Both apps will happily let you build a shop. Neither one will let you get paid on your own before you turn 18, and that catches people at the worst possible moment, which is right after their first sale. Here is how to set it up properly, and what each platform actually keeps.
Move the sliders. The fees are different enough that it changes what you should list where.
Assumes postage costs you what you charge for it. Fee rates as of August 2026.
Search for how to sell on Etsy and you will find a thousand guides that go straight to lighting and keywords. Almost none of them mention the thing that decides whether a teenager can use the platform at all, which is that both Etsy and Depop draw a hard line at 18, and they draw it in different places.
On Etsy, the account owner has to be an adult. Etsy's policy is that every account owner must be at least 18. Sellers between 13 and 17 are allowed to be part of a shop, but the shop has to be registered by a parent or legal guardian, using the parent's name, the parent's email address, and the parent's financial information. The parent is the shop owner and is responsible for everything that happens on the account. You get listed as a shop member in the About section, which is where your name and your story belong anyway. Under 13, Etsy does not allow it at all.
On Depop the account side is looser and the money side is stricter. You can have a Depop account at 13. Getting paid is the problem, because the payment processors behind the app require an account holder who is 18 or older, so a teen seller's payouts have to run through a parent or guardian's payment account, with that adult's identification and tax information attached. Depop tells younger users to talk to a parent before selling for exactly this reason.
The good news is that the setup really is small. A parent opens the account and owns it on paper. You do the work: the photos, the listings, the messages, the packing, the pricing. Then the two of you agree in advance on where the money lands and who is allowed to spend it. That last conversation is worth having out loud, because "the payouts go to my mom's account" is a sentence that has ended a lot of teen shops that nobody planned for.
The pattern across almost every resale app is the same. You can list at around 13, and you cannot be the one who gets paid until 18. Platforms change their terms, so check the current rules before you open anything.
| Platform | Minimum age | Paid directly under 18? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | 18 to own an account; 13 to 17 on a parent-owned shop | No | Handmade, vintage, craft supplies, digital downloads |
| Depop | 13 to have an account | No, payouts need an adult's payment account | Secondhand and thrifted clothing, streetwear, y2k |
| Poshmark | 18, or a parent's account with supervision | No | Brand-name clothing and shoes |
| eBay | 18 | No | Collectibles, electronics, sports cards, odd things |
| Mercari | 18 | No | General household resale |
| Facebook Marketplace | 18 | No | Bulky local items you do not want to ship |
| In person: markets, fairs, school | Any age | Yes, it is cash | Anything you can carry, and your first real practice |
Look at that last row for a second. A craft fair booth or a table at a school event has no age requirement, no fees, and no payout problem. If you are 13 and impatient, that is the version of this business you can run entirely by yourself this weekend.
These are not really competitors. They are two different stores, and picking the wrong one is the most common reason a shop gets no views.
A search engine for things that were made, not bought
Etsy only allows three kinds of listings: handmade items, vintage items that are at least 20 years old, and craft supplies. That rule is enforced, so you cannot use Etsy to flip current mass-market clothing no matter how good your photos are. What you can do is sell something you actually make.
A social feed for clothes with a checkout attached
Depop is where thrifted and secondhand clothing moves, and it behaves like a social app. People scroll, follow shops, and buy a whole look. Your camera roll matters more than your keywords here, although the search box still works and most sellers ignore it.
Fees are where teen shops quietly lose money, because they get subtracted after you have already spent the time. Here are the real numbers as of August 2026.
Etsy charges a $0.20 listing fee each time an item sells, a 6.5% transaction fee on the full amount the buyer pays including the shipping they paid you, and a payment processing fee that runs around 3% plus $0.25 for US sellers. Stack them together and a $30 item with $5 shipping costs you about $3.78.
Depop removed its old 10% selling commission for US sellers. What is left for you is payment processing, about 3.3% plus $0.45 on the item price plus any shipping the buyer paid. On that same $30 item with $5 shipping, that is around $1.61.
Start from the profit you want instead of guessing a price and hoping. Enter what the item cost you, what postage will cost, and what you want to walk away with.
