Five ways to make money from your clothes – even without selling them | Personal Finance | Finance

If you’re overdue a wardrobe clear out, don’t just take your unwanted clothes to the charity shop. You could make cash from them! The MoneyMagpie team love to find savvy ways to make extra cash to help you live a richer life – so try using your clothes in these ways to boost your bank account.

Sell Clothes Online

This is the most obvious one, but we’ve got to mention it. Classic online auction site eBay has been a stalwart of selling second-hand clothes online for years – but now you can find competitors such as Vinted and DePop which offer a more specific clothes-focused audience to you.

When selling online, make sure you take clear pictures, including details of any scuffs, missing buttons, or damage. This will help avoid any complaints that could ruin your money making chances.

Take photos in good lighting, ideally on a mannequin or on yourself (you can blur or crop out your face) to show what the clothes look like when worn. Be reasonable with pricing, too – you don’t want to undersell, but if you try to charge more for a ‘vintage’ piece that isn’t true vintage, you could get caught out.

Check selling fees and look for offers, too. EBay regularly has offers to reduce selling fees, while apps like Schpock don’t cost you to list. Make sure you build fees and postage costs into the pricing so you’re not out of pocket.

Rent Out Your Designer Clothes and Accessories

If you have more Prada than Primark in your wardrobe, you could make money renting your clothes, handbags, and accessories out. People will often want to wear something for a special occasion, and can’t afford to buy an expensive dress that’ll get worn once.

You can rent things out privately via social media, but this comes with risks. For example, you won’t have much comeback if someone doesn’t return an item in time, or it is damaged. Listing through a service like By Rotation or Hurr gives you better protection if something goes wrong.

Sell Your Wedding Dress

Much like giving people the chance to feel like a prince or princess for the day with renting designer items, your wedding dress is probably the most expensive item of clothing you ever bought.

Unless you ruined your dress by accident or deliberately, you could sell it for at least half of what you paid for it – especially if it’s a new season designer dress. Look online for specialist retail sites that let you list your dress, and try to include photos of your wedding to help people visualise what it could look like when it’s worn. You can blur your face to maintain anonymity if you like.

Try to sell your wedding dress seasonally, with a few months before the season it is designed for. This will help those looking for a last-minute bargain to find your dress. For example, if you had a winter wedding in December with a long-sleeved dress and fur stole, try advertising from September, while a summer strapless wedding dress would sell well around April. It’s the same as when you need to upgrade your summer wardrobe – you start looking to buy before the sunshine hits otherwise it is too late!

Upcycle Your Clothes for a Profit

If you have the time and skills, upcycling clothes is a great way to reuse and recycle, and make a tidy profit from it. Whether you make custom patches, have a talent for embroidery, or like to Frankenstein several pieces together to create a new one, there is a demand for handcrafted and upcycled clothes.

You can sell your items online through social media and websites like Etsy, as well as at stalls at local markets and car boot sales.

Depending on the custom edits you do on your clothing, you could demand fairly high prices for something relatively simple. A popular trend right now, for example, is to replace or cover panels in a denim jacket with different fabric to make it unique. Finding offcuts at your local fabric shop will keep the costs down – or you could even do as creators like Poppy Lu do and thrift tablecloths and duvet covers to upcycle into new items of clothing.

Style It Out

Perhaps you don’t want to get rid of your old clothes – but you can still make money from them. Online influencers love to show off their ‘fits’, and give styling advice for different body shapes and occasions. If you’ve got an eye for what makes a great outfit, you could set yourself up as an influencer and make money that way.

Alternatively, if you have an area you can use to set up as a photobooth, you could style clothes in different kinds of photos and sell them to online stock galleries like Shutterstock.

These galleries are in high demand for all kinds of content, so be creative with how you use your old clothes and accessories to take photos you can sell!

Don’t Waste Your Old Clothes

True MoneyMagpies don’t believe in wasting things – we’re all about sustainable living. So, if you’ve come to clear your clutter and can’t sell your old clothes because they’re just too worn out, don’t fret. You can bundle your unwanted fabrics together and find a rag buyer – they’re in most towns and will take clothes by weight.

You won’t get paid much, but it’s better to get a fiver and know your fabrics will be recycled instead of finding their way to landfill.