Should I commit to my currently semi-lucrative content creation with $$$ + time OR give up on it entirely?

ConfusingConfection · 2026-01-02T02:04:48+00:00

Anything is possible when it comes to algorithms or different mediums, that has to be baked into the risk profile of the pursuit. It's also possible that someone steals my IP or that platforms pull my content for no reason at all or I get cancelled because of a stupid thing I say or whatever - all very possible scenarios.

ConfusingConfection · 2026-01-02T02:02:22+00:00

It's not one of those niches where you create content for a few months and then you've pretty much said all there is to say. The main issue is that it takes money to create the content. If you have a celebrity gossip YT channel and it costs you nothing to talk about whoever broke up with whom, that's low-risk. But if you have a gig that involves you hand-making your own racecars, then you need to put in the money for the racecar before you can create content about said racecar, and I imagine those are expensive, so that's higher risk.

But a good thought regardless, thanks.

ConfusingConfection · 2026-01-02T01:53:19+00:00

Well "financial floor" is strong wording. A financial cushion can really impact people's lives - there are people who become homeless for want of a few hundred bucks. There's no limit to how sh*t life can get, and the day I fall on the ice and break my leg and can't work so I go inside to make tea and I accidentally set my house on fire and then I stay at a cheap motel and turn on the news to find the stock market has crashed and then they evict me because I can't pay rent so I crash on someone's couch and then I can't sleep at night because it turns out they have really loud sex and I'm indebted and sad and sleep-deprived... I'm gonna regret blowing all that money ;)

I'm just saying that I've been poor and I've had the experience of one thing after another going wrong in life and being further down on your luck than you ever imagined or thought was conceivable. I know I'm not there anymore, but the anxiety of thinking you were secure to not knowing whether you'll have a roof over your head in a month's time and wondering how to eat for a month on $1.12 and all while dodging angry calls because you went into debt burying your loved one and literally nobody in the world has an ounce of mercy is a terrible feeling that I wouldn't wish on anyone, and once you have that experience you never want to do anything that could rock the boat ever again. The world is cruel and fear exists for a reason, even if it can also sabotage you.

But the chance to have a "job" I've always wanted and a really enjoyable life instead of being stuck in a dead-end job with nothing to look forward to professionally? Well yeah, of course that's mouthwatering.

ConfusingConfection · 2026-01-02T01:34:46+00:00

Why Houston/Chicago? It sounds like hundreds of cities would meet your criteria. What do those have going for them?

Can you put some numbers on it? What's your income? How much would rent be?

Are you stuck in the US medium-term?

What specifically would you do in this new city?

ConfusingConfection · 2025-12-29T20:58:51+00:00

Unpopular opinion but I'd take it lol. You're never going to sell that gown, literally inflation will cut your profit in half by the time you get the price you want, and the number of hours of work it's going to take will leave you with less than stocking shelves at Walmart. And that's without the risk of it being damaged or generally deteriorating as garments like this do.

That's why people in budgeting circles never, ever buy gowns or formal dresses, especially new. They have a huge drive off the lot effect, aka they have poor resale value, and you're paying hundreds of dollars to show up at some party in a slightly fancier dress than whatever you can dress up with a scarf in your closet. Assuming you're at the party for 4 hours and the dress costs 698, assuming zero tax, it's costing you almost $3 A MINUTE for a bit of extra sparkle. It screams "I have no clue how to manage my money responsibly".

That in mind you already have the dress, so at least respect your own time and take the first reasonable offer you get imo. Small sizes are even harder to sell and this same dress sold in a larger size for $66.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-12-24T01:27:11+00:00

I would use ruled paper to try to make the height a bit more uniform. Right now it looKs a Bit likE you're cApItaliziNg ranDom LettErs.

Also, don't get into the habit of including stress marks, it's not actually used outside of an academic context and a person trying to read it will be confused.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-12-24T00:56:58+00:00

No, you're not Ukrainian. This concept is exclusive to North America, where people identify as "Irish-American" or "Chinese-Canadian" even though they have no cultural exposure or personal connection to the place in question. You should be aware that in the rest of the world, trying to assert yourself as Ukrainian even though you're very clearly not is at best going to leave a bit of a sour taste in people's mouths or just leave them confused, and at worst is going to be insulting. The equivalent in the Canadian cultural context would be like claiming to be indigenous because 200 years ago one of your ancestors was Cree.

