Selling unwanted items used to involve cumbersome methods like classified ads, flea markets and yard sales. These options lacked reach and relied on luck. Fortunately, today you can instead use your iPhone as a convenient way to sell on a local or national level.
Before diving into the apps, here’s some essential advice. Always secure payment before shipping. Be aware of fees and shipping costs that might eat into your profits. Use trackable shipping services for proof of delivery. Exercise caution when meeting people for in-person transactions. And never share personal information online.
Right, now that’s out of the way, here are the iPhone apps we recommend for selling online.
eBay (free)
While increasingly geared toward brands and businesses, eBay remains a powerful platform for individual sellers. With a few exceptions, listings are now entirely free. And eBay’s massive user base means it’s the first place many people look when wanting to buy something.
The app itself is also great for sellers. It’s really easy to start creating listings by scanning barcodes or using existing listings as templates, before customizing the result with your own photos and descriptions. The app also makes it a cinch to track auctions and payments.
Vinted (free)
Unlike eBay, Vinted prohibits commercial sales, and may even ban accounts it thinks are making a regular profit. It also only permits sales for a more limited range of items (mostly clothing, entertainment items and electronics), reflecting its roots in clothing sustainability and giving quality items a longer life.
The vibe therefore has a community feel, and sellers tend to do better when taking more care with detailed and accurate listing descriptions. Naturally, the app supports all this, with straightforward listing tools and a comprehensive help section.
Facebook (free)
This social network’s main feed is often these days a mess; the integrated Marketplace is therefore a saving grace. Listing items is simple, although be mindful that the platform is geared heavily toward local sales. Shipping is an option, but people on Marketplace tend to prefer searching and buying locally.
It’s also important to note that Facebook’s seller protections are less robust than eBay’s. So while we recommend (and have used) Facebook for local sales, we’d urge caution when shipping items rather than getting cash in hand.
Soulver ($14/£14)
Tracking how much you’ve earned from sales can be important for personal record-keeping or tax purposes. Although you could use a spreadsheet for this, Soulver offers a more human solution, based around natural-language input.
If you’ve used Apple’s Math Notes, Soulver is similar but offers a far superior take (and predates Apple’s effort by years). It’s like ‘back of an envelope’ math, only everything is magically totted up for you – even when you start working with conversions and dynamic documents with interconnected totals.
Also consider…
Plenty of other apps exist for helping you use your iPhone to sell online. For local sales, Nextdoor (free) and Varagesale (free) (depicted above) provide alternatives to Facebook. Varagesale emphasizes security through sales based on “real identity” due to its vetting process.
For bulk selling media like CDs, DVDs, books, and games, consider Decluttr (free) in the US or its UK equivalent, musicMagpie (free). Other options include WeBuyBooks (free) and World of Books (free).
These apps/services all work in a similar fashion, having you scan in items, receive a valuation, and then securely ship what the service will accept. You’ll make much less than when selling items individually on the likes of eBay, but that’s balanced by the time you’ll save – and the space you’ll much more rapidly regain.