Madi Donohoe struggled with the 9-5 due to her health conditions
A former care worker has gone from earning £9 an hour to £55,000 a month after ditching her job.
Madi Donohoe, 22, struggled with the constraints of her 9-5 due to her health conditions, including chronic pain and fibromyalgia. It led her to make the decision after six months to hand in her notice.
At first, Madi from Frinton, Essex, had no set plan of what she wanted to do, but after managing to sell a pair of “ugly” trainers on Vinted for double what she paid, she decided to give reselling a go. She then discovered Tilt, a live auction app, and went from earning £800 in her first month to £5,400 in her second month. Madi now makes an average of £55,000 a month from reselling and even pays someone to pack her parcels up for her.
She said: “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. Tilt is so good because you can sell five things in 10 minutes, unlike places like eBay, where you have to wait days for things to sell.
“I think I’ve had so much success because I’ve taken things slow and steady and not pushed myself. Some people get really money hungry and rush into things, which can end up being costly, whereas I’m laid back and go with the flow.”
After leaving school at age 18, Madi started work as a care worker in a private care home for people with severe special needs, where she earned £9 an hour.
“It was awful; we were understaffed and underpaid,” she said. Madi struggled with working full-time hours due to her health conditions, so in December 2022 she handed in her notice without a clear plan of what she was going to do next.
Shortly after leaving her job, Madi went into her local Nike outlet and bought the “ugliest pair of trainers imaginable” for £25. As soon as she got home, she regretted her purchase and put the trainers on Vinted for £50 – double the price she paid for them.
“I don’t know why I did it, but they sold, so I thought ‘I’m missing a trick here’,” she said. She then bulk-bought a load of Jibbitz for Crocs for £2 each from Temu and sold them on Vinted for £4 each.
As her sales continued to rack up, Madi began going to the Nike retail outlet multiple times a week and reselling the clothes for double the price. Around a year after she started selling, in late 2023, Madi discovered Tilt, a reselling platform where sellers host live auctions and buyers make purchases in real time.
She would spend her days scouring charity shops, market stalls and outlet stores for bargains and, in her first month, made £800 profit. “It wasn’t much, but I could see there was something there,” she said.
Madi does around two live streams a week, which last between three and five hours at a time, and spends the rest of her time sourcing clothes to resell. Her products appear on the screen one at a time, alongside a countdown – usually around 10 seconds – and at the end of the countdown the person who has placed the highest bid wins. As she grew in confidence, Madi discovered there was a gap in the market for Stone Island clothing.
“I’ve always loved Stone Island but could never afford it,” she said. “I’d go into shops to try it on, with no intention of buying it.”
She bought up a load of Stone Island clothing from vintage shops and marketplaces and threw herself “headfirst” into trying to make as much profit as possible from reselling. In her second month, Madi’s profits rose from £800 to £5,400 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 1,000 viewers.
Madi now works with suppliers to find the best Stone Island items and even pays someone to pack her parcels for her. She sends around 200 parcels a week and has loyal customers who will watch all of her live streams and spend thousands of pounds a month on her products.
