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[bctt tweet=”Retake pictures of your listings that aren’t moving, then relist them.” username=”AshlynTengan”]
[bctt tweet=”5 reasons you’re not selling more on Poshmark (and how to fix them!)” username=”AshlynTengan”]
Can’t watch the video right now? Check out the transcript below!
My name is Ashlyn Tengan and I’m the host of this group, Poshmark Sellers, and I feel like we have a really tight knit community which I really, really like! I love that! Don’t you guys love that?
Basically what we’re going into today is 5 reasons you’re not selling more on Poshmark, and we’re going to cover how to fix them as well because stating problems is kind of a downer and we don’t want that. We’re here for solutions!
How many of you have heard… and those of you who are already going through the challenge you already know this… but how many of you have heard that self-sharing (sharing your own closet) increases your sales?
But no matter what you do no matter how many times you seem to share it nothing seems to work!
Maybe you’ve tried relisting your items… you’ve tried target following people… you’ve done pretty much everything and nothing seems to work! So you feel like giving up…
When I first got started I was learning the ropes just like everybody else and I quickly realized that sharing your items was vital to getting your listings seen.
Some of my items were not moving. I did some experiments and some of them worked! The more I tried those experiments out, the more I was like, “Hey, this is kind of cool!”
So let’s dive right into it.
- Your titles and your descriptions are not keyword rich
What does that mean? Keywords are words that people are actually typing in Poshmark to look for items. For example, there are listings that I’ve seen that have said “cute dress” but if you think about it… as a buyer, are you typing in “cute dress”?
Or are you typing out “LuLaRoe Nicole Dress” because that’s what you’re looking for?
You have to think like a buyer when putting listings on Poshmark. I’ve seen things like “cute dress”, “adorable top”, “pink shoes”… things like that! Those are keywords that should go in the description.
So notice I say that your titles and your descriptions are not keyword rich so what’s really important is that those keywords are in the title as well as the description because that’s what’s going to get your listings found better in Poshmark.
- Your photos are not attractive
This is where a lot of you are probably saying, “She’s going to talk about my photos…
but I’m gonna talk about my photos, too, because I’m not perfect!
Your photos are not attractive – meaning… they’re dark… there’s not enough light… there’s too much clutter in the background… think of it like Forever 21 as an example. When you go into the Forever 21 website, how are their clothes displayed? Their pictures are bright. They make it look so clean! Clean photo makes buyers want to look more into it.
Yes, there are times when there are pictures that have a lot of clutter in the background (and when I say clutter, I mean that there’s somebody standing in the mirror holding their phone taking a picture but their bed is messy, they’ve got stuff on the floor that maybe the public shouldn’t see…) so things like that.
Compared to other photos where I’ve seen people really dress up their pictures, which is really cool! They have a nice background, some kind of wall, some plants, some have a little sign… but it looks clean! That’s the point I’m trying to get across.
So that’s my example of Forever 21 ~ how their photos look so clean!
I challenge you to retake pictures of your listings this week and post that again especially for those items that aren’t moving.
I challenge you to look at a website and see how their pictures are set up. They have professionals who take their pictures to list their items online to sell, not just to play because they’re serious about their business. Model your photos after retail companies like Forever 21… and Target (because I love them).
- Your descriptions are either non-existent or they’re hard to read
There are some listings I come across that are non-existent – meaning the only things in their description is “NWOT” stands for “new without tags” or “good condition” and I cringe when I see listings like that because I’m like, “Are you kidding me?! You are trying to sell your items and all you’re saying is ‘good condition’?!” It makes me cringe!!
If it makes you cringe, too, then throw emoji up because I cannot be the only one who feels that way.
And the other part where your descriptions are hard to read… so I’ve seen listings that are literally a huge chunky paragraph.
I don’t want to read it! You don’t want to read it!
You opened that listing because first they caught you with a nice title – their keywords were in there… their photos were attractive so you opened the item and they got this huge paragraph there.
Nobody wants to read that.
So if you have some chunky paragraphs, I am going to challenge you again this week to go in there and break it up into something that’s easier to read that you would want to read.
What I found that was working for me was actually using emojies to break up the paragraphs! For some reason, the eye is really attracted to an emoji (which is why I put that in the Poshmark Closet Checklist that I have). There something magical about that!
People also don’t realize the real estate they have in the description area. Besides just describing your items, state your policies.
- You’ve got negative vibes
You’ve got negative vibes by saying “no trades”, “no low balling”.
I’ve even seen somebody say, “Low Ballers will be blocked!”
My jaw dropped.
I was like, “Are you kidding me?! Are you kidding me?”
Let me dig into this deeper.
Okay, first let me go back into the description as your real estate. So use that real estate to your advantage. Instead of saying “no trades, no lowballs”, say something positive like “all offers welcomed!” Say something friendly because you’re using the description area as you’re selling point.
Imagine you’re walking into a store and right away they’re telling you, “Cash only.”
Excuse me?
Or… “No trading! No lowballing!”
Okay… I wasn’t planning on doing that in the first place.
But people are doing that! I understand why people are doing that because they don’t want to deal with people sending in lowball offers in the first place and they don’t want people asking them to trade… but think of Poshmark as a business.
This is your business. You wanna be friendly. You want to be open. You don’t want to shoo away customers who are visiting your closet for the first time just by saying “no no no no” – you’re actually turning them away! Keep the vibes positive!
- You’re not selling what people want
It’s okay to have non-brand items because I know a lot of us have items that don’t have a brand on it because they’re cute! It’s okay to have those, but I do think that you’ve got to have some brand items in there.
