items, I think it is a super fun way to make some extra cash.