Gross profit vs net profit: what's the difference?
Gross profit is sale price minus purchase price. You pick up a jacket for £8 at a charity shop, sell it for £30, and your gross profit is £22. That's the number most people carry in their head, and it's the one that fools you.
Net profit is what actually stays in your pocket once every cost of the sale is taken off. On one item the gap looks tiny. Across 100 sales a month it can add up to hundreds of pounds you think you made and didn't.
Quick test: if you can't say what your last sale made after costs, you know your takings, not your profit.
The net profit formula for resellers
For each item you sell, start from the sale price and take off every line that applies to you:
- Purchase price (what you paid, or £0 if it came from your own wardrobe).
- Platform seller fees, if there are any.
- Packaging: mailing bags, boxes, tissue, labels, tape.
- Postage, but only when you pay it (free postage offers, your own courier).
- Bumps, promoted listings or other paid visibility for that item.
- Returns: lost packaging, any return postage, the item back in stock.
Net profit = sale price − purchase price − seller fees − packaging − postage you pay − promotion − returns. What's left is your real profit on that item, before tax.
Who pays what on Vinted, eBay UK and Depop?
Vinted's help centre says there are no fees to upload or sell items. The Buyer Protection fee is added at checkout and paid by the buyer, and so is postage when they buy through Vinted checkout. You get the price you set. What Vinted can charge you for is optional visibility: Bumps for single items and Showcase (formerly Wardrobe Spotlight) for your whole wardrobe. The price is shown before you pay.
On eBay UK it depends on whether you're a private or business seller. eBay says it's free for UK based private sellers to sell most items, with no final value fee, but fees still apply for optional listing upgrades, for listings over the monthly free allowance and for delivery to an overseas address. Promoted listings cost extra. Business sellers pay a final value fee that varies by category plus a per order fee. If you offer free postage, that postage comes out of your profit.
Depop's seller fees depend on your country and have changed several times in recent years. A payment processing fee can apply even where there's no selling fee, and boosted listings cost extra. Check the seller fees page in Depop's help centre for your country before you run the numbers.
Fee tables change often. For eBay and Depop, always take the rate from the official page for your country, not a number you saw in a video.
Worked example: one sale, two platforms
Example with round numbers, for illustration only: a jacket bought for £8 and sold for £30. Left column, a Vinted sale where you paid for a bump. Right column, the same sale on a platform where you pay a seller fee and the postage. The fee amounts are examples, not any platform's actual rates.
| Line | Vinted (example) | Platform with seller fees (example) |
|---|---|---|
| Sale price | £30.00 | £30.00 |
| Purchase price | −£8.00 | −£8.00 |
| Seller fees | £0.00 | −£3.00 |
| Packaging | −£1.00 | −£1.00 |
| Postage you pay | £0.00 (buyer pays) | −£4.00 |
| Bump or promotion | −£2.00 | £0.00 |
| Net profit | £19.00 | £14.00 |
| Net margin | 63% | 47% |
Gross profit is £22 in both cases. Net profit is £19 in one and £14 in the other. That gap is exactly what you miss when you do the maths in your head.
Margin vs markup: which one should you track?
People mix these two up all the time. Margin is based on the sale price: net profit ÷ sale price. Markup is based on what you paid: net profit ÷ purchase price.
- Vinted example, margin: 19 ÷ 30 = 63%.
- Same sale, markup: 19 ÷ 8 = 238%.
Both are correct, they just answer different questions. Margin tells you how much of every pound you take stays with you. Markup tells you how hard every pound you spend on stock is working. Pick one and stick with it, or you'll end up comparing numbers that don't compare.
Hidden costs: your time, mileage and unsold stock
Some costs aren't tied to a single sale, but they still eat into your profit:
- Your time: sourcing, cleaning, photos, messages, packing. Divide your monthly profit by your hours to see your real hourly rate.
- Mileage: fuel, parking and fares for car boots, charity shops and drop off points.
- Unsold stock: an item sitting for months is your money sitting with it. Anything you sell at a loss, donate or bin is a cost to take off your profit.
- Bulk buys: packaging in bulk, a Showcase for the whole wardrobe, small kit. Count these per month, not per item.
Tracking profit per item or per month?
Both, because they show different things. Per item, you see which brands, categories and sources actually pay and which ones keep you busy for nothing. Per month, you add the costs that don't belong to any one item: mileage, bulk packaging, wardrobe wide promotion, and stock you wrote off.
- When you buy, log the price and date for each item.
- When you sell, log the sale price, the platform and any fees for that sale.
- At the end of the month, add up net profit per item.
- Take off the month's costs that aren't tied to an item.
- Compare with last month and spot the items that have been in stock too long.
A spreadsheet is fine to start with. Once stock grows, that's usually where it breaks: you lose track of what you paid for what. That's why we built ResellStats, an iPhone app where you add each item with a photo and net profit is worked out for you after fees, packaging and postage, with stats by week, month and year. It doesn't connect to your Vinted account, you add items yourself.
Profit here is before tax. What you owe depends on your own situation, so check HMRC's guidance or ask an adviser. This isn't tax advice.