Can You Make A Profit in Retirement Selling on eBay?

The short answer to the question in my title is ‘Of course you can!’. There are plenty of wheelers and dealers out there who do. Check out Chaddypete on YouTube. He was a favourite inspiration of mine. When I first retired I thought that I’d combine my hobby of browsing in charity shops with eBay selling it seemed like a no-brainer. After all, people told me that I had a good eye and back in 2022 I seemed to find plenty of bargains whenever I popped into town and had a little browse.

Take this beautiful little artist’s water pot that I bought for £2.50, one of my favourite finds. The finish was so smooth and lovely. A big part of me wanted to keep it but I was strict with myself. I listed it and my 2022/23 eBay spreadsheet tells me that it made me a profit of over twenty pounds.

But now I’ve stopped eBay selling as a source of income. I thought I’d tell your my story. It may be food for thought for other retired people who think that they could possibly make a buck or two in this way.

Starting Out on Ebay

In 2022 I started to sell on eBay on a regular basis. Some of the items that I listed were things that we had around the house that we no longer needed. It was a great way of decluttering. Amongst other things I got rid of jewellery, clothes, tools and my meditation stool that I could no longer use because of a dodgy knee. It was a great source of a bit of extra cash.

I also started to scour the charity shops for items, with some success. One of the criteria was that the objects that I bought needed to be easily stored. We don’t have masses of room in our house. So some items including clothing were out of the question. We don’t have any spare hanging space. What I initially picking up seemed to fall into four main categories: textiles for the home, decorative ceramics, kitchenware and jewellery. Some of these I picked up in charity shops but I also started to buy from Facebook Marketplace and eBay itself. For instance I had some success with buying silver charm bracelets and breaking these up to sell the chains and charms separately.

After a while I was finding that wrapping all those fragile pieces of china was a bit of a faff. Inspired by an American YouTuber Small Town Small Time Bookseller I started to sell books. These mainly came in the categories of academia and art. I’d look up prices on Amazon and eBay in the store. Books where there was a potential profit were pretty easy to find and so much easier to wrap.

Why I Stopped

As the cost of living crisis set in people seemed to become more and more savvy. Finding things to sell became increasingly difficult. What’s more I don’t believe that people had the money to buy the non essential items that I was selling. My market dried up and the numbers weren’t adding up. When I took into account sourcing items, listing them, packaging them, taking them to the post office or Evri shop and doing the accounts I was definitely earning less than minimum wage.

What’s more a lot of our precious storage space at was being taken up by stock that had seemed to have made a home in our house. I wonder if I could have made a profit if I had a dedicated space for stock and could list more items but this just wasn’t the case.

And so I called it a day. All the spare stock aside from jewellery went back to the charity shops from whence they came. I did toy with the idea of sourcing silver items to sell as they take up so little room. However as my caring commitments increased I could no longer be relied upon to post things in a timely manner. For now I’ve shut up shop completely.

Should You Sell On eBay?

In spite of my lack of success I wouldn’t put everyone off making money in this way especially since the end of last year when many of the fees for private sellers have been dropped. It’s definitely a good way of getting rid of your own possessions if you’re having a decluttering spree. And if you fancy getting more serious about selling don’t let me stop you. For instance, a lot of people seem to have success car booting but I wasn’t dedicated enough to be grubbing around in the early hours of the weekend.

My idea of stocking items that were easy to pack was a good one. Books were especially simple. However I could not sell the volume to make this worthwhile. If I had a dedicated space, like John at Small Town Small Time bookseller seems to have, I feel that I could have tolerated storing stock that had a longer shelf life before someone bought them.

I hope my cautionary tale has been helpful. And for those who decide to press ahead with online selling I wish you good luck!

Disclaimer

This post contains links to companies and organisations just because I’m happy with the products or services that they supply or I’m spreading the word about what they do. There may also be affiliate links to Amazon for books and other items that I am personally recommending. If you decide to make a purchase from them, I might get a little bit of commission at no cost to you.

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