What I've Learned in Six Weeks Reselling on Poshmark | Beginner Reseller | How to Start

hey guys happy tuesday my name is essie jane and i am a brand new reseller on poshmark i'm also trying my hand at ebay and mercari but have made no sales there yet so we'll get back to that in a minute but it's been reselling on poshmark for about six weeks now and i was just wanting to start documenting my journey with reselling a little bit because i've learned so much from resellers sharing their knowledge on youtube and kind of giving a peek into their business so my situation is that i live in the midwest i'm a mom i have an eight-month-old daughter and i'm not in a huge city so sourcing is slightly more challenging for me than for some and i thought maybe it would just be helpful for me to talk a little bit about what it's been like these six weeks so today i just wanted to talk about five things i've learned or started doing already and five things that i want to learn or implement in the near future i got the idea for reselling from my sister who has been kind of casually listing and selling on poshmark for a few years now i naively jumped into it when i saw a couple pairs of zara shorts at my local tj maxx and thought i could flip them for a profit um long story short those are still sitting in my closet and i'm hoping to just make my money back on them but again we'll get to that in a second those were part of a big lesson that i learned so yeah i'm a full-time mom at home i have had a business most of my life or at least a side gig i think since high school there's only been one year where my taxes were that super straightforward i just had one w-2 every other year i've had some sort of self-employment income or side gig that i've been doing since becoming a mom last year it kind of made a lot of those a lot more difficult to do i was doing like grocery delivery for a little bit before that and i can't take my daughter with me to do that i was kind of looking for another option and this kind of just has started working and i am super super excited about it i feel very energized and my husband would tell you that i talk about it non-stop and am constantly learning soaking up information pretty addicted to reseller youtube channel so thank you to all of you who have put out amazing amazing videos with so much information yeah so let's jump into five things i've learned so far and five things i need to get better at or start doing so the first thing i learned and this goes back to those zara shorts i mentioned previously is to check comps and actually calculate your estimated profit i think at that point i didn't even know that poshmark took 20 of your sale as their commission at that trip to tj maxx i saw i think it was like a theory wool sweater or something for 200 at t.j.maxx and i saw that at retail for 400 and i was very much debating about whether i should buy it and list it and try to sell it and very glad that i did not end up wasting 200 on that because with what i know now i know that that would have been a horrible idea i did end up picking those two pairs of zara shorts though each for thirteen dollars and yeah like i said before they're still sitting in my poshmark closet and i will be very happy to just make my money back on those yeah that was lesson number one after i made my first couple of sales just seeing how much poshmark actually took out and it registered at that point that i need to be much more strategic when i'm sourcing and be sure to check what things are selling for and kind of calculate what my estimated sale price and profit would be based on that the second thing is that with sourcing being a little bit more tricky in a smaller city in the midwest than it is in bigger cities or on the coast where there's a lot more of a fashion culture the thing i've learned is that you just have to look everywhere and there's probably a lot more places to source than you think so the obvious places like i mentioned before goodwill tj maxx my goodwills here are kind of terrible i found a couple of things that i was happy to pick up and was able to sell for a decent profit nothing huge um and then tj maxx is very hit or miss i found maybe one or two items that i am happy that i picked up there so far in this six weeks but i have discovered so many other places that i never knew about before starting this there is a local chain of basically outlets that have either overstock or returns most of their stuff is from places like target and jcpenney but i have found brands like all saints everlane the koopals which i never heard about before just a bunch of random pieces like in these giant outlet stores it's kind of like a tj maxx but like a local version and yeah there's a lot of hidden gems in there they also have bins where on tuesdays everything is six dollars and it kind of decreases in price throughout the week fridays everything's a dollar so i've been going there every week on friday and picking up items to resell and like i said a lot of this stuff is from target but i have found a couple of things i found an elite pencil skirt that i made like a 35 profit on um which was i was very happy about you know grabbing that for a dollar i think it sold within 24 hours of listing it for 45 so that was great and yeah just another place i never knew existed before i started this and it's been a really great place to find pieces to either sell or to