How do you know what’s trending on Poshmark?
Posh is telling you right there! If you check out the parties that they have, there are specific brand name parties that Poshmark hold four times a day.
Just to name a few brands out there:
Anthropologie, Lucky Brand, Free People, Brandy Melville, Three Birds, Nike, Lululemon, Steve Madden, Zara, Rebecca Minkoff, LuLaRoe, Adidas… all of these brands are in the Poshmark parties.
They’re not keeping it a secret! They give you a big hint to what’s selling!
So if you can get your hands on some of those brands, go take a look at the Posh parties to see what brands they’re advertising because that’s really the key – they want you to sell! Those are things that are trending.
Poshmark is a business. When you make money, they make money, so of course they’re gonna want to help you sell more things so that they can make money to keep them in business! So if you have a bunch of items that are non-brand items, try to add in a mix of the brands that are trending on Poshmark as well.
When somebody opens up Poshmark they’re typing in something specific (and I’m going to go back to LuLaRoe because that’s what I sell). If I’m looking for a Carly, which is my favorite dress of LuLaRoe, I’m going to type in “LuLaRoe Carly” and all these Carly dresses are going to show up. Now that I got the results, I’m going to pick the listing’s photo that’s catching my eye (which is the importance of photos). If your photos catch my eye, I’ll open the listing and see what details there are – if this person is friendly… if there’s any flaws (you all the details about that)… if it’s easy to read (if it’s not easy to read, I’m not gonna read it. I’m just gonna move onto the next one because nobody got time for that.) Then maybe if I like what I see, I’m gonna browse your closet to see if there’s anything else that you have in there that I might want to bundle to save (because hello… I personally feel that the shipping price for one item is kind of high so I kind a want to take advantage of that to see what else there is). If I do find a non-brand item in your closet, then that’s how that gets found.
Just to review:
- Your title and descriptions are not keyword rich
- Your photos are not attractive
- Your descriptions are either nonexistent or hard to read
- You’ve got negative vibes
- You’re not selling what people want
I just want to remind you that all of these things are exactly but I list in the Poshmark Closet Checklist that I’m always talking about.
Like I said last week – I’m always talking about it because it works.
If there’s one thing you need to do… maybe you’ve been relisting and it’s still not selling… go back and retake your pictures. Make them brighter. Set them up a different way. Maybe people need to see how the item can be worn before they can actually understand the listing, especially with LuLaRoe. If you guys know the LuLaroe brand, they have some pretty wild prints out there. Sometimes people would be like, “that is questionable… I’m gonna pass”… But if you dress it up a different way or pair it with something else so that the customer can see how the item can be worn, that helps increase sales tremendously.
Comments (3)
Great summary. Sometimes(often) P.M.’s instructions r not at all clear& ,
easy. For a new P.M.er, how would u know the symbol for sharing.
Every
time I ask a ?, their answer:send a screenshot of what u mean…
WOW!!
U R right: pictures!!
Super helpful guide for a new Posher. Thank you so much for publishing this! XXX
My pet peeve with Posh listings is the utter absence of a description and the terrible photos. Fabric content and measurements are a must, yet around 80% of the listings don’t have them. The words ‘Condition is used’ are the only descriptors. Photos are blurred or nearly black; color is so far off that ‘cream’ looks like saffron and black looks like sapphire blue, and every photo looks like a completely different color; color and brand aren’t listed; garments are wrinkled and rumpled in a half-twist on the floor; they’re left, factory-folded in their factory-sealed packaging so all you see is the neckline; photos are cropped so tight, you can’t see the sleeves, hem or the cut of the garment; there are no closeups to show the print on printed fabric; only one photo is included; or in one absurd case, the cover photo was of the plain cardboard carton they received it in, and the item itself was never shown.
This puts the burden on the buyer to play ‘twenty questions’ in order to know what the item looks like and how it would fit. This is a disservice to buyers and makes the process of buying a huge chore. And about 50% of the time, sellers don’t answer the questions—even when they’ve been asked repeatedly over a period of months to please respond. Often the item is purchased while you wait for an answer that never comes. And my favorite: sellers who have abandoned their closets, instead of taking a minute to mark their closet as NOT FOR SALE, or just removing the listings altogether, and they don’t ship your purchase, and ignore attempt by Poshmark to contact them.
If it were just a few sellers who do these things, that would be one thing. But there are so many, it defies reason. This is something you just don’t see on other online marketplaces such as eBay, Etsy or Amazon, where sellers are more professional, overall.
I believe Poshmark is responsible for much of this because they offer cash or credit prizes for each listing during Love It, or List It promotions. They’re virtually paying sellers to rush their listings, which means for the buyer, no description and unacceptable photos on which to base their decision of whether to buy, or not. This negatively impacts my impression of Poshmark, when compared with other online marketplaces, making it seem a notch above an online garage sale.
eBay has numerous required data fields that must be populated before a listing can be submitted. Why doesn’t Poshmark? Do they not care about their reputation? Or are their programmers so inexperienced that they don’t know how to program even the most basic functionality?
As a seller, I go to a great deal of effort to give every conceivable bit of information on my items—all of the details I’d want to know before purchasing. I correct photos for lighting and color and show every side of an item, with closeups of smaller detailing. My goal is to make shopping my closet effortless; minimizing the need for them to ask questions, and answering the very few that are asked promptly and courteously. But then, I’m not concerned with winning contests for listing the most items in a day. I’m concerned with selling my items and creating a positive experience for my buyers. Why are there so many sellers who are not? And why does Poshmark encourage quantity over quality? Both would seem to be shooting themselves—arm their buyers—in the foot.