How To Start an Online Thrift Store for Fun & Profit in 2024

I’ve always loved a good day of going thrifting. There’s a thrill to the discovery of unexpected treasures, the emotion of getting something unique… and of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s cheap and a small, eco-friendly measure.

I’m hardly alone. According to online consignment and thrift store ThredUP, second-hand clothing makes up about one-third of clothes sales in the US, and the industry is expected to grow in the next few years.

That means now is a better time than ever to start your own online thrift store. It doesn’t have to be an all-in venture either – you can start off with a small project if you’re looking for a fulfilling side gig.

After extensive research (on top of years of my own experience), I’m here to show you what you need to know to get your online thrift store up and running, even if you’ve never created an online store.

First and foremost, there’s some research involved to ensure your store stands out from the competition. But if you want to skip ahead to the technical aspects, you can sign up for a hosting plan from Hostinger and follow along, or keep reading before you dive in.

First, Some Research

Look into the competition. Search for other popular online thrift stores and make a note of what they’re doing right. At the moment, focus only on their website. Make notes along the way. How are products displayed? Is the navigation simple? What about the shopping cart? The answer to all these questions will help you identify what you would like to imitate for your own store, what you can improve, and what you’d do differently.

Of course, you can always use this step to gather inspiration about your own website’s aesthetics. Start brainstorming which style and aesthetic you would like your site to have and what you’d like potential customers to feel when they visit.

Don’t Get Too Bogged Down by a Niche

Usually, picking a niche is one of the most important steps for any modern business. If someone wants to sell watches, that’s all well and good, but what makes your watches stand out from the rest? Are they geared for adventurers? Luxury designs for women? Vintage?

Thrift stores find themselves in the unique position of not knowing what they will offer next week or next month. By all means, if you’re fortunate enough to get the chance to pick a specific niche and really focus on it, go for it. However, if you focus too much on any niche, you risk both leaving valuable items on the table and not finding the right inventory for your niche.

Even if you decide to focus on a niche, I don’t recommend making it the sole focus of your thrift store. In other words, even if you’re going for a home goods vibe, don’t turn away the opportunity to flip other items you might come across.

Find Your Suppliers

You’ll need products to flip if you want to start an online thrift store (shocking, I know), so it’s a good idea to look into getting as many supply channels as you can. Family and friends are always a good starting point. That said, unless you’re friends with the great Gatsby, your inner circle might simply run out of things they can give you.

eBay is a good place to find almost anything, but most of the stuff there is already flipped, meaning that you probably won’t be selling it at much of a profit. Physical thrift stores and outlets near you might be a better idea. Many people dump their old goods there and you can find surprisingly valuable items at a much lower price than they’re worth.

Try to do some basic research on whatever you find. An old, discarded set of toys might turn out to be a collector’s edition that can sell for a lot more than what you bought it for. Don’t expect this to happen with every product though – not everything is vintage just because it’s old.

Exploring is a huge part of thrifting, so be on the lookout for potential new avenues to find your valuables like garage sales or consignment stores. You might also come across a lot of junk, but that’s part of the business. Still, a sweater with a huge hole in the middle might be worthless, but you know what isn’t? A sweater without a huge hole in the middle. Which leads me to my next point.

Consider Learning Some Basic Repair Skills

Some of the stuff you’ll be thrifting might potentially be valuable products with minor defects that people would rather throw out than repair. Doing basic repairs on some products can make a huge difference in profits. Of course, you won’t be able to repair everything you come across, but here’s where your interests and hobbies come into place.

If you like fashion, then maybe you can learn some basic sewing and patching techniques. If you’re into tech, you can repair a lot of hardware considered “useless” by replacing parts or doing basic soldering. You don’t have to become a jack of all trades but making basic repairs can make a big difference to your bottom line.

