How to Sell on Mercari -

It’s not an easy task trying to find time to spend time with your kids and keep the house in order when you have to work full-time to ensure the bills are paid. I struggled with the same issue for years, and I felt like I didn’t see my daughter enough. I honestly felt like I was missing out on her childhood.

That was a few years ago, but now I get to spend time with her and give her the attention she deserves. All it took was figuring out a way to find a way to bring in some extra income from the comfort of my own home. So how did I do it?

I started doing some research about additional income revenues and learned about a website called Mercari. This put me in the right direction to do what I needed to in order to see my daughter more often.

What is Mercari?

To put it in the simplest terms, Mercari is like an online yard sale. You can put a wide range of items up for sale, new or used, for people like you looking to buy things at a reasonable price.

People can sell all sorts of things on Mercari like:

Clothes
Toys
Electronics
Jewelry
Furniture

And other miscellaneous items. Point blank, if you have it and you don’t need it, you can sell it on Mercari (as long as it’s not illegal, obviously).

And that’s what I started doing, leading me down the road to go down to part-time at my job and spend some more time at home. I started off by selling the junk I didn’t need anymore like the hand-me-downs from my daughter, toys, and even some old furniture.

From there, it led me to start my own business in the comfort of my own home by using the creative mind that I was born with.

It Can’t Be That Easy, Right?

On the contrary, getting started on Mercari is very simple, and that’s coming from someone that had no prior knowledge of selling stuff on the internet. There are just a few easy steps that you have to follow, and you’ll be all ready to go.

Sign up!

This is the easy part. All you have to is go to the Mercari website and follow the sign-up instructions. It’s literally as easy as one, two, and three!

Show off the merchandise!

This one is pretty important, and you’ll want to be as detailed as possible. Take pictures of what you want to sell, and make sure you get the best angles and lighting. The more pictures you take showing off the condition of what you’re selling, the more likely it is to actually sell.

The Mercari app has it to where you can take photos straight from it, and it comes with tons of lighting and enhancing options to ensure your pictures are top quality. One more tip for when it comes to taking these pictures: use a neutral colored background. This will help to really show off the colors and little details of what you’re selling.

Give it a title!

You’ll want to be as thorough as you can at this point in as few characters as possible. Abbreviations are your best friend when giving a super-fast, basic description of your item. If the item is a name brand, try to include it!

Describe it!

Here’s where you go a little more in-depth about the item including:

Brand
Size
New or Used
Any flaws it may have

Basically, you want to describe it with any information that you would personally want to know about an item before you bought it. The more honest you are about its condition, the less likely it is you’ll come into complaints with your customers. You wouldn’t want to buy something that wasn’t as great as it sounded in its description, after all.

Decide where to put it!

This is when you choose a category to put the item under. I already gave you a small listing above of the sort of things you can sell on Mercari, and it’s as simple as finding what your item is. And if it doesn’t fit any under of the existing categories, just put it under “others.”

Brand it!

Now I know that I’ve already suggested putting the brand name in two other spots, but you’ve also got the chance here to place a brand name on your product. Brands are important when it comes to selling items, especially if it’s not for full retail price. It’s a great deal, after all.

Condition It!

You’ll need to report just what kind of condition the merchandise is in. You have plenty of options to choose from such as new or used, or fair or good condition. Remember to be honest. People are shopping on this website, knowing that not everything they get will be top tier.

Color It!

Describe the color of the merchandise as best as you can. Don’t just mention it’s yellow, but really go into the shade of it. This will help if the picture, for whatever reason, doesn’t highlight as well as it should.

And that’s literally how easy it is to put your items up for sale on Mercari. There is the shipping process as well. It might seem like a little much at first, but really, even the shipping process is pretty simple.

Anywhere in the USA

Mercari only offers shipping to the United States currently, but that’s not too much of a problem. In the end, that will help out your shipping costs. But let me go over the shipping process really quick, that way you can see for yourself that anyone can do it.

