How I made money selling clothing online

By: Basmah Hendy  

Good morning and Happy Friday! 

Maybe your summer has looked like travelling, catching up with friends, or spending time with your family. Whatever the case may be, you probably realized that all those things can start to cost a lot of money. I know that feeling all too well.  

In the months leading up to my sixteenth birthday, I was ecstatic. But it wasn’t because I wanted my license or to eat birthday cake. What I really wanted was to finally get a job.  

My birthday is right before the school year starts in September, which made the summer before my sixteenth birthday especially frustrating. If only I was born a few months earlier, I would have been able to land a job and make some money.  

So instead of sulking around and imagining what could have been, I took matters into my own hands. Just because I couldn’t work at a job, doesn’t mean I couldn’t work. Nothing was stopping me from starting a side hustle.  

I have always had a passion for sustainable fashion, and decided to see if I could sell secondhand clothing from the thrift store. I would force my mom to drive me and spend hours looking through the racks. After a while, I began accumulating a collection of clothing I could start to work with.  

I would spend my days washing, sewing, and repairing the clothing I found so I could sell it. I made a tripod setup with some textbooks and would use the self-timer setting on my phone to take pictures. After this, I would take measurements of the clothing and keep track of that information.  

I decided to create an Instagram account to sell my clothing and have people DM me if they were interested. Though I might change my approach now if I were starting over again, it worked well at the time. Slowly but surely, I started gaining a following and began to get customers! I also listed my clothing on Poshmark, Depop, and Facebook marketplace to broaden my reach since those platforms were free.  

Once the school year started again, I kept with my clothing business. I would do drop-offs at school, during my lunch break, and whatever else it took.  

It was incredibly fun for me and was my first experience ever making money. I learned to track my inventory, spending, and profits using spreadsheets. It gave me something to look forward to doing on the weekends and in the afternoons after school.  

Looking back now, I’m incredibly grateful that I took the chance and decided to start something. Even though I don’t sell clothing anymore, I still use the skills that I learned from it. To anyone looking to start a side hustle, I would encourage you to give it a try!  

At best, you’ll make some extra money and worse comes to worse you’ll have some great stories to tell.  

Thank you to all who took the time to read this post! If you have any questions or want to rant, please feel free to reach out via Insta or our email (@mapmentorship / mapmentorship@outlook.com).