Madi Donohoe, 22, struggled with the constraints of a 9-5 (Image: SWNS)
A former care worker has ditched her £9-an-hour job to earn £55,000 a month reselling clothes. Madi Donohoe, 22, had struggled with the constraints of her 9-5 due to health conditions, including chronic pain and fibromyalgia. After six months, she decided to quit.
Madi, from Frinton, Essex, had no set plan of what to do next, but after managing to sell a pair of “ugly” trainers on Vinted, she decided to give reselling a go. She then discovered the live auction app, Tilt, and went from earning £800 in her first month to £5,400 in her second month.
Madi said she now makes an average of £55,000 a month from reselling and even pays someone to pack her parcels up for her. She added: “Reselling has given me so much freedom.
“I was having to call in sick a lot in my old job, which I never wanted to do, and now I don’t have to worry about that. It’s given me the chance to have the best quality of life I can have.”
She put her success down to doing things slowly and steadily and not pushing herself. Madi started work as a care worker in a private care home for people with severe special needs after leaving school at 18.
“It was awful. We were understaffed and underpaid,” she said.
After six months, in December 2022, she handed in her notice. Soon after leaving her job, Madi went into her local Nike shop and bought the “ugliest pair of trainers imaginable” for £25.
Madi spent her days scouring charity shops and market stalls for bargains (Image: SWNS)
As soon as she got home, she regretted her purchase, and popped the trainers on Vinted for £50 – double the price she paid for them. She said: “I don’t know why I did it, but they sold, so I thought, ‘I’m missing a trick here’.”
Madi then bulk bought from Temu a load of Jibbitz for Crocs at £2 each and sold them on Vinted for £4 each. As her sales racked up, she began going to the Nike shop multiple times a week and reselling the clothes at double the price.
About a year after she started selling, Madi discovered Tilt, where sellers host live auctions and buyers make purchases in real time.
She would spend her days scouring charity shops, market stalls and outlets for bargains and in her first month made £800 profit.
Now Madi does around two live streams a week, which last between three to five hours at a time. She spends the rest of her time sourcing clothes to resell.
In her second month, Madi said her profits rose from £800 to £5400, and by the end of her first year, she had made £356,000. From November 2025 to June 2026, Madi made £513,000 from reselling – averaging at around £55,000 a month.
She sells everything from £15 badges to £2,000 prototype jackets, with her live auctions getting up to 1000 viewers.
The entrepreneur said she now sends around 200 parcels a week and has loyal customers who watch all her live streams, spending thousands of pounds a month.