Assumes you charge the buyer exactly what postage costs you. Offering free shipping? Set postage to $0 and add it to the item cost instead.
Not a list of trends, which expire. A list of categories that keep working, because of what they cost you to produce.
You make the file once and sell it a hundred times. Study planners, habit trackers, class note templates, phone wallpapers, printable wall art, photo presets, resume templates. No postage, no packing, no inventory sitting in your closet.
Depop's whole economy. The sellers who do well are not the ones with the best eye for fashion in general, they are the ones who know one narrow thing cold: a specific decade, a specific brand, a specific sport's team wear. Narrow beats broad, because you can spot value on a crowded rack in four seconds.
Stickers, earrings, keychains, beaded jewelry, clay charms, embroidered patches. The magic word is lightweight, because postage on a two-ounce package is a fraction of postage on a two-pound one, and shipping cost is what kills small orders.
Adding a name, a date, or a color choice raises what people will pay by far more than it raises your costs. It also means more back-and-forth messages and a real risk of a buyer who changes their mind, so write your custom-order rules into the listing before you take one.
Etsy allows vintage, and its definition is at least 20 years old. Old cameras, glassware, sewing patterns, tins, jewelry, band shirts. This is the category where knowing what you are looking at is the entire business, and where a garage sale can hand you a 10x return if you do.
Two people can sell an identical item and one gets three times the sales. It is almost never the item.
Shoot in daylight near a window with the overhead lights off, because mixed lighting is what makes clothes look yellow and sad. Use a plain wall or a bedsheet. Fill the frame. Take at least four shots: the whole item, a close-up of the fabric or texture, one showing scale next to something familiar, and one honest photo of any flaw. The first image is the only one most people ever see, so make it the one that would stop your own scrolling.
Nobody types "cozy vibes bestie sweater." They type "vintage green cable knit sweater womens medium." Put the words a stranger would search at the front of the title: item, brand, color, material, size, era. Save the personality for the description, where it actually helps you close the sale.
Clothing sizes are fiction across decades and brands. Lay the item flat and give pit to pit, length, waist, and inseam in inches. This one habit removes most "it did not fit" messages, and those messages are where your profit goes to die.
Vintage 1990s forest green cable knit wool sweater. Unbranded, heavy weight, no stretch. Fits like a modern women's medium.
Measurements, laid flatPit to pit 21 in · Length 25 in · Sleeve 24 in
Condition, honestlyGreat condition with one small pull on the left cuff, shown in the last photo. No stains, no holes, no smell. Freshly washed.
ShippingShips within 2 business days in a recycled poly mailer with tracking. Bundle two items and I refund the extra shipping.
Here is the mistake, and nearly everyone makes it once. You sell a sweater for $22, you charge $4 shipping because that sounds about right, and then you get to the post office and the package costs $9.60, because a wool sweater in a box weighs more than you assumed. You have now worked an hour and a half to lose a dollar.
Fix this before the first sale, not after it. Buy a cheap kitchen or luggage scale. Weigh a few typical items in their packaging, then look up the real rate for that weight and distance. Charge what it actually costs, or build it into the price and call it free shipping, which converts better because buyers hate watching a shipping number appear at checkout.
The rest is small habits that compound. Use poly mailers for clothes and boxes only for things that can crack. Ship within two business days, because both platforms weigh fast shipping when they decide whose items to surface. Put a handwritten thank you note in the package, which costs nothing and produces a startling number of five star reviews. And photograph the packed, labeled package before you drop it off, so you have a record if anything goes sideways.
Selling online makes you self-employed in the eyes of the IRS, even if you are 15 and even if the shop is technically in a parent's name. The number to remember is $400. If you clear $400 or more in net self-employment income in a year, a tax return generally has to be filed for that income. Net means after your costs, and it is a much lower bar than the threshold for a regular job with a W-2, which surprises people every single year.
Payment platforms also report seller earnings above certain amounts on a form called a 1099-K, and the dollar threshold for that form has been changed more than once recently. Do not try to keep the current number in your head. Keep your own records instead, which you should be doing anyway, because they are what let you subtract your costs.
