05/24/2026
Struggling Selling on Depop? As someone who has experience in business, algorithm/social media and marketing; I hope this help long post helps anyone (especially new sellers on depop ) understanding the platform better.
Are you not selling as you used to? Having issues with stagnant items? There are may be a variation of reasons why this is happening to new and old sellers alike and I truly hope this helps you all. As a disabled / chronically ill seller myself, I run into these issues a lot. Itās not fun, but I hope in the long run I can help others and if you want more informative posts like this, please comment below and let me know.
Depop has become another influencer based platform and Iāll explain especially because this ties into the current economy, trends on social media, buyer psychology, content creation, aesthetics, and more.
Depop has slowly started moving toward rewarding ātop sellersā aka the influencers of depop. The people who can post every day, upload 50+ items a month, make over $1k monthly over a 90 day period, ship within 1-2 days, maintain good reviews, and basically have little to no seller issues. They say three minimum but realistically they want zero. By seller issues I mean buyers opening complaints about damaged items, wanting returns, accusing people of scamming, buyers scamming sellers, broken items, all of that.
The more you do what depop wants, the more they tend to favor your listings. Boosting helps. Minimum five RELEVANT tags help. Tight but informative descriptions help. Measurements help. Shop policies like āpet friendly,ā āsmoke free,ā ācheck address before buying,ā āno returns/refunds,ā etc may or may not help but some elite sellers literally make entire listings just for their policies and shop info because it looks more favorable and professional.
The item fabric matters. Using all eight photos matters. Showing the REAL condition matters. Good lighting matters. High quality photography matters WAY more than people realize because depop absolutely pushes prettier listings more. Clean backgrounds matter too. Not clutter just for aesthetic clutter where buyers can barely even see the item details and strain their eyes trying to figure out what theyāre looking at.
Depop also seems to heavily favor consistency. Clean layouts. Similar aesthetics throughout a shop. Consistent branding. But that can honestly burn sellers out because trends and algorithms change constantly and not everybody wants to run their shop like a corporation or influencer page 24/7.
If you have apple devices you can actually go into a section through boosting where it shows trending search terms and what buyers are searching most. Simple things like ādressā or random stuff like ājortsā will literally be ranked from 1-100 in demand. Use EVERY tool depop gives you. Read their emails. Read their resources. Sometimes depop themselves literally tell you āthis is trending this weekā and thatās what sellers should focus on sourcing or relisting.
Good keywords matter. Tight SEO matters. Personality matters. But also please stop making descriptions that are just āfairycore shirt ā and leaving it at that because thatās genuinely not enough anymore.
If pieces get no traction after 24-48 hours try boosting a few stronger pieces or slower movers instead of mass deleting your whole shop every day. Constantly deleting and relisting everything can actually hurt accounts more.
On android you can copy listings, save photos from previews, save drafts, and slowly rotate relists every few days instead of nuking your entire page. Refresh keywords. Redo styling. Improve photos. Freshen listings up if discounting and boosting didnāt work.
Also stop pricing cheap items insanely high thinking buyers wonāt notice. People are not stupid. And please stop labeling things ā100% silkā when only the shell is silk but the inside lining is polyester because that is NOT 100% silk and it lowers the value immediately.
Another thing people are struggling with right now is shipping costs, higher prices everywhere, and the newer fees depop has slowly pushed onto sellers especially after the ebay merge. Unfortunately things probably are not going to magically improve overnight because the economy itself is unstable right now. Buyers are struggling too. There are dry spells for sellers where it feels completely dead and then random sudden booms where everybody starts buying again.
Honestly if depop focused more on lowering fees and keeping things like free shipping incentives, theyād probably make MORE money long term because buyers would spend more and sellers would stay loyal to the platform. But until they realize that, more people are probably going to continue moving to other platforms and only using depop as a secondary marketplace instead of their main one.
Especially now that thereās been a huge increase in dropshippers, scammers, and low effort reseller spam coming onto depop similar to what happened to ebay over time. That shift changes buyer trust a LOT whether people want to admit it or not.
I yapped a lot but hopefully this helped somebody lol
