I want to start by letting you know this is NOT sponsored in any way, just my genuine thoughts from personal experience!
I’ve been reselling for almost 3 years and while I’m still a novice compared to Ebay’s first sellers back in the late 90’s I’m now a full time reseller and it’s my primary source of income. I use 6 different platforms (I can’t even believe it’s that many!) to resell on so I know a thing or two about the differences between them.
There’s a handful of steps you have to take to get your first sale and Poshmark definitely makes it simple enough for people looking to just sell a couple things from their personal closets – but it can be a powerful platform to run a real business on.
Create an account
Lets start off at the very beginning with creating an account. Some platforms require identification, a credit card on file, or even your social security number. Poshmark differs because they only ask you for an email address and that’s about it. I do recommend linking your bank account to get paid faster but Poshmark also gives you the option of mailing a paper check to your house if you aren’t comfortable putting in bank info.
When picking a username try to choose something simple that people can easily remember. Honestly it doesn’t matter very much but don’t use anything inappropriate or filled with lots of numbers and confusing text. You can choose something specific to the type of things you’ll be selling or go as simple as just your name.
You don’t need to do anything crazy with your profile to be making sales. You should have a profile picture of some sort which can be either an actual picture of you or you can create a basic logo. I recommend using the app Canva to create a logo; it’s free and extremely easy to navigate.
If you don’t know what to choose for your header you can just use a solid color. No need for an additional image if it’s just stressing you out. That’s it! Your profile is done.
Listing
When it comes to actually listing the items you want to sell, Poshmark has the simplest set up. You just have to fill in a title, description, category, size and price. They have a few optional categories you can fill in but that’s pretty much all there is to it. You set your price, list the item and then repeat.
They now allow you to post up to 16 photos for each item you list but you won’t need that many. I try to post 8-10 pictures for every item I list so I can be sure I’m showing as much as possible (this will help you if you have a return where someone claims you sent something in a condition different than what you actually did) but not wasting time taking unnecessary pictures.
Promoting/advertisements:
Right now Poshmark doesn’t have a way to run a sale on your entire closet (which is just what they call your store). There are ways that you can manually launch a sale but I won’t go into that in this post. The way you get eyes on your items is by sharing them a few times each day. It’s tedious but this is also an opportunity for you because when you share your items they get boosted to the top of the search results.
As long as you have things that people want to buy, you don’t have to do too much legwork to make it sell.
Shipping:
Poshmark makes it extremely easy for novice sellers to ship their sales. Once your item sells, they email you a shipping label and all you have to do is print it out, attach it to your box or mailer and drop it off at the post office (or schedule a free pick up and never even leave your house!). That’s it!
Getting Paid
This is probably your biggest curiosity: when do I get paid?
Poshmark’s system gives buyers 3 days after receiving their item to review and accept it. If they don’t “accept” or review your item, Poshmark will automatically release your funds after that third day. I find that most buyers are pretty good about leaving you a rating within a day or so of getting their purchase. Poshmark will also remind them and suggest that they leave you a review.
Most people don’t leave any actual text on their review but will rate you (it’s a star review system, 1-5). Although there are definitely some great buyers out there that will leave you very sweet reviews.
If they do happen to accept or review their purchase before the 3 days are over, your money will be released once they do so. Otherwise you have to wait the full three days.
Once your money is released, it will move from your pending balance to redeemable. How quickly the money moves from your Poshmark redeemable balance to your bank account depends on what bank you have and what day of the week you cash out. If you cash out on a Saturday you won’t get your money until likely Tuesday or maybe Wednesday.
Returns
My absolute favorite thing about Poshmark that sets it apart from all other platforms is their return policy. The only way anyone is allowed to return anything on Poshmark is if what you received is different than what the pictures and description said you were buying. In a little more detail this could mean: if you sold something that had flaws but didn’t take pictures of or describe the flaws, if you sent an item different than the one listed, etc.
Anytime someone wants to return something you’ll get a notification that a buyer opened a case. What happen then is that the buyer will tell Poshmark why they should be allowed to return the item and Poshmark’s support team will decide whether or not to approve it. In my experience they’ve typically sided in my favor or released funds to both parties involved, unless I was very clearly in the wrong; which I definitely have been because we all make mistakes. It’s just part of how you learn.