Woman too ill to work earns £800 a month on Vinted with controversial tip

A FORMER interior designer has revealed how she now earns £800 a month on Vinted after having to stop working due to heart problems.

Lisa Brown, 49, started selling clothes on eBay to make money until a house fire destroyed everything she owned.

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After buying and selling clothes for eight years, she went to Vinted and started selling the clothes there.

Since then she has earned £800 a month from her turnover, which allows her to take her son out for a day, eat out and order food.

Lisa, from Stansted, Essex, said: “I can no longer physically work, so Vinted has become my passion.

“After the fire in 2022, which devastated us, I started over.

“Buying and selling are things I enjoy and they fulfill a need to make money. It’s my safety net.”

After Lisa lost her job as an interior designer in 2007, she realized she would never be able to work full-time again.

She had heart problems that had not yet been diagnosed, but she now thinks it was postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), an abnormality in the functioning of the autonomic nervous system.

A year later, she underwent an ablation, a procedure in which small catheters create tiny scars in the heart to block the wrong signals, in an attempt to treat the problem, but she has been unable to work since.

“I just wanted to get better,” she said.

“I could only work when I had the energy. I really had to listen to my body.

“That meant I had to rest and sleep when I needed to. I couldn’t stick to fixed working hours.”

Lisa started selling her old clothes on eBay and for the first nine years it was a thriving business.

She really enjoyed selling second-hand goods and was able to earn a living selling clothes, bags and jewelry.

Having a part-time job allowed her to lead a ‘normal’ life and work the hours she could.

Their possessions lost

“Business was going really well,” Lisa said.

“I did what I could.

“I know my heart condition will always be my biggest culprit, but I really enjoyed it.”

On January 26, 2016, Lisa and her husband Paul, 52, a carpenter, returned home from a night out while their son Charles, now nine, was being cared for.

We lost everything – I went out and bought a lot for myself

Lisa Bruin, 49

Lisa said she “smelled something strange” coming from the wood stove. She went to investigate in her upstairs bedroom after hearing “animal scratching noises.”

“Paul came upstairs and opened the door,” she said.

“He opened the attic trap and immediately saw that there was a fire.

“From that point on it was like, ‘Okay, get the baby and get out of here.’ We lost everything.”

The family lost all their belongings in the fire and their house burned down.

A fire investigation team concluded that the cause was the flue, which hit the woodwork and was too close to the electrical system.

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Do I have to pay tax on items I sell on Vinted?

FAST tax facts from the Vinted team…

• The only time an item is taxable is if it sells for more than £6,000 and there is a profit (sells for more than you paid for it). Even then you can use your £3,000 tax-free capital gains allowance to offset it.
• Generally, only business sellers who trade for profit (buying goods with the intention of selling them for more than they paid for them) are required to pay tax. Business sellers who trade for profit can take advantage of a £1,000 tax-free allowance, which has been in place since 2017.
• More information here: vinted.co.uk/no-changes-to-taxes

It took eight years to rebuild the house, and Lisa says it’s still not finished.

But she has spent the time buying new stuff, and she “admits” she is “a bit of a collector.”

She said: “The fire didn’t exactly help my collecting mania.

“We lost everything. I went out and bought a lot for myself.”

It’s a call to action, to go check out the rest of my wardrobe

Lisa Bruin, 49

In 2022, Lisa decided to start a business on Vinted, where she sold some of the items she bought after the fire.

She quickly learned some tips and tricks to sell as much as possible and now she passes on her knowledge to other sellers.

Within two years, she has turned her small sideline into an £11,000 ’empire’, turning it into a ‘constant income stream’ of £800 a month.

Her top tips include: never sell in bundles and always offer items at a higher price than expected.

“Always submit a bid on your item if you consider it a ‘favorite,’” she said.

“Ask a higher price for your items than you want so that you will accept the offer.

“Personally, I think bundling discounts is counterproductive.

“What I do is say, ‘I’m going to clean up, take a look at my other ads.’

“It’s a call to action, to go and look at the rest of my wardrobe.”