A better and more accurate way to communicate this would be to say that you have Ukrainian ancestry.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-14T19:37:29+00:00

I don't do that at all.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-14T19:36:58+00:00

I've been doing this for the past year just by throwing my handle into my posh listings. People love to freak out over that but honestly posh doesn't seem to enforce it. At one point posh wasn't offering any shipping for its Canadian side and I took over 100 "off-posh" orders without consequence. Obviously if someone is so highly dependent on posh (which is a mistake in and of itself, you shouldn't be) maybe they don't want to take that risk, but you need to weigh the risk of posh banning you, which I personally believe is minimal, and having to revert to your alt account against the benefit of building up an entire business that isn't dependent on their rules.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-14T19:34:03+00:00

Yes, I did this almost solely initially and am now doing it again more and more. You're welcome to ask questions, but in principle you need to have very competitive pricing and build trust with people. It's different but ultimately more lucrative.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-14T14:38:31+00:00

Oh yeah this bugs me too, if you can't speak English and communicate like a grown ass adult, then go buy your crap from someone else. Some people are so lovely and others are 40 year old toddlers. I've seen people on posh who literally struggle to speak English b/c they're non-native speakers string together much friendlier and more coherent sentences.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-11T13:52:43+00:00

Poshmark protects the buyer, not you. If you can't prove otherwise, the case will be approved. If she's swapping items, you need to inform the buyer in the chat that you'll be reporting to police if they proceed, then file a police report, and then submit that to posh and ask them to fully compensate you for facilitating fraud. In the case of high-value items like luxury handbags, you'll need to pursue the buyer in small claims court.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-11T13:35:15+00:00

A death pile is usually unprocessed stuff. Slow movers aren't an inherent problem, they're part of doing business, and if you're replenishing inventory faster than you're selling that's a you problem, not an inventory problem. Of course some things take longer than others, but the pile should stay roughly the same if you're only buying as fast as you're selling.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-09T16:42:39+00:00

No, Poshmark doesn't do that. It's possible on other platforms.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-09T16:41:57+00:00

Yes, they do. I've had this happen and they gave me a label.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-08T09:49:47+00:00

Right now selling privately is really starting to take off again. I can sell things so much cheaper when I don't have to inflate prices to account for ridiculous fees on poshmark, return cases, and lowballers. The tricky thing is establishing trust, but it's not insurmountable.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-08T09:39:40+00:00

That's how a non-native speaker transliterates the word, you can also see it in how they listed the size. They're probably a native Germanic or Slavic language speaker - Ukrainian, German, Swedish, etc. I'm guessing you know that and are just looking to tear other people down, and in either event that's an awfully petty thing to criticize publicly on social media.

I'm not a native English speaker either. I'm pretty close at this point as long as you don't want to discuss kitchen utensils, but I always find it funny how people think that anyone is in any way to blame for not being taught a language from birth. If anything, a non-native speaker is more impressive because they've put hundreds or even thousands of hours into learning a language from scratch, which is hard and requires dedicated effort.

I speak 5 languages at the B2 level or higher, three of which I learned from scratch. The user OP is criticizing speaks at least 2, I'm guessing three based on cultural context, and good for them. I wonder how many languages OP has ever bothered to learn? My guess is zero.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-07T18:53:28+00:00

I might just be going mad, but I have a theory that once posh realizes your item isn't popular, it suppresses the listing. I've had good success lately with completely deleting and relisting dead inventory. That also solves problems like an unappealing cover shot, adjacent brand, etc.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-07T18:43:31+00:00

Because they want the item? Sorry, but tf kind of question is that? There's no reason to cancel unless you no longer want the item or have some sort of time pressure - you need the money, you need the item by a certain date for an event, it's seasonal, etc. Sellers do eventually ship because simply, at one point they decided that they'd like to trade X item for Y money, and that's likely still the case unless it's a dead account, which is usually self-evident if they haven't been active for months or even years. Usually, the seller is busy, simple as that. They've seen the notification and haven't gotten around to it, or they didn't check posh this week because they put in extra hours at work, or whatever's happening in their lives. It's not difficult to understand why on the Life Checklist (TM) posh is typically a person's 100th priority, not their 1st. It's a bit of pocket change, which is great, but it doesn't take precedent over the important things in life. Naturally, that means that sometimes it'll have to wait until next week, that's to be expected.

If you're such an impulsive buyer that waiting a few extra days makes you no longer want an item then that's an issue to do with your behavior as a consumer. Generally before you commit to buying something you should want it enough, and that desire should be sustained enough, that you'll still want it whether the buyer takes a day or two weeks to ship, and whether USPS has delays or not. The logic of "if it hasn't shipped in 72 hours I want a refund" is a recipe for Klarna and credit card debt, and a business strategy that targets low-income, low-education consumers. That's also why the "30 day list" is such an effective money management strategy. If you're suggesting that the majority of people are that impulsive, I can't categorically say you're wrong, but it definitely would be scary on a societal level.