Where the money lands matters too. Payouts go to an adult's account by design, so decide up front how it gets to you, and consider a teen checking or custodial account so shop money is not tangled up in a parent's grocery budget. One more thing worth knowing early: money you earn from work, including a shop like this, is exactly the kind of income that makes you eligible for a Roth IRA, which is close to the best thing a teenager can do with a few hundred dollars.
Every package you send carries your address, to a stranger. Talk to a parent about this before you list anything. Many families put the parent's name on the label, and some use a PO box. It is a five minute conversation that is much better to have now than after the fact.
"Just Venmo me and I'll ship it" is the oldest scam in resale, and it strips away every protection you have. Same goes for a buyer who wants to pay by gift card, or who sends a screenshot as proof of payment. Once it leaves the platform you are on your own. There is a longer list of these tricks in our making money online guide.
The classic teen shop failure is spending $200 at a thrift store in week one and discovering in week six that none of it moves. Sell things you already own first. Let money from real sales pay for the next batch.
If you sell locally instead, meet in a public place in daylight with a parent there. Plenty of police stations have marked exchange zones for exactly this. No item is valuable enough to be worth skipping this rule.
Add up sourcing, cleaning, photographing, listing, messaging, and packing. If a sale nets you $9 and ate two hours, a regular job pays better, and you should know that before committing a whole autumn to it. The shop wins later, once listings sell repeatedly and the work stops scaling with the money.
Day 1. Sit down with a parent, pick the platform that matches what you are selling, and open the account with their information the way the platform requires. Agree on where payouts go and who touches them.
Day 2. Pull ten things you already own and would genuinely sell. Not your best ten items, your first ten listings. The point of the first ten is to learn the process, not to make rent.
Day 3. Photograph all ten in one session by the window while the light is good. Batching this is the difference between a shop that grows and a shop that stalls, because photography is the step everyone avoids.
Day 4. Write the listings. Search words first, personality second, measurements always. Use the payout calculator at the top of this page to set prices that actually leave you something.
Day 5. Publish all ten at once, then tell approximately nobody that it is a big deal. Post the items themselves where people who want them already spend time.
Days 6 and 7. Weigh a sample package, buy your mailers, and build the spreadsheet. When the first sale lands, you want the boring parts already solved so you can ship it inside a day.
No. Etsy requires the account owner to be 18 or older, and for sellers aged 13 to 17 the account has to be registered by a parent or legal guardian using their name, email, and financial details. An account that hides a minor behind adult-looking details is exactly what gets suspended, usually right after money starts moving through it.
Not into your own account. Depop lets you have an account at 13, but the payment providers behind the app require an account holder who is at least 18, so payouts have to run through a parent or guardian's payment account with their identification attached. You can still do every other part of the shop yourself.
Right now Depop, for US sellers, by a clear margin: roughly 3.3% plus $0.45 against Etsy's roughly 9.5% plus $0.45. But cheap fees on a listing nobody sees are worth nothing. Etsy sends you buyers who are actively searching for what you make, and for handmade or digital items that traffic is usually worth the bigger cut.
No. Etsy only permits handmade items, vintage items at least 20 years old, and craft supplies. Reselling current mass-market clothing breaks that policy. Depop, Poshmark, or Mercari are the right homes for that, subject to their own age rules.
Generally yes, once your net self-employment income reaches $400 for the year. Net means after costs, so keep receipts for inventory, mailers, and postage. Talk it through with a parent, and read our guide to taxes and paychecks for the basics of how all of it works.
In order of likelihood: your first photo is dark or cluttered, your title has no searchable words in it, your price is above what the same item has recently sold for, or you simply have too few listings. Ten listings is a trial. Thirty is a shop. Fix the photo first, because it is the cheapest change with the biggest effect.
If you are under 16 and want the money without the paperwork, honestly, sometimes yes. A market stall or a school event has no age minimum, no fees, and no payout problem, and it teaches you to price out loud in front of a real person, which is a skill worth more than the profit. Plenty of sellers do both and list the leftovers online.