trade into buy sell trade stores for credit the other place i've begun sourcing which i actually just discovered last week is a local consignment boutique which is very curated and carries much more high-end brands and styles i think that was my first time ever seeing a pair of jeans from the brand mother they were marked up too high but i did find several dresses at that consignment boutique that were worth grabbing and i think i'm going to be able to sell for a good profit so i'll definitely be checking in there frequently and also bringing in items to consign for credit there the third thing i've learned is the value of listing consistently and i kind of learned this accidentally i think it was like my second or third week reselling that we went on a week-long road trip and my sister had just come up the day before we left and she modeled a bunch of my pieces for me that i was kind of putting off listing because i couldn't find stock photos or they just weren't as exciting to list so my phone was full of photos on that road trip and i just kind of listed like three or four items every day while we were driving or when i had some down time and my sales that week were amazing it was the end of february so that last week of the month um which now that we're into march i'm really hoping is going to be a great week again yeah my sales really started to pick up when i started listing three to five items every day and since then i have learned from so many other resellers that that is actually a very intentional strategy they have is to list every day and to list um i mean every reseller does it a little bit differently and has different goals i've heard three to five items i've heard five to ten items i've heard ten to fifteen obviously depending on how much inventory you have and how much time you have with my inventory and time i think three to five items a day is pretty realistic and so that's my goal for myself and i think i've kept that up for a couple of weeks now so hoping to um yeah reap the benefits of that the next thing that i have done so far is get organized so at the very beginning i was just kind of trying this out and everything was just in piles in bags goodwill bags retail store bags and i would just grab it out of the bag when it sold package it up and ship it but over the weekend a couple days ago my husband helped me create a space in our basement so now i have bins that i have labeled and put all of my inventory in i have a spreadsheet that i will link below that has all of my inventory all of my sales i'm able to track a lot of different metrics on there but the size of my business now i think i have around 75 active listings maybe 120 total listings i definitely wanted to start really keeping track of everything early before it gets too overwhelming so i'm really happy i did that before things grew out of hand and i'm really excited about the new space i have in my basement to store everything i have a shipping station i'm keeping my laptop down there so it's easy to go down there when my baby is taking naps and write up some listings so very very happy that i took the time to get organized early on an obvious one here is looking for flaws in items i've had like five or ten items that i've brought home that i was really excited about purchasing and then as i was taking photos to list the item i discovered flaws like either stains that i haven't been able to wash out or tears holes that either made it much less valuable than i had hoped or just not worth reselling at all definitely look closely i'm gonna be a lot more careful about that in the future one story is i went to a local buy sell trade store i was going through all their jeans that were on clearance and i found a pair of citizens of humanity jeans which i had sold one pair of before really quickly for a good profit and so i was really excited to see these on clearance for ten dollars i got them home i've taken all the photos and i was like hmm these are really close to my size maybe i'll try them on i tried them on and i discovered that there was a hole right by the back pocket very noticeable so that was a huge bobber i felt crushed like i had just wasted ten dollars and i was nobody was going to want these jeans now not only that i had noticed earlier when i was photographing them that there was a paint stain on the leg as well so just really unfortunate i did end up listing those and noting the flaws in the description and uh with photos and they actually sold within two days for a four dollar profit which i was very thrilled and relieved about because i thought i was just going to have a pair of holy paint covered jeans in my basement forever so in the future i'm definitely going to try to list them if they seem worth my time yeah they could still sell somebody still wanted that pair of jeans even with all its flaws all right so getting into what i'm excited to start doing here in the near future i have started cross listing to ebay and mercari a couple of items to tradesy as well i got the flip reseller tools sharer and crosslister so i think i have between 25 and 30 items now crosslisted to ebay and mercari i have not made any sales on either of those platforms yet so we'll see how that goes i know it's probably a little bit deterring to buyers to see that i don't have any ratings especially on makari i have just no stars or anything like that on my profile on ebay