First thing you’ll have to do is on every item you sell, and the posting is going to have your zip code on it. This is so your customers know where the item is coming from and help them in expecting any delays due to distance.
Here comes a tricky part: Are you going to do a free shipping option, or have the buyer pay for it? You might think it would be better for you to have the customer pay for it, but hear me out. The free shipping can be covered by charging a little extra on the item, and a free shipping option really draws the customer in. It’s more likely to sell with that “free” tag on it.
Decide if you want to get a prepaid label from Mercari or do everything on your own. Taking advantage of Mercari’s shipping will save you about 30% on the retail cost of shipping, and their labels come with insurance of up to $200. This is opposed to doing it on your own and finding your own label and tracking number.
Get your tracking ID, as this is most important. You have three days to ship the items once it’s sold, and if you don’t put the tracking number in Mercari, the sale will automatically get canceled, even if you’ve already sent the item out!

It’s a simple process, right? Just make sure as you’re enjoying the free time you are having with your kids to send your shipments out on time. Otherwise, you won’t get paid.

What about getting paid?

When you sell on Mercari, the website will take a 10% commission on what you’ve sold, but this is to be expected from such a website. This is how they make their money, after all. And honestly, 10% really isn’t that much.

One of the only things I don’t like about Mercari is its payment process. Just like you have three days to ship out the item, the customer has three days to approve it on the website. What does that mean?

The customer must approve that the merchandise they received was indeed what they bought. They approve it, and you get paid. But what if they don’t approve it, does that mean you get nothing?

Of course not. If the customer doesn’t approve the transaction, then Mercari automatically approves it, and you’ll get your money. Praise them for that as we know a lot of people will just get lazy once they get their stuff and won’t come back to do a review. It’s honestly the same thing.

How does the payment system work?

There are two different ways that you can get paid on Mercari, and you’ll want to really weigh both options when trying to decide how you want it. Let’s go over the pros and cons of them both to help you decide.

Direct Deposit

Direct deposit is one that we are all familiar with, and it’s an automatic choice for most of us. Before you go barging in, though, let me go over these options

Pros:

Free for orders over $10
Straight into your checking account
No monthly maximum

Cons:

Takes 2-5 business days
$2 charge for orders under $10
$2 charge if the bank rejects your direct deposit

So, it comes down to getting all of your due funds without paying out extra, but you have to wait a little longer for it to hit your account.

Instant Pay

Instant pay is where you hook it up to a debit or credit card, and the payment goes immediately to that card. Just like with the direct deposit, there are some things you want to weigh on before deciding.

Pros:

Immediate payment to your account
Deposits balance to your debit card

Cons:

$2 charge for every deposit
Can only receive $500 a month
Can only request once per day

Instant pay is really great if you need the money immediately, but if you’re planning on making a lot of sales that could go past that $500 limit, I would think twice before choosing this option. Sometimes waiting the 2-5 business days is worth it to get the most out of your blooming business.

Time to Make a Business

As I’ve mentioned, starting out on Mercari was just the start of getting my foot in the door on starting my own online business. If this is what you are thinking about doing, don’t just settle down for selling random goods on this website, or any other.

Really sit down and make a plan. If you are going to be selling often and for a lot of money, consider opening an eCommerce store to make your life a lot easier. I did the same by starting a store on Shopify, and it’s really helped me in terms of getting my business going.

I can still sell on any website I want, and I still do frequently on Mercari as I love being able to sell things I just don’t have a need for. I’ve also been able to sell quite a few of my own products, and all of my experiences have been positive.

Why an Ecommerce?

Alright, imagine starting your own business and quickly becoming overwhelmed with everything, you suddenly find yourself needing to keep track of. Your inventory, prices, shipping prices, and shipping process; all of it can get lost in the lack of organization in the crazy life of being a mom.

Opening your store on an eCommerce website, like Shopify, is targeted into helping with organizing all of this stuff for you. And trust me, when going into this seriously and for the long run, you’re going to want this.

Otherwise, you’ll just drive yourself into madness, and that’ll cause you to lose the motivation you’d built up. It’s aimed to help you, and I can guarantee you that that’s exactly what it will do. It was a lifesaver for me as I got deeper into selling my own products but was getting lost in all of the confusion.

Nothing to lose

Seriously, everything I’ve talked about here is a lot easier to do than you’ve been led to believe. Stop wasting all of your time at work and never seeing your kids. Give yourself some freedom and peace of mind by going down to part-time or even quitting altogether once everything really starts working out.

Your kids will appreciate it just as much as you do. They may not say it or even realize it, but your kids love you and want you around more often. So do all of you a favor: ditch the full time and live the life you truly want.