One mom says she has sold almost 100 items in a single month, and she did it in the quiet hours after her kids went to sleep. Creator @helloimjen7 spent 30 days selling on Vinted, an app she describes as an online garage sale, and she came away a fan.
She sold on Poshmark for close to a decade because it was easy. Then she tried buying on Vinted, noticed that shipping ran only a dollar or two depending on package size, and decided to start listing there too. Her month of very part-time selling, she says, has changed where she puts her time.
The appeal comes down to money. On Vinted, she says, you can list items for as little as $1, $2 or $3, and you keep everything you earn because there are no seller fees for now. She expects that to change someday, and she also suspects the cheap shipping will not last forever, so she is taking advantage while it is here.
Why Cheap Items Finally Make Sense
She points to the math on her old favorite. On Poshmark, she says, an item that sells for $3 plus $6.49 shipping leaves the seller only $0.05 after the $2.95 fee. That is why she never would have listed a $3 item there. On Vinted, those same items are worth listing.
Her first listings came from the donation box she keeps for the thrift store. Things she was about to give away, such as kids’ toys priced at $3 and under, started selling quickly. She says that if she sits down and lists 10 items, at least one will usually sell while she is still listing, sometimes within minutes. Not everything sells that fast, but plenty does, and she has found toys and household items moving faster than clothing. A Halloween decoration and a box of Halloween costumes were among her quick sales, and she says she more than doubled her money on the Halloween box she bought.
She sums up the trade-off this way: she would rather take $5 less and sell something within a week than leave it sitting for a year or two. For now she plans to keep her pricier, more valuable pieces on Poshmark and send the everyday items to Vinted.
A Faster Way To List
Because items sell for so little, she keeps her effort low. For clothing, she takes a front photo, a back photo and photos of the tags showing the brand and materials, and that is it, unless a special feature needs to be shown. On Poshmark she used to take around 14 photos plus a video.
The result is a big time savings. Listing five items on Poshmark used to take her about an hour, she says, and now she gets through an entire pile in about a half hour.
She tried voice-to-text for titles and descriptions, but it left odd punctuation, missed capital letters and kept picking the wrong word for phrases like light signs of wear. So she found a better routine. She uploads her photos on her phone, taps the X in the upper left corner and saves the listing as a draft. Then she opens the drafts on her laptop, where she types much faster, and fills in the title and description with a few details such as buttons or fly and the fabric content, plus keywords.
Watch Your Balance
There is one warning she gives. Everything is so cheap that it is easy to spend your whole balance on the app. When her balance reaches a certain amount, she cashes it out so she is not tempted to shop.
She admits she has already been buying with it. She picked up Christmas presents, work clothes for her husband, and Tonies for her son, who got a Toniebox for his birthday. Tonies that run about $20 new, she says, have been showing up for $7 or $8. Selling little toys for $1 to $3 gives her enough to buy her son a new Tonie, and she says it is a nice way to move toys he does not use.
The Downsides She Has Noticed
She says you cannot send an offer to everyone who has liked an item with one click. Instead, you have to go to your inbox and message each person who favorited the listing, one at a time.
The bigger annoyance is shipping. About 90 percent of her orders go through USPS, but she says somewhere between 5 and 10 percent are FedEx. Those cannot go in the mailbox, so she has to drop them at a FedEx location about a mile away, which can be a hassle with two little kids. She has the Speed X option turned off, but the app warns that some shipping options cannot be disabled for every seller, so she still gets a few. She usually waits until she has several to take at once.
For USPS orders that do not fit in the mailbox, she schedules a pickup on usps.com and leaves the package on her porch. Package sizes on Vinted run from extra small to large, and she simply estimates the weight. She has seen people mention shipping items that were too heavy without any trouble, but she suggests not going overboard.
She calls Vinted possibly a fad or a phase, but says she is happy to enjoy it while it lasts. As for her own decluttering, she says the app is finally getting her to do what all those ads suggest, which is clear out her house, and get paid a little for it too.
Takeaways If You Want To Try It
- Start with the donation box. Items you were going to give away may be worth a dollar or three to someone.
- Keep listings simple with front, back and tag photos for clothing.
- Draft on your phone and finish the text on a laptop to save time.
- Cash out your balance regularly if you are tempted to shop.
- Remember that fees and shipping rules can change, so check the current terms before you rely on them.
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