I am naturally an enthusiastic, joyful person. I declare that I love all kinds of things I encounter on an average day—and I usually mean it. I have noticed, however, that many people—especially those who regularly post on social media—are not like me. People who post their gripes online tend to do so because, well, they have gripes, only some of which are valid. Thus, I tend to disregard the crankier opinions I see on X and Reddit until I’ve tried something out for myself.
That’s what happened this week when I decided to try Poshmark’s “Promoted Closet” feature, which allows you to pay a little money to have your sale listings promoted to potential buyers. I’m in several resale forums and see posters denigrating the feature all the time, but as usual, my initial suspicion that people are just generally too critical was correct: I do love Promoted Closet. Still, I noticed right away that it’s not necessarily suitable for everyone.
What is Promoted Closet?
Promoted Closet is a paid feature on Poshmark that puts your listings in front of potential buyers during one-week campaigns that automatically renew and can be canceled any time. When someone searches for a specific brand or item, if you’re promoting your closet and have something that aligns with their search, it’ll pop up higher in their search results.
You get a free one-week trial before you start actually paying, which is what convinced me to finally try it. I already pay for third-party apps like Vendoo and PrimeLister, which help me crosspost my for-sale items across various marketplace apps and give me a little help running my shop through automations, so the idea of paying for a third thing was daunting. I decided to give it a shot and see if it worked well enough to justify continuing to pay and, perhaps, canceling one of my other app subscriptions.
Within two days, I made $115 in sales from promotions—but that was off one sale (I’ll touch on that more in a moment). The other basics you need to know are these: Opting in to Promoted Closet gives you access to a dashboard that breaks down how many clicks you’ve gotten and what you paid per click. It tracks sold listings, too, and outlines your return on investment. The money you pay comes off a debit card, not out of your Poshmark balance, so you’ll get a traditional charge.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
Since I have been running it for four days, here are my stats: I got 3,756 impressions, 96 clicks, and one sale for $115. My “spend” was $8.64 (though not really, since I’m running the free trial), which amounts to $0.09 per click. My click-through rate is 2.56% and my conversion rate is 1.04%. I do wish the dashboard would highlight “likes” that I received from promotion clicks, but it doesn’t.
I noticed a greater amount of likes on certain listings over the last few days, but can’t prove they came from the promotion, although I think they did. When someone likes a listing, you can send them deal offers or move their liked listings into a bundle that makes it easier for them to buy from you in bulk, so to me, likes are the most critical part of Poshmark selling. Seeing how many of those I got from the promotion would make me more inclined to keep paying, provided I got a lot—even if someone only “likes” something during a week-long promotion campaign, they are more likely to buy it in the future, making the campaign more worth it.
What are the criticisms of Promoted Closet?
The criticism largely centers on the promotion being a “money grab” for Poshmark, which already takes a 20% cut of your sale as it is. (In the post linked above, though, you’ll notice the author mentions that “sales tank” when you cancel Promoted Closet, which hints at the fact that it does work.)
Other criticism comes from those who didn’t notice an uptick in sales despite paying for the promotion. I have some theories on that.
Who should try Promoted Closet?
I did make a sale within two days of promoting my closet. (I make a lot of sales, to be clear, but in the promotions dashboard, Poshmark does a good job of breaking down which sales came from clicks on promotions, specifically.) I sold a pair of Gucci sunglasses for $115. That told me all I need to know about for whom this is worth it, but I was also able to see on the dashboard which of my listings are getting the most impressions. Gucci, Prada, Alo, Reformation, On Clouds, Nike, Fendi, and Skims are all on the list. None of the SHEIN or fast fashion pieces I’m reselling makes an appearance. This all makes sense—and gives a few clues as to which sorts of sellers should even bother promoting.
The promotions appear in search results, right? That means that if you’re selling a lot of unknown brands or random goods, there’s a higher chance few people will be searching for them during your one-week campaign period.
One of the reasons I like Poshmark more than other resale apps like Depop is that anything and everything eventually sells because the focus isn’t solely on clothes—but that can take a while. I’ve sold bobbleheads, electronics, and notebooks, but those sales took more time than, say, when I list a Skims t-shirt—because fewer people are searching for them. If all I sold were random doodads or clothing brands that don’t get much search traction, there would be no point in paying for promotion.
I am not saying you shouldn’t list unknown brands or random tchotchkes—but if that’s all you’re selling, promotion might not be worth it for you. If you have listings from well-known, popular brands, promotion is a much better idea.
Moreover, the way you price your stuff matters in this decision. If you sell because you want to clear out your closet and you don’t care much about getting an item’s true value back in the sale, I wouldn’t promote the closet. A lot of sellers price their stuff cheaply to entice buyers, clear out clutter, or make it more likely to sell multiple listings at once. That’s fine, but if you’re dealing with $10 and $15 listings, it just doesn’t make sense to pay for that.
On my $115 sale, I made $92 after Poshmark took its cut. My “spend” on promotions so far is about $9, so if I weren’t using the free trial, I’d already be down to $83 profit. That’s still not too bad, all things considered, but if my promoted sale had been for something cheaper, I can see how spending on the promotion campaign could eat up the majority of your earnings really quickly.
I do like this feature and will continue to use it, but only because I have many listings for high-search, high-value goods. If that’s not what you have, maybe stay away, although it certainly can’t hurt to test the week-long free trial.
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This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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