Best Place To Sell Second Hand Clothes Online In Australia

To sell Second Hand Clothes Online is not one of my side hustles. However I’ve become more experienced in this area over the last two years from selling items from my own wardrobe.

As an impulsive buyer and someone who could be careless with money, I’ve got way too many clothes and shoes. The thing is, I hardly wear most of them. When at home, I’d wear the most comfortable and daggiest clothes. While at work, I normally just rotate a few pieces that I feel comfortable wearing all the time. You see, comfortable is what I always go for nowadays. It must be part of the aging process. But I’m ok with that. Since Covid restrictions hit, I hardly went anywhere. Therefore, there’s no use of going out clothes either.

I’m working on getting better with my personal finance and eliminating impulsive purchase. In the mean time, I’ve tried a few venues to sell second hand clothes online. It’s always good to declutter from time to time.  Although I could be wasteful in spending, I’m not a hoarder. In the past, I just dumped my unused clothes and shoes in the bin because I was too lazy. Or gave them away. But since I became older and hopefully wiser, I started to sell my used clothes online. Happy to report, the result is better than I’ve expected.

Below are the different online platforms I’ve tried. I’m also sharing the processes and the best place to sell 2nd hand clothes online from my personal experience.

Online platforms to Sell Second Hand Clothes Online in Australia

eBay

A friend of mine started to use eBay since 1997 and made a small fortune. Back then, it was crazily easy to sell just anything on eBay.

eBay is the pioneer of online platform for buying and selling second hand items. I never used eBay at early stages but watched some people made it big. Back in 2005 to 2009, any old leather bag could be bid to over $100. Old, unbranded polyester dresses would be sold to over $80 each, as long as it was “vintage”.  Are you surprised that I was one of those suckers who would pay $150 a piece for damaged “vintage” clothes from eBay? It all changed dramatically since eBay started to promote brand new merchandise from mega sellers. However unit this day, eBay remains to be the oldest and biggest online market for anything used.

I’ve only started to sell more 2nd hand clothing recently because my mission of decluttering.

Customer Base

eBay is a enormous market place with hundreds of millions of users per year. Because the super high Australia Post fees, I only post to Australia buyers. Nevertheless, I still find eBay has the most serious 2nd hand clothes buyers and you can get higher selling price from eBay as well.

Listing and selling process

There are a lot of mandatory fields you need to complete before finally listing an item. As a result, many people complain it’s a bit time consuming to list on eBay. However, once you get used to it, the process becomes easier.

eBay gives an Australian selling 40 free listings per months. After this number, you’ll have to pay listing fees. Therefore, it might be beneficial to have an eBay store for more serious sellers who need to list more than 100 items a month.

It always helps your sale no matter what platform you choose to sell from. As a general guide, it’s better to have 4+ pictures per item to achieve a better result.

Overall, I found it’s still fairy easy to sell on eBay. I normally just take photos using my phone and listing through eBay app right after that.

Selling Fees

Depends on different store levels, eBays charges different fees accordingly. For casual sellers without a store, the eBay selling fee in clothing category is about 14.2% nowadays.

Payments

Instead of allowing Paypal to process the majority of the payments, eBay has implemented their payment process system. It normally takes 2 -3 days to get payment deposited to sellers’ nominated bank accounts after buys make a payment.

Returns

eBay’s allowing buys to return no matter the seller is accepting returns or not. Return normally happens when the buyer files a case to return an item “not as described”. For 2nd hand clothing and handbags, it is extremely hard to describe as accurate as a picky buyer would expect.  If a return case is filed, the seller needs to fully refund the buyer including the original postage. On top of that, the seller is also required to pay for the buyer return postage. As a result, condition is the key. It’s much safer for a seller to sell near new or excellent conditioned clothes on eBay.

Shipping

eBay has a sophisticated system in place to offer sellers different shipping options. You can choose to use different packaging, Australian Post or courier service. You can offer free shipping or allow buyers to pick up from you. It can be overwhelming for a new seller. But once you decide which options suits you the best and stick to it, you’ll find it quite straight forward.

Facebook market place

Customer base

I guess Facebook market place has a large user base as well. Whether or not all users are genuinely looking for something to buy is another question. Once again it all depends what you sell. For instance, a friend of mine’s been very successful selling brand new office furniture as they have a office furniture company. When trying to list a few 2nd hand clothes to sell on Facebook market place, I found it’s a complete waste of time. Most people just click a button to send you a default question “is this still available?”, then vanish completely after that. Others just want to chat and consume more of your time.

Listing and selling process

Listing on Facebook market place is easy. All you need to do is load a picture and add some very basic information. The whole listing process can be lightening fast. The downside is your items is hardly visible. Another annoying factor is they won’t allow you to list any designer brand, including common brand such as Ralph Lauren.

