Goodbye Clutter: top 4 apps we used to sell

You’ve made the difficult decision of deciding which items to keep vs. let go. Congrats! Now, the fun begins – making some moolah on the things that no longer serve you.

If you’re like us, it isn’t as simple as having a garage sale. Perhaps you live in an apartment and don’t even have a garage, or you’re trying to sell most of your items in the middle of winter. Whatever the case, you probably want to try to make some money off of your items instead of selling everything at dirt cheap prices.

Through trial and error, we learned that we could make the most money for our stuff through selling items on various digital platforms and apps. While we made money through all of the apps below, each presented its own unique set of pros and cons as noted in our descriptions.

Here are the top 4 apps we used to help us sell our belongings:

1. Poshmark

Used to sell: clothes, shoes, and accessories

Pros:

• You can send offers to people who “like” your items as well as receive & accept offers
• Shipping is fast & easy because you don’t need to use your own boxes (you can use priority mail boxes at the post office)

cons:

• Poshmark takes the highest percentage of your sale compared to other clothing apps we used (20% of the total if you sold the item for $15 or more; flat fee of $2.95 for anything under $15).

2. Depop

Used to sell: clothes, shoes, and accessories

pros:

• It seems that buyers on this app are generally willing to pay a little more for items
• Depop only takes 10% of your sale

cons

• People can send you offers on your items, but after you accept, they have to confirm the order (which many buyers do not end up doing)
• Shipping is more difficult because you have to estimate the weight of your items and provide your own boxes

3. Mercari

Used to sell: clothes, shoes, and accessories

Pros:

• Mercari only takes 2.9% + 50 cents of your sale (best rate!)
• As a seller, you can choose to offer local delivery where an Uber driver will pick up the item from your home & deliver it if someone in your town purchases your item

CONS:

• Less people seem to use this app
• You have to provide your own boxes for shipping

4. Facebook Marketplace

Used to sell: furniture, decor, books, kitchenware, other misc. items

pros:

• Many people use this app
• You can either ship items or meet up with people locally
• You keep 100% of your local sales (if you’re shipping, they take 5% of the total if you sold the item for $8 or more; flat fee of $0.40 for anything under $8)
• You can renew or delete/relist items that haven’t gotten many hits
• You have more control over how you are paid (cash, Venmo, PayPal, etc.)

CONS:

• You will get many messages that read, “Hi, is this still available?” You will likely respond with a “yes,” then never hear anything back
• If you ship items, you have to provide your own boxes
• Many people are looking to negotiate on this app. Not a bad thing, but consider listing the item a little higher than the amount you hope to sell it for