Plan Your Promotion Strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) – the practice of enhancing your site to appear higher in search engine results – plays a big part in the success of most online businesses. You’ll want to focus on appeasing search engines but not in the way most online stores do. Let me explain…

While your online thrift store can certainly gain a following, focus on serving a specific area and demographic. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to promote your website, just that you should be more selective about where you promote it.

Outline a brand identity that sets you apart from other thrift stores. Remember, you can’t be too picky about which products you’re selling, so instead concentrate on creating a brand identity that will appeal to customers. Try to be personal: you can ship personalized “thank you” notes with your products, do giveaways, invite shoppers to post pictures with their thrifted items – everything you can do to foster that sense of connection.

Choose a Good Domain Name

If you want people to find you, your online thrift store will need a domain name. A domain name is like your online address and looks like this: nameofyourbusiness.com.

If you already have a physical thrift store, the good news is that your domain name can be the same name as your store with a .com or .net at the end (and I do recommend going for the well-known .com over other alternatives if possible).

If you don’t have a name for your business yet, consider making it short (it’s more memorable) and try to include the word “thrift” somewhere. Unless you have an established brand presence, clearly stating what your business is can prevent a lot of misunderstandings down the line.

Don’t worry if you’re not particularly tech-savvy. Most web hosting services (more on those below) offer free domain name registration and maintenance for the first 12 months, so you can get a domain name right with your hosting. There are interesting tools like domain name generators out there, but considering the competitive nature of the business, you’ll be better off taking some time to come up with something creative and unique to your brand.

Choose a Reliable Web Hosting Service

The largest companies in the world host their websites on their own servers, which can cost thousands of dollars. However, if you’re a few dollars short, using a hosting provider is the next best thing. A web hosting provider (or web host) is simply a service that offers server space for your website.

The best hosting providers offer specialized features like optimization software for WordPress websites and proactive support to manage your hosting.

For your thrift store website, good loading speeds are important but you don’t need them to be spectacular. Though bad performance is certainly noticeable (and can potentially cost you customers), there’s a point where a 0.2-second difference in loading speeds only matters for global SEO purposes. And as we’ve established, you should focus on promoting your website through social media campaigns and local SEO.

That said, you do want your website to be highly secure and reliable. That means that you’re looking for a host that offers good loading speeds, the latest security protocols, and as close to zero downtime (the amount of time your website is unavailable) as you can get. This might sound like a tall order, but we’ve tested hundreds of hosting providers over the years to find web hosts that offer high-quality hosting at affordable prices.

My top recommendation is Hostinger. Not only does it provide nearly perfect uptime at very low prices, but it also offers a proprietary management dashboard called hPanel to manage your hosting that in my opinion is every bit as effective as the most popular option on the market (cPanel) – but considerably more user-friendly.

If you’re interested in other beginner-friendly options, you can check out our expert guide to the best web hosting services in 2024.

Install WordPress and Set Up Your Thrift Store Site

I’ll use Hostinger to create my example website and illustrate the steps of this guide, since it’s my top recommendation, after all. However, these steps should apply to almost any other host you choose to use. It’s just the placement or name of a few options that will change.

The first step is creating an account with the host of your choosing. Once you do, all you need to do is go to the Websites tab (or similar) and click on Add website. Then, it’s only a matter of inputting your login details, connecting or creating a domain name, and waiting for WordPress to install.

To improve the performance of WordPress-based sites, Hostinger activates LiteSpeed optimizations for your website by default. If you want to double-check that it’s activated, simply go to WordPress > Overview > Core and toggle the LiteSpeed button on.

Choose a WordPress Builder and Theme

Although you could use the default WordPress editor, I’ve always found it a little restrictive for creating interesting designs. Luckily, there are tons of powerful page builder plugins for WordPress like Elementor and Astra, which give you intuitive, visual interfaces and tons of useful features for customizing your website.

For my online thrift store, I decided to go with Elementor since it integrates neatly with WooCommerce and gives me a lot of room to customize my website layout. You can install Elementor from your WordPress dashboard by navigating to Plugins > Add New Plugin. There, you can search for “Elementor” and install it with a single click.

Since Elementor is so customizable1, I chose a simple theme that would serve as a blank canvas for me to make my own. Elementor automatically offers to install the Hello Elementor theme for your site, which is exactly that blank canvas I was looking for. Professional Elementor template kits are also available, but keep in mind that you can only access them on one of Elementor’s paid plans.

Consider These Useful (Free) Plugins

Thousands of different plugins are available for WordPress, from completely free to prohibitively expensive. You can use plugins to add translations to your site, expand functionalities, add design elements… the works.

For your online thrift store, you want to make sure that you have a plugin that allows you to add e-commerce capabilities, and WooCommerce is the most popular one there is. It’s easy to use and integrates with almost any other plugin, plus it also offers a fully free plan – although you might need to make a small investment once your thrift store grows to expand its functionality.

I also recommend installing Wordfence, a security plugin for WordPress. When you’re managing an online store and potentially handling the credit card and financial information of many customers, you want to ensure that your site is secure from any malicious attacks. Lastly, for better visibility for potential customers, I suggest you install Yoast SEO to optimize your website for search engines.

These are my general recommendations but look around the WordPress plugin page (especially under the Popular or Recommended tabs). You might find plugins that will come in handy specifically for your e-commerce website.

Set Up and Customize the Most Relevant Pages

WooCommerce will automatically install the following relevant pages to your site:

• Cart
• Checkout
• My Account
• Privacy Policy
• Refund and Returns Policy
• Shop

All these pages will be mostly blank at the moment, so it’s up to you to add content and images. Before you do that, though, make sure to create a homepage for your site.

To do this, simply go to the Pages panel on your WordPress dashboard and click Add New Page. Give it a title using the standard WordPress editor (“home” is a good one) but don’t edit anything else. Once you’ve given your page a title, click on Edit with Elementor and customize it from there.

Elementor’s editing panel can seem a little overwhelming at first, so I recommend playing around with its drag-and-drop editor before you commit to starting your design. There’s a lot of Elementor material out there (including Elementor’s own documentation), so check out some tutorials, test out every widget, and generally just let your creativity run wild.

Once you feel comfortable enough making actual edits, it’s time to get serious about your homepage. For my thrift store, I dumped the more minimalistic trend of other thrift websites in favor of an energetic page that invites visitors to shop and clearly displays my categories for easy navigation. I included one hero image, a full menu, and quick links with CTAs like “Shop New Arrivals Now.”

Remember that you want to maintain a coherent design philosophy, so don’t go from muted backgrounds on one page to rainbows on the next one. You have a lot of work ahead of you since you also need to customize relevant pages like products, refunds and returns, and checkout.

This whole thing might take a while. Don’t get impatient and try to do it all at once. Exhaustion is an enemy of quality design, so take your time and remember that you’ll get there eventually. Making a checklist of everything you’ve already done and still need to do might also come in handy.

Revise, Test, and Publish Your Online Thrift Store

Broken links, bad navigation, or unfinished pages will give potential customers pause when buying online. Take some time to test your site once you’re finished. Make sure every link works, the design is exactly as you want it to be, and that you can add an item to your cart and checkout with no hiccups.

Your site should work as well on mobile as it does on desktop. Mobile traffic makes up roughly half of all traffic on the web, so that’s 50% of potential customers you might be missing if your mobile site isn’t tested for quality.

Once again, don’t get impatient. Personally, I think taking a couple-days-long break between your last edit and your testing is a good idea. Some time away from it will let you look at your site with new eyes and potentially discover areas for improvement you’d have glossed over otherwise.

Finally, check your website’s performance using a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix. I know I said earlier that your performance doesn’t need to be spectacular but it absolutely cannot be downright bad. If you’re getting low performance scores, you can try to improve that by optimizing your images, deleting useless plugins, or even installing some high-quality SEO plugins, which include speed-optimization measures by default.