Selling fees

There’s no listing or selling fees using Facebook market place. So if you manage to sell something on Facebook market place, you get to pocket every cents you collect from selling.

Payments

No complication or long wait here. You can take cash, bank deposit or Paypal payments, depending on what you and your buyers agreed upon.

Returns

This is between you and you buyer. Most buyers pick up so they’ll decide if they want to buy or not on the spot. Therefore, no returns involved in most cases.

Shipping

Occasionally there will be interstate buyers. Shipping options and costs depends on seller and buyer’s mutual agreement.

Gumtree

Customer base

Gumtree.com.au has a bit over 7 million users in Australia. Most users are genuine sellers or true bargain hunters. In order to sell, the selling price has to be very low. The good news is, 2nd clothes are the most popular category.

Listing and selling process

It’s very easy to list and sell on Gumtree as the process is very simple. Bear it in mind though, it’s better to list using a PC or a laptop because it can be slow to list using a smart phone.

Selling fees

There can be no listing or selling fees selling through Gumtree. Hence the reason it’s so popular in Australia. The catch is you’ll have to keep updating or relisting after every few days. Otherwise your listings won’t be visible to users, unless you pay a fee to stay visible.

Payments & shipping

From my experience, buyers mostly come to pick up from you. They’ll either pay by cash on pick up or transfer you the money instantly.

Poshmark

Poshmark is the latest online social marketing place in Australia. I first heard of Poshmark a few years ago from a story about someone in the US quitting her job and became a full time Poshmark seller. Since then I was curious if one day Poshmark will become available in Australia. It really happened. Back in May a Poshmark Australis ad popped up in my Instagram feed. It turned out, Poshmark app expanded to Australia market since 16th Feb 2021.

Unless my usual self, waiting for years and years to join eBay or any social media, this time I set up an Poshmark account fairy quickly. I’ve started to list a few things on Poshmark for more than 1.5 months now. Below is the what I learned from my experience.

Customer base

Obviously Poshmark has much fewer users being fairly new. I don’t know what Poshmark US is like but it certainly feels that there are more sellers than buyers on Poshmark app in Australia.

As it is marketed as a social marketing place, Poshmark is operating very much like Instagram. You get likes and followers every time you list an item for sale by a popular brand. But I suspect a lot of those likes and followers are robots. They are tools from sellers to get your attentions, hence hardly any of these likes or followers are genuine.

Poshmark market place is specialising in clothing and accessories, so hopefully the Australian customer base will build up gradually.

Listing and selling process

Compared to eBay, listing and selling process is only slightly less complicated. I don’t like the fact every time you list something for sale, you have put the original price in. Otherwise, you can’t list it. To make it easier, I just put “0” in that field to save some time.

You also gets way too many messages from Poshmark everyday and it can be quite distracting.

Selling fees

Poshmark generally charges a 20% flat fee, plus GST. So it works out to be 22%, which is the highest amongst all. Also, for items below $20, the fee is flat a flat AUD4.35 (including GST). So if you sell something for $10, your fee will be 43.5%. (4.35/10).

Payments

You only get paid either when the buyer’s received your item and accepted it in Poshmark, or 3 days after your items is delivered. As you can see, depending your shipping destiny, it can be a long time before you get your payment.

Returns

Poshmark doesn’t generally accept a return unless buyer file a case because the item you sold is grossly mispresented.

Shipping

Shipping in Australia is all done by a courier company Sendle. Buyers pay a flat $9.5 shipping fee. Once your item is sold and paid, you’ll be able to print a shipping label. Poshmark Shipping labels don’t support packages over 5kgs. In other words, if you sell an item of more than 5kgs, you buyer still only needs to pay $9.5. You as a seller, need to pay the additional shipping fee charged by Sendle out of your own pocket.

There’s no other shipping option available at the moment.

The best place to Sell Second Hand Clothes Online in Australia

I’ve tried to sell on all those online platforms so far. And if you ask me now what’s the best to place to sell 2nd clothes online in Australia? I’d say eBay yields the best result so far. Fair enough, the listing process can be lengthy. People complain the selling fee is getting too high. And you can be in a vulnerable position being an eBay seller at times. But you get the most buyers from eBay and the selling price is the highest compared to other platforms.

Nothing was sold on Facebook market place in a month so I stopped listing on Facebook market place after a while.

I’ve sold a few items on Gumtree in 2 weeks time. Because it’s not always convenient for me to have people coming over picking up things, I stopped listing on gumtree. In the last 2 months,  I’ve only sold 6 items sold through Poshmark. Though it doesn’t sound a lot, I guess it’s still better than nothing. Since Poshmark is the newest addition to Australian online market place, I’ll be a little more patient and see how it goes.

In the past 3 months, I  recouped $3,500 from selling my clothes online, which is not bad. There are not as many options to sell second hand clothes online in Australia but still enough to choose from.