My ‘raffle’ trick anyone can do helped me double my money reselling trainers – now I make £20k a MONTH

TAJMEET Sethi was stacking shelves in the produce section of Morrisons when his phone buzzed – he’d just won his first ‘sneaker raffle’. Since then, the 23-year-old from west London has used his raffle winnings to kickstart a successful business earning a whopping £20k a month. Here’s how he did it, and you can too… Tajmeet Sethi, 22 and from west London, trades as Ts.Kickz on eBay and Instagram Tajmeet sold these Travis Scott x Nike Air Force 1 Low Cactus Jack trainers Credit: Supplied Tajmeet, who’s known as Ts.Kickz on eBay and Instagram, now sells sought-after trainers like Jordans, Dunks and Yeezys. He spends hours hunting for the products at bargain prices and then sells them on for a profit – a technique called ‘flipping’. Sign up for the Money newsletter Thank you! The trainers usually sell for between £60 to £130 a pop, although some can go for as much as £500 if they’re rare and in demand. Tajmeet started selling trainers in 2022 while he was studying electrical engineering at Brunel University and working on the shop floor at Morrisons. It was a random chat with a colleague at the supermarket that sparked his business idea. The colleague had encouraged him to enter a ‘sneaker raffle’ – which is when brands or retailers such as Nike and Foot Locker let shoppers buy limited-edition or high-demand shoes using a lottery system. Retailers run these kind of raffles to make sure these sorts of trainers are not bought in bulk by a select number of people – which means everyone has an equal chance of bagging them. If you “win” the opportunity to buy the trainers, you don’t get a discount on them – you buy them at the set retail price. Most read in Money You can sign up for free to one of these raffles – all you need is your name, contact details, shoe size and payment details, and the retailer will then randomly select winners. If you’re a winner, the money will automatically come out of your bank account and the shoes will be on their way to you. “It was 8am and I was literally in the middle of the produce section and I entered the raffle,” Tajmeet says. “Five minutes later, my bank’s been charged and my colleague said ‘you’ve won’.” The sneakers cost him £90 but when he looked online, they were being resold for £180. That’s because once a high-demand trainer has sold at retail price, buyers are often willing to buy over the odds to get hold of it themselves. Tajmeet put new kicks on trainer-selling site StockX and within a few days he had doubled his money. Realising it was a good way to make cash, he began researching sneaker raffles and entering more and more. You can only enter each raffle once. Each time he scored a pair of rare trainers, he would put them on re-selling sites and flip them for extra cash. “Back then all these hype Jordan shoes and Dunks and all these Nike shoes everyone wanted would sell out on the release,” Tajmeet says. “And then everyone would just be crazy for them straight after, so you could just buy and sell those quickly.” Which retailers hold sneaker raffles? WHEN in-demand brands release new trainers, they'll often launch them through 'raffles' at select online retailers. To make the launches fairer for everyone, shoppers need to sign up with their personal details before the release date so they can be entered into a draw. New versions of the Air Jordan 1s, Nike Dunks and Nike Air Maxes often launch by raffle release. You can check for upcoming raffles on The Sole Supplier or The Drop Date, which provide up-to-date lists of what’s coming up. You should also download the Nike SNKRS app to enter official draws for limited Jordan, Dunk and Air Max releases. Adidas uses the Confirmed app and you can watch out for Yeezy releases here. Foot Locker and JD Sports also do sneaker raffles – you can find the upcoming calendars on their websites. End is another popular sneaker raffle website and app, or you can try the Sneakersnstuff app. Tajmeet started to take his side hustle seriously in November 2023, registering it as a company. And after finishing his uni exams in May last year, he’s taken it on as his full-time job. “While I was at uni, I was doing this on the side. I’d be in lectures and buying trainers on my phone at the same time,” Tajmeet says. But now he’s got an office in London and is earning consistent monthly revenues of between £20,000 to £25,000. His profit is around 20% of this each month. He’s changed his business model since the early days and now he sells most of his trainers on eBay Live. The platform lets sellers showcase their products and interact with buyers on livestream. Tajmeet usually auctions his trainers on livestream starting at £1, while shoppers bid for each item. The live selling has been incredibly lucrative for him, earning him £75,000 in sales in just three months at the end of last year. He’s also stopped getting most of his trainers from raffles now and instead spends hours trawling discounted and sales sections at retailers. He’ll also buy stock directly from individuals or secondary suppliers, and it’s easier to get a bargain as he’s buying more in bulk now. The 23-year-old says the job is hard work and he wasn’t able to take a proper holiday for two years. “I do want to branch into other things down the line, but I just don’t have time for it now,” he says. But he’s proud of how far he’s come already and it’s given him lots of opportunities to network with other entrepreneurs. How YOU can make cash from flipping in four steps These Nike Zoom Vomero 5 trainers were also sold by Tajmeet Credit: Supplied If you want to flip items yourself, you can do it just like Tajmeet in four easy steps… Step 1 – work out what you want to sell It helps if you have plenty of knowledge already about the items you want to sell. Tajmeet has always had an interest in trainers so he already knew what was popular and could make a good profit. But you could also flip items like vintage or designer clothes, collectibles or trading cards. Just bear in mind that flipping only works well if the products are in demand, and buyers are often willing to pay more if the item is limited edition or super-rare. Step 2 – look out for bargains The key idea with flipping is that you need to buy your items for a bargain price and then sell them on for more. That means you need to work out where you can get bargain prices. If you’re planning to sell clothes, you might want to scour charity shops – especially in posher areas where you might spot more designer finds. If you’re selling collectibles or trading cards, you should keep tabs on any new releases and make sure you can swoop in to buy them before they sell out. You could also look through sales sections of retailers, like Tajmeet now does. Another option is to buy from wholesalers, although in this case you may need to buy in bulk. Step 3 – keep an eye on trends Make sure you’re keeping across what’s in demand right now. Tajmeet says when he first started out, there was loads of hype around limited-edition trainers like Jordans and Travis Scott collaborations. But now buyers are more interested in comfortable footwear and sports shoes from brands like Asics and Saucony. You can keep on top of trends by tracking trending searches on resale apps like eBay or StockX, joining reseller communities on Reddit or Discord, and monitoring Google Trends for spikes in brand searches. Plus, you can watch how quickly new drops sell out on retailer websites and track which items consistently appear in ‘Low Stock’ alerts. Step 4 – try out live selling You could try live selling like Tajmeet if you want to shift lots of items at once rather than waiting weeks for them to sell. Sellers use platforms like eBay Live, TikTok Shop and Whatnot. Bear in mind that most platforms take a commission or transaction fee on every sale you make. For example, eBay Live takes a 4% commission fee capped at £100 per item, as well as a 2.42% payment processing fee – plus 30p per order. Start your auctions low, for example at £1. If you livestream regularly and make sure to interact with viewers, you can build up a loyal base of repeat buyers. Comment now