i think i do have a 100 good feedback just from making purchases and things that i've sold in the past hopefully those platforms will start to generate some sales for me but i'm just going to be cross-listing everything in the future and seeing what happens because especially with the flip reseller tools it's actually very easy and takes maybe two minutes to cross list to those two platforms so i think that's definitely worth experimenting with so i'll let you know how that goes the second thing that i am working on now is separating my personal uh space my personal bank account and all that from my business so like i said we kind of set up my area in the basement with all of my inventory and shipping supplies and i am also now working on registering an llc and getting an employee identification number so that i can get a business bank account business credit card and kind of separate my personal finances from this business venture i think once i get everything moved over to a separate bank account and credit card i'm going to be much more aware of what i have having a budget and just keeping things separate which is going to give us all a lot more peace of mind so i'm excited that should hopefully be set up in the next couple of weeks i haven't actually heard a lot of resellers talk about this so if i've totally missed those videos link them below for me or yeah just give me your tips also did you set up an llc um did you get a business bank account at what point did you do that i know i'm doing it pretty early on but i think it's just gonna be a really good step for me to take the next thing is kind of a small one but one that i probably should have been doing all along and i just didn't because i didn't have the tool for it and that is steaming all my items especially ones that come home from the store wrinkle i have a few items listed that i think probably could have sold by now or could have generated more interest but in my photos they're just a little bit wrinkly and i think it's just best practice anyway to steam everything so i have a steamer coming in the mail today and i'm going to start doing that in the future on all my items especially especially on the ones that are wrinkled so that i can photograph them looking the way they should look i also really want to get better at online sourcing so i've dabbled with this a little bit i've ordered things from thredup from the real real from poshmark ebay and i've had a little bit of luck with that so far i think it's really hard because there are so many people sourcing online that you really have to dig around and kind of find your niche or your brands that not a lot of other people know about so it's been a lot of learning for me just hours spent looking at items that are available out there at a good price and then comparing them to comps and seeing if they're actually worth picking up and then also researching a lot of brands and kind of making a list for myself of brands that i want to check in on on the real real on thredup on ebay and see if new items pop up that i can snag for a good price and make a profit on reselling last but not least as i mentioned before i'm super like energized by this whole thing my mind is buzzing constantly with all the things i've been learning and wanting to try and it's been kind of taking over my life i'm very thankful that i've been able to work around my daughter's nap schedule and that it's fit into my life in a pretty good way but i definitely need to learn more efficient practices get way more efficient with my listing process photographing finding stock photos listing and kind of batching all of that instead of buying an item being really excited about it photographing it looking for the stock photos listing it right then which is kind of what i've been doing so i want to kind of take a look at what i can make much more efficient to fit into the small windows because i do want to be present with my daughter with my husband just with our life and make this much more of a part-time gig than the very all-consuming thing that it has been and it's been really fun and it's been all-consuming because i want it to be and it's what i've been thinking about it's been what's on my mind for the last six weeks so no complaints there but in the future i definitely want it to take up less of my day so yeah those are five things that i've started doing or lessons i've learned and then five things i'm excited to figure out here in the near future i'm going to keep you updated on all of those in some upcoming videos i want to go over all of my numbers so far so what i've invested on inventory what kind of return i've seen on that am i out of the red yet no i'm not yeah maybe a haul of items i've sourced online and i'm so new to this it's so early in the journey that i've got a bajillion things to learn still and i'm gonna be here on youtube stalking resellers learning everything i can and i am going to be bringing you along with things i learned about sourcing about managing being a mom and having this reselling business and yeah i'm i'm loving it i'm loving this so far i'm really excited to have discovered this opportunity this community and i'm really thankful for you watching this

Channel: essie jane

Views: 26,066

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Id: C3w0RjXE1V4

Length: 18min 23sec (1103 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022