For those who resell things for a profit

[EconDiva]

I've been wanting to do some type of side hustle for a while.  The past year I've tried my hand at buying women's clothing items off of Poshmark and reselling them.  Thought I really knew my stuff but found out I didn't.  Although I've made some money, it's been very little compared to what I estimated would be made.

I want to expand my horizons and consider other types of items I could potentially do this with.  Ideally they would be items I could make ~$50-$100 off of.  (I'm not interested in moving large volumes of items at much lower profits due to time and space considerations.) 

Looking for suggestions from those that do this already...what types of items do you resell?  How long does it usually take from the time you purchase until the time the item is sold? 

[tralfamadorian]

I'm not comfortable talking about what I flip on a public forum but if you PM me, I would happy to discuss it. I would recommend looking into niches that you know a lot about- jobs, hobbies.

[AnnaGrowsAMustache]

I've been wanting to do some type of side hustle for a while.  The past year I've tried my hand at buying women's clothing items off of Poshmark and reselling them.  Thought I really knew my stuff but found out I didn't.  Although I've made some money, it's been very little compared to what I estimated would be made.

I want to expand my horizons and consider other types of items I could potentially do this with.  Ideally they would be items I could make ~$50-$100 off of.  (I'm not interested in moving large volumes of items at much lower profits due to time and space considerations.) 

Looking for suggestions from those that do this already...what types of items do you resell?  How long does it usually take from the time you purchase until the time the item is sold?

I resell clothing. I've been doing it for years. I've found that small sizes do not sell. At all. What sells is larger plus sizes in good quality fabric. Think wool, silk, linen etc. Cotton doesn't sell. Shoes need to be leather. Brands don't sell, unless they're actually of the Gucci/Armani/etc level. You also need a good pic, on a mannequin, and some decent text that tells people what to do with the item - winter work or play and versatile enough to wear with heels, boots or flat etc etc blah blah. Vintage and retro, homespun and handknit sweaters, those things also sell very well.

I typically sell half of what I list on the first listing, so within a week. I'll relist items once and sell about 10% of the relisted items. After that I cut off all embellishments, all buttons, all zips and dump the fabric. A box of lace or a tin of buttons also sells quite well, so collect it up and list it.

The other thing I often find is seriously retro curtains. I cut off the curtain hangy bits and faded bits and sell them as large pieces of retro fabric.

[fuzzy math]

I frequent a Goodwill Outlet (the bins, by the pound) that's in a big city near me. I'm always impressed at the amount of people who are there at any hour of the day who are clearly reselling. I'd love to have the balls to resell but my family's limited Ebay experience has really turned us off from that. I don't have the patience to deal with shitty buyers who are intent on fraudulently getting their $$ back from eBay or paypal.

I've been close to walking up to a couple of the friendlier looking people to find out what their niche is, or how they develop the sense of what to do. But its not always obvious if these people are turning much of a profit or not. Talking with a coworker about his wife's reselling store on eBay it became apparent to me that they had spent a ton of money on brand name clothing and had an entire room dedicated to this business of essentially getting your original $$ back and wasting a lot of time doing it. The only way I could see it being profitable would be buying that rare desirable item from the goodwill outlet

[J Dough]

The Scavenger Life podcast, forums, and weekly "What Sells?" videos have been great resources for me.


https://www.scavengerlife.com/

[Socmonkey]

I recently did an experiment in which I went to the Goodwill Outlet (pay by the pound) every day for 30 days.

At the end of those first 30 days I had a profit of $1,300.78. This was actual profit after all expenses. 9 weeks later, after more items sold, the profit from stuff found during those 30 days was up to $2,458.17. I usually stay away from clothes, but I do like shoes. I like media items the most, which are video games, audiobooks (mostly self-help), and niche CD/DVD courses.