Miss Pennypincher: Make money from your junk

With spring nearly upon us, and the Easter break just around the corner, now is the ideal time to start planning a good clear out around your home – and hopefully you can make some money at the same time.

You only have to visit any public rubbish tip to see the huge number of perfectly useful items that are thrown away by our consumer society.

Rather than joining the many who let these goods go to waste, selling them on instead can be straightforward, and means they won't end up taking up space in our already overstretched landfill sites.

The website eBay.co.uk is one of the most effective ways to sell items online and because so many people visit the site regularly, many items fetch a good price.

However, there are costs involved in becoming an eBay seller. First, there is an "insertion fee" based on the item's starting price or reserve price, plus a "feature fee" which you pay if you select optional features to increase your chances of selling successfully when listing the item. If the item sells, your also pay a "final value fee" based on the selling price.

So, for example, if you list an item on eBay with a starting price of £1, and select the gallery option, which means when buyers search for items, they will see your item with picture directly in their search results, you would pay a 15p insertion fee and a 15p gallery fee.

If the item sells for up to £30, you will also have to pay a final value fee of 7.5 per cent of the selling price, and if it sells for between £30 and £599 you have to pay 7.5 per cent of the first £29.99, plus 4.5 per cent of the remaining balance of the final selling price.

Postage costs, which you must declare on the site, will be covered by the buyer, but with large items, such as bulky furniture, many sellers stipulate that these must be collected directly from them.

For those who don't want to get to grips with selling on internet sites, then a car-boot sale can be a just as effective way to sell unwanted items.

You can search for car-boot sales in the UK, which tend to be held from late March until late autumn, on the site www.carbootjunction.com.

Pitches usually cost from £5 to £15. If getting rid of an item is your top priority, and you don't necessarily want to get money out of it, then the website www.freecycle.org is worth a look.

The site's focus is keeping reuseable items out of landfills, so you can give, and get, items for free in your home town.

You may think some items, such as old mobile phones, aren't worth selling on or recycling, as there are always new and more advanced models coming onto the market, but don't throw yours away just yet.

There are more than 80 million old phones lying around in the UK, with a value of £1.6bn, and there are plenty of people prepared to pay for older models.

For example, websites such as www.envirofone.com, www.mazumamobile.com, www.mopay.co.uk and www.mobile2cash.co.uk, all buy old phones.

All you do is put in details of the make and model of the phone and they will make you an offer for it.

If the price is acceptable, the company will usually send you a pre-paid addressed envelope for you to send the phone back to them.

Alternatively, you will be asked to send the phone in a jiffy bag to a freepost address.

Remember, however, that it may be worth using registered post if your phone has a high value. Once the phone has been received and the company has tested that it is working, they will then pay you for it.

The phones usually end up being sold on and used in the Middle East, Africa and South America, and so you are recycling at the same time.

For example, a Nokia 5310 model would fetch £35 on the envirofone.com website, or alternatively you can trade it in for Argos vouchers worth £40.26.

Even if your phone is broken you can still trade it in as normal using this site, and you will be offered anything from 30 per cent to 70 per cent of the value.

Mobile phone recycling companies also often make a donation to charity on top of the personal payment they send you.

For example, if you send mopay.co.uk three handsets totalling £23.50, it will send you a personal cheque for £23.50 and make a 10 per cent donation of £2.35 to your chosen charity.

So think carefully before throwing anything away – not only could you get some money back but you will be doing your bit to help the environment too.