Ideas to save £2500

sniggings

Any suggestions to save up £2500, no time frame in mind, but less than a year would be good, I'm thinking along the lines of ebay and errr well that's as far as I've got, is it doable? any other ideas, I've not got much to sell so it would mean buying stuff to resell, would this work? anyone did similar? any suggestion on what would be good sellers?

uncommonadvice

Stoozing, arbitrage betting, mystery shopping, amazon, amazon affiliates, overtime.

I make more money from lots of odds and ends than I don from my main job.

StormyWeather_2

If you buy to sell, you need to register on ebay as a business seller. You also have to let HMRC know that you are self employed and will be liable for tax on any profits.

ShaunH

StormyWeather wrote: »

If you buy to sell, you need to register on ebay as a business seller. You also have to let HMRC know that you are self employed and will be liable for tax on any profits.

And you'll also have to pay NI contributions too

Rylynn

Okay OP are you employed already, you can sell YOUR OWN things on eBay without having to be a business seller, but you cannot buy to sell, but people do, you only have to look on there to see that. However, they eventually catch up with those people, so not a great idea.

If you are not employed is there any harm in becoming self employed and buying to sell to make a living from eBay, problem is will you make a living and what would you intend to sell, you need to do some research.

You need to see what you think you want to sell, then see who else is selling it, look at how much they are selling and when and what you think they actually are making from it, and then can you undercut them and make a profit, or can you sell better stuff or offer more than they do, ie Free Postage, quicker delivery time.

On the tax you will not pay any tax until you hit the level applied by HMRC and you do not need to register for VAT until you are going to hit £77K which I assume you will not! LOL. The other thing is, you have to also have a paypal business account if you are a registered business on eBay, you cannot simply use your own personal paypal account, or at least you are not supposed to. Most personal accounts have a limit you can put through them in a year and I believe it to be just under £2K so hardly a living wage.

There are people making a very good living out of eBay, working from home, they have a found a niche and have a good customer base. One sells handbags, and she buys them on eBay under one name and then resells them under her business account, I have tracked her over the past months and she is making well over £1500 per month, others are doing the same with electrical equipment, so yes it can be done.

Yes you will have to pay NI, and so you should if you are self employed, just as employed people do, you would also have to keep accounts as you will have to submit a TAX return.

I believe if you can also prove you are working for more than 30 hours doing this you can also claim working tax credits as a self employed person, I am at present looking into this which is why I have some knowledge around it. I have also been an eBay member for a long time, clothes are not great sellers, unless they are rare, vintage and designer, it is like a jumble sale on there if you look, not that the clothing is bad (although some is) but there is so much of it which pushes the prices down.

How else you can save 2500 have you looked at what you are now spending and what you can cut out, or cut down on. Are you energy efficient, ie turn off lights, do not keep reboiling the kettle, close doors to keep the room warm, only heat the rooms needed to be heated. Take a walk instead of the car, there are ways to save money, but you may already be doing all of those.

Hope this helps, I have just been made redundant and am looking to think of ways to now work from home which is why I popped into your thread.

sniggings

thanks for those replies and good post Rylynn,

yes I'm living as cheaply as I can, so no savings there, I set up my first blog yeasterday and added a few Amazon banners but I can't see that working as I know I don't click on links in blogs, also they would have to buy something before I saw any money, are there any better banners I could add to my blog?

Yeah ebay is a hard one as a lot of stuff is dirt cheap, I wonder how some afford to even post the stuff never mind make a profit too.

I guess the blog thing might be my best bet so any tips on that would be good, and I'll get reading up on it too.

hampsterpoo

The banner thing takes time to build up, I know as I have recently started redoing my entire site, most of it not touched since 2000, adding google , amazon and another type of banner.(yesasia) ,found on webgains. Its slowly picking up.

Have you set up google analytics ? and joined adsense ? then you are able to track the pages people are looking at. Ive found that very helpful.

I dont have a blog so take others advice on that.

As for living as cheaply as possible , have you done a SAO and had a look at that , keep a spent diary to see where those pennies are actually going. Not buying a paper or magazine slowly adds up and saves a bit over a year,its the little things that you take for granted I found , after stuggling for 6 years we are now debt free (56k) and have some savings.

sniggings wrote: »

thanks for those replies and good post Rylynn,

yes I'm living as cheaply as I can, so no savings there, I set up my first blog yeasterday and added a few Amazon banners but I can't see that working as I know I don't click on links in blogs, also they would have to buy something before I saw any money, are there any better banners I could add to my blog?

Yeah ebay is a hard one as a lot of stuff is dirt cheap, I wonder how some afford to even post the stuff never mind make a profit too.

I guess the blog thing might be my best bet so any tips on that would be good, and I'll get reading up on it too.

Rylynn

sniggings wrote: »

thanks for those replies and good post Rylynn,

yes I'm living as cheaply as I can, so no savings there, I set up my first blog yeasterday and added a few Amazon banners but I can't see that working as I know I don't click on links in blogs, also they would have to buy something before I saw any money, are there any better banners I could add to my blog?

Yeah ebay is a hard one as a lot of stuff is dirt cheap, I wonder how some afford to even post the stuff never mind make a profit too.

I guess the blog thing might be my best bet so any tips on that would be good, and I'll get reading up on it too.

Hi there, you may want to put your blog under your profile to attract people from here to take a look for a start off. I just saw I seriously need to update mine the website I have there is not longer in existence.

Put yourself out around other sites as well, what is your blog about and then maybe I can give you some other tips. I am in the process of starting one, and also some other ventures I am trying to consider having just been made redundant.

RL