I’ve been having a constant de-clutter of my things for the past four or five years. Mostly of the type of stuff which gets chucked in an attic and never looked at again. A lot of it holds no sentimental value for me, yet it turns out lots of other people put a monetary value on it.
For example I recently stumbled upon a Blue Peter 50p coin from the lead up to the 2012 Olympics. I have no recollection of getting it, but ended up selling it for £160!
I’ve found selling stuff on eBay to be a great supplement to my PhD funding and suggest you give it a go too. For other ways I’ve made money as a student, click here.
What am I selling?
I’m not going out and buying items cheaply to then resell (arbitrage). Everything I’ve sold are possessions I either bought or were given which I no longer want.
Why have I decided to de-clutter my life? Well firstly I grew up in cluttered houses, surrounded by drawers stuffed to the brim and boxes which never get unpacked which I now find stressful.
Secondly: it’s no fun moving house with lots of stuff and also you’re limiting options in finding somewhere to live if you need loads of storage space. Finally, being able to make money is a bonus incentive which is bringing me closer to financial freedom.
I’m getting rid of everything which:
- I don’t use regularly
- I don’t like and/or holds no sentimental value
Almost everything I sell are toys from my childhood. Things which have done well include: Pokemon cards and figures, Nintendo games and Lego. Of course not everything I’m letting go of is worth money so some of it get’s given to charity.
What is worth selling?
The first thing I do when I’m thinking of selling something is find out how much its currently selling for. Simply search for an item, then click on the “Sold listings” checkbox. Then have a browse through to see what prices the item sold for and over what time period.
You can also use the “Completed listings” button to see all completed listings, including the ones which ended but didn’t sell. I don’t tend to bother with this and instead just stick to “Sold listings”.
Not everything is worth selling for three reasons:
- Postage. If you have a low value item which is bulky, heavy or both, then it’ll be expensive to post. Say for example if you have a book you think someone would pay £5 for including postage. Second class postage will likely cost about £3. It’s probably not worth your time to list it, package it and pay for postage all to make less than £2. For small items, use the Royal Mail price finder here and be aware of the parcel dimensions too. More recently for bulky items I’ve used couriers, sometimes arranged via ebay’s own postal providers. Whatever you do, make sure you spend a bit of time thinking about how much it will cost to post.
- Effort. Don’t devalue your time. Even if you’re able to make money selling something, if it takes you an hour to clean it, take nice photos, list it, package it and take it to the post office you might find it’s not a great use of your time. On the other hand if you’re able to do those things whilst doing something else, or relaxing, then crack on.
- Price. I set myself a rough lower limit of £10: if I don’t think something will sell for more than £10 (excluding postage) then I’ll often give it to charity and they can make a profit from it instead. Only exceptions are if the item is really niche items (eg Pokemon cards) whichI don’t expect the charity shop would do well selling.
In instances where something isn’t worth selling I’d suggest giving the stuff away to friends or charity shops. As you’ll see below, charity shops can make a lot of money from things people would otherwise chuck in the bin. If you have clothes in not great condition you can either put them in fabric recycling or the charity shops can pass this on for you.
How much money can you make on ebay?
My total sales listed on the eBay dashboard up to 1st September 2019 are:
| Region | Items Sold | Price (£) |
| UK & Ireland | 881 | 9766.04 |
| Germany, Austria & Switzerland | 20 | 225.87 |
| USA | 11 | 286.37 |
| Everywhere else | 642 | 5681.00 |
| TOTAL | 1554 | £15,959.28 |
Strangely eBay doesn’t show your worldwide sales all in one place, perhaps because of currency conversions. I don’t believe the “Everywhere else” category and recon it could be double-counting some of the sales from the other categories. If we disregard that category, this month I passed £10,000 in total sales! Pretty crazy considering that my average item value is just over £10. Most of the time I’ve selling pretty run of the mill stuff which a lot of people would otherwise chuck away!
At the end of last year I got access to the last of my childhood toys which had previously been hidden away unreachable in an attic so have had a recent surge in items available online. Here are my recent monthly sales:
Since the start of the 2019 I’ve made £3048.62. I’ve been making, on average, £208 a month from eBay sales since March 2017: six months after starting my PhD. It’s been a really handy extra source of income plus has the added benefit of decluttering my life and giving a new home to items which might otherwise never get used. Now be aware that there are both eBay and PayPal fees which aren’t included. I suggest listing high value items during one of the promotional “Max £1 final value fee” promo periods which is covered further down this post.
