Mum earns £1,200 from selling unwanted clothes and junk on eBay – how you can do it too
Karen McTweed, 53, from Elderslie, near Glasgow, uses the money to pay for family holidays
A MUM-OF-TWO earns about £1,200 a year by selling unwanted clothes and household junk on eBay.
Karen McTweed, 53, from Elderslie, near Glasgow, has paid for family holidays with the money she makes from de-cluttering her cupboards - and now she has revealed how you can do the same.
By auctioning off her kids' old clothes and other unwanted items, GP practice nurse Karen says she's made £12,500 worth of sales in the 10 years she's been selling on eBay.
Karen, who became a grandmother for the first time in November, explained why she started selling off her and her family's old clothes on eBay just over a decade ago.
She said: "At the time I was a single mum, I had some health issues and was only working part time.
"I started selling my kids unwanted and grown-out-of clothes to make some extra cash."
Sharing her top tips for selling with fellow bargain hunters on a forum, she added: "I sell mainly clothes and shoes but over the years have sold household items too.
"You can sell virtually anything on eBay and eventually someone will buy it."
Karen is a prolific seller on eBay, auctioning off dozens of items at a time.
She said sometimes she will sell as many as four or five items of clothing or bits of unwanted junk a week, but other weeks she won't sell anything.
She sells off her old clothes and junk, her partner Stuart Turner's items as well as unwanted clothes that her two kids have now grown out of.
How to be a successful eBay seller
Karen and LatestDeals.co.uk co-founder Tom Church have shared their top tips for making the most money from selling unwanted items on eBay:
Karen says:
1. List things accurately: In the past I’ve had to refund items when I’ve made an error in the listing and it's too low value to make it worth paying the seller to send it back. In those cases you lose the cost of the postage you paid to send it to the buyer and the value of the item. So it’s very important to list things accurately.
2. Beware new eBay charges: The eBay charges have changed so they now include a percentage of what you charge for posting and packaging. It makes it unfair if you only charge the actual cost of the postage. For example, if I sell something at 99p, charge £2.95 to send, eBay will take 39p. It will cost £2.95 to sent it in the post, PayPal will take 33p so the profit would only be 27p from selling that item. It's not a lot when you’ve sold the item for 99p.
3. Don't be put off by it being "too much work": The biggest myth about selling online is that it’s too much work. Once you are up and running it’s not. You can choose the "sell similar" option so you don’t need to start from scratch every item you sell.
4. Remember the three golden rules: Be honest, describe things well, and dispatch promptly.
Tom says:
1. Set the right amount for postage and packaging: A seller on eBay is required to pay for the postage up front so bear this in mind when setting the separate postage fee.
2. Close your auction on Sunday: According to eBay, the website is at its busiest on Sunday evenings so try to end your auction then.
3. Watch out for seller's fees: Remember you can list up to 20 things for free every month but there is a 35p charge if you sell more.
Karen often sells items for just a few pounds each so she relies on listing lots of old clutter to make a profit.
The highest value item she ever sold was a never-used new burglar alarm she no longer needed, which she auctioned off for £100.
She said: "The best part is when you have a good month and make some money to put away for holiday spending money."
For anyone who wants to follow in Karen's footsteps, she warns that eBay and Paypal - the money transferring system that eBay uses - will both take a slice of your earnings.
How to sell on eBay
HERE is all you need to know about selling on eBay:
How do I sell on eBay?
To sell something on , you first have to make a listing so other people using the site can see what you have on offer.
To do that, you must create an account with eBay and once you have done that, you are free to make a listing.
In your listing you can add up to 12 pictures of your item and give a description of what is exactly on offer.
You can also opt for a reserve price for your item so that if you don't get any bids that are high enough, you don't have to sell the item.
While you make your listing, you also set the amount of time you would like your item to be on sale for.
At the end of the sale, whichever fellow user has bid the highest has to buy the product and once they pay you must send it to them.
You can list 20 items free of charge per month. After that, it costs 35p to list each item on eBay.
The auction website giant will also take 10 per cent of the sale including postage and packaging, so make sure you factor this in when you set your auction price.
How does PayPal work?
PayPal is the way most people spend and receive money on eBay and is an instant way of sending cash to each other.
Once you set up an account, it is linked to your credit card or bank account and is mainly used for online purchases.
Receiving money into your PayPal account means that you have to pay certain fees.
The fee for each transaction is 3.4 per cent plus 20p of the amount you receive from your selling price.
However, if it is a highly priced item you are selling, the fee reduces as the price goes up. To check out fees, log on to the
Auction website eBay will take 10 per cent of the total sale price and will charge 35p to list an item, but the website does give sellers 20 free listings a month.
Meanwhile PayPal will typically charge 3.4 per cent of the total sale, plus a 20p transaction fee.
Karen's £12,500 earnings from her eBay sales don't take these charges into account - but she said she still brings in enough from flogging her unwanted junk to make it worth it.
Karen said she sticks with eBay because it was one of the few auction websites around 10 years ago and it's worked well for her.
But there are now plenty of alternatives to eBay, including Gumtree, Etsy, Asos Marketplace, Freecycle and Music Magpie.
Karen's success on eBay has now rubbed off on her children.
She said: "Both my grown up children sell unwanted clothes on eBay too now."
More on Money
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We've got a guide on how you can sell those leftover gifts you don't really want successfully.
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