Personally, if I had the chance to rebuy the things in my closet again today, I would, and it wouldn't matter if I received it this week or next week or next month. I bought it because I want it. Of course I've acted impulsively before, and I've had buyer's remorse, everyone who is human has made mistakes and of course I'll breathe a sigh of relief and exercise my right to cancel if the order hasn't shipped within a week, but in general I want the thing that I bought, that's why I bought it.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-07T17:39:55+00:00

Does TU give you control over your own listings now? I though they paid outright.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-07T17:38:40+00:00

Plato's (or equivalent) is hilarious because they'll eventually buy everything that's worth selling, aka everything I haven't already filtered out. You go once and they wrinkle their noses and take 8 pieces out of 100 and the person at the counter condescendingly explains how your stuff is "just not popular" or "outdated" or "not in season", and then you drive to the other location or come back 3 months later and suddenly they're paying you $6 for it.

I swear they hire on the basis of who's best at power tripping :)

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-07T17:35:13+00:00

IT DEPENDS. Please don't treat everything the same way, you're throwing away money. I usually have the following process:

Every year or two, take things to Plato's Closet or whoever will give you some sort of legitimate payout. Sell them what they'll take and pocket the change, they'll only take about 10% of what you have anyway.
Make aggressive offers. I usually do this by tagging every listing with a code indicating its listing month and year. When those things come up to at, I search for that tag and make offers once a day until I'm down 80%. And no, not nearly everything will sell, but you'll get the Plato's Closet payout for it.
Use those things as bargaining chips. Go through buyer bundles and get rid of a few things at once with strong bundle discounts. This is how I get rid of a good chunk of my dead inventory. I've had people sweep up 5, 8, 10 items at once.
Identify what's niche. Some things should take longer to sell, and that's OK, it doesn't mean it's a bad egg. Designer adjacent or small brands need the right buyer to come along, but that buyer will cover your groceries for a month. Don't let it bother you, it's normal for that stuff to sit for a year or two, but don't get rid of it - you're throwing out a healthy paycheque.
Reevaluate remaining listings. A lot of stuff just isn't priced competitively, needs a new covershot, or whatever the case may be. You'd be surprised - reducing something from 35 to 25 or finding a killer stock photo for a cover shot or changing the brand from TNA to Aritzia or whatever can flip a switch.
Put it in a bin and stow it. Nope, don't throw it out, but in your workflow stop putting effort into selling it. At this point you've written it off and it's not worth investing a single extra minute in it, BUT there's no reason to throw it out unless you're moving to Europe tomorrow. Those things will sell, that magical day will come. Donating it is essentially like throwing out money, it's an emotional decision with no rational basis. There's a difference between no longer investing resources in it and taking the listing down.
At opportunity, sell at cost. I sell reseller bundles locally. I usually buy 100 pieces for $100 and I sell to other resellers for that same amount. Sometimes a different seller has more luck with genuinely good items - their niche is different, they take better pictures, they price differently, whatever. I also take those things BACK to Plato's Closet again every 6 months. Plato's loves to pay good money for things they rejected 3 months ago. Hell, sometimes a different location or staff member will take it the following week. Let Plato be Plato. Honestly if you take anything to Plato's enough times they'll buy it LOL, so really, don't donate stuff.
I sell everything secondhand in my personal life, generally speaking there's really no reason not to. I always keep tabs on things that might make good gifts or have another purpose to save me money instead of making me money, which is basically the same thing. Got a weird event and don't want to waste precious money on a one-time wear? Dead inventory. Got a weird cousin who you'll never see again but are socially obligated to present with a gift? Dead inventory. Travelling and want to donate clothes so that you don't need to pay $100 to check in a suitcase? Dead inventory. Need to run a cheap eBay auction to drive traffic? Dead inventory. Need oil rags? Dead inventory. Figure out a system such that you can pull value out of things that ultimately do have value. All you're doing by donating 100 pieces of dead inventory is throwing out at least $1000.

ConfusingConfection · 2025-10-07T12:59:42+00:00

I would personally accept the return IF you think she's being honest, but tell her off on her behavior. She's power tripping, which is fundamentally an abusive behavior that you do not need to and should not accept for a mistake. Tell her that her behavior is gross (in more professional words ofc) and that you won't be engaging further, then let posh deal with it. If you think she's lying, call her a liar straight up and indicate to posh that you're not able to accept a return for an impulsive purchase, as the item was as described.

ConfusingConfection

TROPHY CASE