'How I earn a full time wage selling old clothes'

A woman has described how she earns the equivalent of a full time wage by selling old clothes online.

Lynne Matthews, 52, from Swindon, Wiltshire, left her job in 2015 due to her father being unwell and turned to her hobby of reselling as a way to earn extra income.

There are a range of platforms she uses, including Fleek, eBay and Vinted and says she takes home about £2,000 a month.

"I like slow fashion. I love vintage Monsoon and I love the 60s aesthetic, but I would really pick up anything – like sleeping bags," she said.

Ms Matthews visits car boot sales and charity shops, focusing on picking up "well made and good quality" items to resell on eBay and Vinted.

She said: "I just have the ethos, if I can make money on it, I'll sell it – it doesn't always have to be big flips.

"If I can make a few pounds and then use those few pounds to buy the next thing, I will, and then it snowballs."

In 2025, Ms Matthews began buying clothing on Fleek - a platform where people can buy wholesale vintage clothes.

She then started to resell items on Vinted and now totals about £1,500 to £2,000 a month from her side hustle.

"I purchased loads of stuff through Fleek, they sell set bundles," Ms Matthews explained.

"I also found a vintage Beatrice von Tresckow jacket – that cost me £10 and they sell for about £600.

"Anything designer or hand embellished, I'll take to the dry cleaners."

After giving birth to her two sons in 2003 and 2005, Ms Matthews decided to start selling clothes online full time.

She said: "I ideally wanted to be a stay at home mum, but I couldn't really afford to, so I went back to work part time, but to make a little bit of extra money and not have to keep buying new clothes all the time, I used to basically sell their old wardrobe and then re-buy the next size up second hand."

Ms Matthews runs her side hustle from a shipping container in the office she shares with her husband.

She spends about three hours a day running the business, and still sees it as a "fun hobby" alongside her part time job as a company secretary.

Ms Matthews discovered the reselling community on TikTok in 2024. Since then, she has racked up more than 18,000 followers.

She said: "I started showing people what I was selling on TikTok and it started to do well – I was so surprised as a more mature woman."

Her reselling has allowed her to fund her son's residential school trips and holidays to Australia, Florida and Singapore.

She has travelled to Memphis, Tennessee, where she visited Graceland – the home of Elvis Presley.

• Platforms must tell HMRC about anyone who sells more than 30 items or whose total sales hit £1,700 in a year
• This does not automatically mean these people have to pay tax
• Selling your own clothes or other items is not taxable if you're selling them for less than you originally paid as you are not making a profit
• Tax only applies if you are buying stock to resell, or making more than £1,000 in gross income per year
• If you sell an item for more than £6,000, you may need to pay Capital Gains Tax.
• You can use HMRC's Help For Hustles online tool to check if you need to tell the authority about your income

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