Promote Your Site

The good news is that you’re now past the hardest part of this process. The bad news is that your work isn’t over yet. Now it’s time to promote it.

I recommend you start with a personal social media campaign. Go through all the channels (Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok) and create a cohesive brand voice inviting people to check out your thrift store. Thrifting is an adventure because you never know what you will find. Try to use that to appeal to potential customers who love a good bargain.

Multi-channel promotion might sound complicated, it doesn’t have to be. Plenty of high-quality social media management tools can help you keep a consistent, stable presence across different platforms. If you want to learn more, check out our expert guide to the best social media tools in 2024.

Also try to foster repeat customers. Getting found online is hard enough for anyone, so it’s a lucky break every time a new person discovers your store and makes a purchase. If you provide a quality experience for customers, there’s no reason they shouldn’t come back.

A great way to do that is by offering the chance to sign up for email newsletters where you can promote your newest finds, keep customers updated on store events, and even offer exclusive discounts. Again, you don’t need to do this the hard way. There are fantastic email marketing tools that can help you grow your mailing list.

An Easier Alternative to Get Your Thrift Store Online

Though hosting your own WordPress site gives you a lot of control over it, it can also be a complicated and sometimes lengthy endeavor. Website builders can help you create and design your website with a lot more ease while managing the hosting part for you.

For an online thrift store, Shopify can be an excellent (and easier) alternative to use. You can use it to create your website while making the most out of its advanced e-commerce features, which give you fine control over shipping, product variations, inventory tracking, accepted payment methods, discounts and promotions, and more.

Shopify also includes many of the marketing and promotion features you might need on higher-priced plans. Unlike WordPress where you may need to log into different platforms to manage your integrations, you can take care of your store, your website’s design, and its promotion all in one place with Shopify.

If you’re interested in using a website builder for your online thrift store, I recommend taking a look at our expertly curated list of the best website builders in 2024.

Keep Working On Your Online Thrift Store

Not only is thrifting a booming market, but it can also be exceptionally fulfilling. The excitement of stumbling upon hidden gems, the knowledge that you’re offering affordable alternatives for people, and the satisfaction of giving new life to discarded products are all amazing parts of the process.

It’s also a sustainable business model if you’re looking for a side-gig that helps you earn that little extra at the end of the month but doesn’t take over your life.

Just one final piece of advice before you go: remember to keep working on your site. Of course, there’s the continuous process of finding and flipping products, but also remember to keep your website updated, nurture your mailing list, and keep improving your content. It will be worth it to ensure that your store remains successful. If you ever get a little overwhelmed, remember you can always come back to this guide.

Good luck and happy thrifting!

FAQ

How should I price items in my online thrift store?

A good rule of thumb is to try to price items at least three times what they cost you, so you get a decent profit margin. You won’t always get that much leeway, but you can also search for similar items on platforms like eBay to find out what they generally sell for. Also, you might be able to get a lot more profit if you learn how to do some basic repairs.

How can I increase traffic to my online thrift store?

Decide who you want to market to. Online thrift stores may not get international attention right away, but you can improve your community or city presence with some local SEO practices and a strong social media presence.

What are the key steps to launch a successful online thrift store?

You need to find a reliable supplier (or suppliers), sign up with a quality hosting provider, and check that your store is well-designed and functional on both desktop and mobile screens. It might sound like a lot of work but it doesn’t have to be. You just have to break it down into manageable steps. Once your site is set up and ready to go, you can market your website and watch your profits grow.

What are the best e-commerce platforms for an online thrift store?

My top recommendation is Shopify because it offers advanced product editing, categorization options, and hundreds of integrations with worldwide payment methods. However, the best platform will depend on your needs and scope. Our curated list of the best website builders in 2024 can help you discover other high-quality website builders with robust e-commerce features you can use for your online thrift store.