About two months after COVID-19 sent me packing from Florida State University and back into my childhood bedroom, I found myself sitting in the midst of piles of clothing. The abundance of clothing around me was soon going to be reorganized into my closet and dresser, or so I thought. Prior to sitting amongst my clothes, I was scrolling endlessly through TikTok and coming across a variety of interesting quarantine activities people were taking up. I remembered seeing lots of people using Depop to actively clean out their closets and make some spare cash. I knew my closet was not going to become the most organized given the excess amount of clothing I had that I either outgrew or simply did not want anymore, so I downloaded Depop.
To my disappointment, the first couple of days on Depop, I had no luck. I waited nearly a week to see if I could get any engagement on my posts, but to my frustration, nothing changed. Even more disappointing was seeing that there was little potential for additional engagement in the upcoming weeks because of my lack of likes and views overall. That same night, while watching Hulu, I got an advertisement for Mercari, another online marketplace. At this point, I had nothing to lose and everything to sell, so I downloaded Mercari.
Within a day of listing around three items, I sold my first item. A few hours after that, I sold another item. Within the week, I had sold around five items, and my excitement was through the roof. For someone who actively tried to increase my engagement on Depop, seeing my items sell so quickly on Mercari felt surreal. It was almost as if Mercari had magical selling abilities, or the universe was repaying me after a series of failures with Depop. Seeing my items sell one day at a time motivated me to go through my entire closet and find more items to potentially sell, seeing that I had so much I wanted to get rid of over the years. Plus, since I was not able to work during the pandemic, given health and safety concerns, Mercari allowed me to make some pocket money on the side.
As the weeks went by, I kept cleaning out my closet and finding more and more to sell and finding additional items to list on Mercari positively correlated to the number of sales. Not only did I sell clothing, but also swimwear, cosmetic products and regular household items that needed spring cleaning. The app has many categories that allow buyers and sellers to easily organize their listings so that customers can find what they’re looking for and vice versa. Not to mention, the app clearly tracks how many items you have sold, how many items are in the progress of being sold and most importantly, how much revenue you have made.
After playing around with the app for nearly nine months now, I can confidently say that the most captivating features on Mercari are the “promote” and “offer to likers” feature. The “promote” feature conveniently allows you to decrease your listing price to typically around five percent lower than the current listing price while the app also boosts your listing to new sellers and notifies the people who liked your listing that there was a price drop. Moreover, the “offer to likers” component allows you to directly send your likers special price offers for your item. Buyers are also able to make offers on your listed items. Then, the seller can either accept the first offer a buyer sends or can make a counter-offer. All of these unique features on this online app foster an engaging marketplace that can be accessible to all types of sellers and buyers. After learning and experimenting with these features on Mercari, I soon found myself checking this app as often—if not more than—my regular social media accounts.
Overall, I’ve only experimented with two of the most popular online market apps and struck out with incredible luck in one of them. If you’re someone who actively sells items online and is having great luck with Depop, props to you, and maybe you can teach me one day. But for now, if you’re someone new to the online marketplace and want somewhere to start, I would first and foremost recommend Mercari. If you do choose to try it out, here’s my link to sign up!
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