How it works: With the tagline "secondhand clothes, firsthand fun," this e-commerce company appeals to thrifty types looking to make money and sell their clutter for cash. The online thrift store sells women's and children's clothes. You send the clothes in a ThredUp bag with a prepaid mailing label, and ThredUp decides the value, favoring popular brands and clothing in good condition. You'll pay a fee if your items aren't accepted, so consider holding a yard sale if your items have seen better days. But if you have quality clothing, ThredUp enables you to sell these unwanted items and may even pay you enough so that you can buy new threads.
Highlights: The process is simple. ThredUp sends you a prepaid bag to put your clothes in, or a shipping label if you prefer.
Drawbacks: You won't get paid until your clothes are accepted by ThredUp. And if your items aren't accepted, they are recycled unless you pay a fee to have them shipped back to you.
Time investment: Minutes, or as long as it takes to look through your closet and navigate ThredUp’s website.
How it works: Like ThredUp, Swap is an online consignment store. After you send in used clothes and toys and games, Swap will sell them for you. As for how much you can make, the website explains that if something is priced for $8 or less, you'll get 15% cash back or you can get a slightly more generous store credit. If your item sells for more than $8, you'll get 70% of the cash, minus a $4.95 processing charge, or you can get a slightly more generous store credit.
Highlights: It's easier than selling on Facebook Marketplace, where you generally must meet a buyer to hand off an item. Aside from gathering items in your home and putting them in a prepaid box, the process is easy.
Drawbacks: As with ThredUp, your clothes that you try to sell with Swap may be rejected, which means either you won't get them back or you pay a fee to have them returned. There are also fees if more than 40% of your Swap box is rejected.
Time investment: Minutes, or as long as it takes to hunt for some clothes and become familiar with Swap’s website. Even if you sell something quickly, it can take some time to get paid. You’ll get paid at the end of the month for sales from the prior month.
How it works: If you have an old cellphone or another device like an iPad or MacBook, you can sell your electronics here. The website will give you a cash offer for your device. If you agree, you'll receive packaging materials. Gazelle pays the shipping costs, and you wait for a check in the mail, a gift card or cash transferred to your PayPal account. You may not make a fortune, but it's better than letting an unused device collect dust on a shelf – and far better for the environment to sell it than toss it in the trash.
Highlights: It's a pretty seamless process from start to finish.
Drawbacks: If you send in, say, a phone, and the phone doesn't meet Gazelle's expectations, the offer for what it will pay may go down considerably. On the other hand, Gazelle will send your phone back for free. So you aren't risking much other than time.
Time investment: Minutes. If all goes well, once Gazelle has your phone, you’ll have it inspected and be paid within about three to five business days.
How it works: This is a popular site for selling gift cards. If you have unused gift cards, CardSell will make you an offer and you can exchange them for cash or another gift card.
Highlights: There's no charge to mail your gift cards to CardSell, and the process is pretty easy.
Drawbacks: You'll never get the full value of your gift card.
Time investment: Minutes. Within 48 hours, you should see the money in your PayPal account.
How it works: This is an online rewards program that has been around for 20 years. As its vice president of marketing, Becky Ford, says, “It is a free website that allows you to earn money online in various ways, including completing surveys, visiting websites, completing offers, and watching videos.”
Highlights: You typically get paid within three days, and there is no minimum amount required to cash out, which you’ll do through PayPal. You can also get paid through gift cards for as low as $5.
Drawbacks: As you’ve probably guessed, you aren’t going to get rich doing this. As Ford says, “We do not represent our site as a job, but rather a side hustle.” She says it’s something to help stretch your budget. So how much might you earn?
“The most lucrative way our members earn is by taking surveys,” Ford says. “The typical survey is around $.75 for 10 minutes, though we have some surveys worth well over $2.”
Time investment: Ford says that this is something you might do “while watching TV or after the kids go to bed.” So … this might take as little time or as long as you want.
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