Thankfully very rarely do I have any issues. There has been the odd time that a prospective buyers asks loads of questions and then doesn’t buy the item or someone has claimed something hasn’t turned up but most of the time the sales go as planned. I recon only 1-2% of the time are there any problems. Usually I won’t use tracking for items worth under £20, since the likelihood of things going wrong is so low. I simply cover the cost myself for any losses not sent with tracking and I’ve found Royal Mail to be good when there are issues with tracked items.
Don’t think you have anything worth selling?
I’m fortunate to have loads of items worth selling, yet don’t dismiss what you might have hidden away. For example, you’d be surprised at how well retro toys sell. Last year I was getting rid of old Nintendo games and was often selling them for more than the price on the box! And, even if you don’t have stuff worth selling, you might have an opportunity to make money from stuff your housemates chuck in the bin: read on…
The time my housemate chucked more than £500 worth of clothes in the bin
I’ll probably come across as crazy for sharing this but it’s a good story:
Last year one of my housemates was having a declutter whilst moving out, resulting in bags and bags of high-end clothes ending up in the bin. It was crazy. When I say high quality I’m talking many items which would have originally sold for £100+ and were still in great condition. I had a quick scan through it, using the “Sold listings” trick above. Most of it we took to a charity shop but a few items we kept back to sell plus a few I use!
Included were six silk ties, I sold them for a total of £277. It is beyond bonkers that stuff like this would end up in the bin destined for landfill…
And please if you’re having a declutter: if you won’t go to the effort of carrying old belongings to a local charity shop, find one online who will come and collect from you. It’s so unnecessary for useable items to end up in the bin. My girlfriend and I took the rest of all these clothes to a charity shop. The result? The charity shop made over £400!
Make money on eBay: my top selling tips
- £1 Final value fee offer. About once a month eBay will have a £1 max final value fee offer. Normally eBay take commission of 10% of the final sale price, meaning that you’d pay £10 in eBay fees on a £100 item. This offer limits that fee to a maximum of £1, saving you £9 in this example. Of course this doesn’t make much difference if you’re selling low value items but it is worth waiting for this offer to come along if you’ve got higher value items to sell.
- Sell using a fixed-price “buy it now” listing rather than an auction. Auctions mean you get a good price if there are several people interested but if you’re item doesn’t draw much attention you can easily end up with only 1 bidder who’ll therefore get a bargain. In my experience it’s much better to start with a high fixed-price and you can reduce it over time.
- To find out how much something is worth, look through “sold listings”.
- Allow offers. Ticking the box to allow offers means that if you’re price is too high potential buyers can send you an offer for a lower price. This is especially useful if you’re not too sure what something is worth. Sometimes you’ll get very cheeky offers, sometimes it’s really close to the asking price.
- Be in it for the long haul. My advice about setting a high price holds true if you’ve got time spare to hold out for the right buyer. I try to avoid being in the desperate situation where you’re willing to accept the first offer sent to you: a sign that you’re potentially not reaching the potential best price. I’ve usually got over 100 active listings and some of these have been going for months and months. The £1 final value fee offer is only valid for the first 30 days of the listing, if you’ve got an item online for hundreds of pounds it could be worth cancelling the listing and starting another next time the offer comes around.
- Be aware of postage prices. The last thing you want to do is end up losing money on postage. Become informed about prices for different sizes and weights of parcels. For example parcels under 2.5cm in thickness are significantly cheaper so package appropriately. Also be aware that these days eBay charges you a fee on postage prices!
Update August 2020: I’m begun seeing the £1 max listing fee offer less frequently and instead this 5% selling fee offer:
Ebay usually charges a fee of 10% of the final transaction value so this offer is still useful but nothing like as good as the £1 fee when you’re selling high value items.
I hope this post has provided some motivation to sort through those belongings you’ve got hanging around. Maybe you’ve watched some Marie Kondo and fancy having a declutter, or simply want to make some cash from old belongings.
Either way I think selling items you don’t use so that they can get a second lease of life is great and making some extra cash on the side is an added bonus. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve found this post useful. If you’d like to subscribe for more content like this you can do so below:
