37-year-old turned her thrifting side hustle into a business that brings in 7 figures a year: 'Anyone can do it'

Jocelyn Elizabeth was a new mom working part-time as a marketing administrator when her dad brought home a $5 lamp from a church yard sale in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.

It was 2011, Elizabeth says. Though the lamp wasn't fancy or new, her dad was sure he'd made a good investment, and found a cleaned-up version of the same lamp listed at $70 on eBay. Elizabeth says she promptly went thrifting the next weekend, intending to flip her finds for a profit online, her baby son tagging along in a stroller.

Elizabeth, who uses her middle name professionally and asked not to share her last name, now makes her full-time living from her thrifting-centric YouTube channel Crazy Lamp Lady and her online thrifting marketplace NikNax, she says. NikNax hosts more than 5,000 other sellers listing resale items ranging from mugs and glassware to jewelry, books, trading cards and local snacks.

NikNax has brought in more than $5.2 million in 2025 revenue, as of Oct. 31, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Elizabeth, 37, keeps a 5% cut of each sale, meaning she's personally received at least $260,000 from the marketplace so far this year. District, the online platform that hosts NikNax, also takes a 5% cut of each sale.

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Elizabeth also sells her own thrift finds on NikNax, and her store is responsible for about 5% of NikNax's total sales, she says. Her YouTube channel has also brought in roughly $298,000 in 2025 advertising revenue as of Oct. 15, documents show.

Both NikNax and the YouTube channel are profitable, says Elizabeth. She employs two other people who help with listing and shipping her thrift finds, she adds. She works about three days per week on NikNax, and two or three days on her YouTube channel — and her working hours vary significantly, she says.

"These days, I spend anywhere from 50 to 100 hours a week working. It really depends on what's going on. Some weeks I'm doing more thrifting trips, and other weeks I'm focused on selling," says Elizabeth, a mom of three. "NikNax has become such a big part of my daily life that even when I'm not actively selling, I'm usually watching other shows, chatting, or listing items. It's technically work, but a lot of it just feels like part of my everyday routine."

Here's how she built her YouTube channel side hustle and turned thrifting into her full-time job.

When Elizabeth first discovered thrift flipping in 2011, she was making $14 per hour at a part-time corporate marketing job, she says. Soon, she started traveling to antique shows and stores across the U.S., studying the vintage and collectible secondary market and developing an eye for items with a higher resale value.

By April 2016, she felt unfulfilled sending marketing emails to clients every day, she says — so she decided to launch a YouTube channel dedicated to her thrifting. Her first inkling that this could become a real money-making business was the first time she made $600 in advertising revenue in one day, she says.

"I remember having to pull over my car and just be like, 'What in the world is happening?'" says Elizabeth.

By the end of 2018, Elizabeth was "consistently earning more from YouTube than from my part-time job," she says — so she quit her marketing gig that December. "I was like, 'You know what? I don't want to be here anymore' ... It was definitely risky, and it was scary."

Roughly six months later, Elizabeth had a house full of antiques and five employees, two who listed items on eBay and three who packed and shipped them. Elizabeth says she brought on three more employees during the Covid-19 pandemic, as declining ad revenue pushed her to try selling more on eBay. She also grew dissatisfied with seller fees on the platform, she says.

In October 2023, she launched a marketplace on District — an internet platform founded in 2022 — after being invited by a company representative who'd seen her YouTube channel. District currently hosts 98 marketplaces, according to its website, including NikNax.

Elizabeth also rents a commercial space to store her own thrift finds, and a separate operating space for day-to-day responsibilities like listing and shipping orders. Combined, those spaces roughly cost $2,000 to $3,000 per month including utilities, she says.

Owning a marketplace — rather than just being a seller — presents a new set of challenges, Elizabeth says. Online trends shift quickly, and staying on top of them can be difficult. Livestream sales, where you sell items in real time to buyers actively watching your live video feed, are a major sales driver for NikNax, but Elizabeth wasn't initially comfortable in front of a live camera, she says.

She's also responsible for enforcing platform rules, like removing people who make rude comments or determining whether a buyer is falsely claiming that an item wasn't shipped to get an illicit refund.

Building a community of buyers and sellers, on the other hand, was fairly easy, she says: She brought some of her YouTube audience with her, and now casts many of her NikNax livestreams on YouTube and other social channels to market the platform.

Elizabeth has used some of her earnings to invest in real estate, purchasing an Airbnb rental property and a separate rental home in Pennsylvania. Each three-bedroom house cost around $300,000, she says. The Airbnb runs guests roughly $300 per night, including fees, according to the rental platform.

Anyone can replicate her experience — from thrift flipping to YouTube and NikNax — to a certain degree, as long as you have the "drive" and dedication, she says. She travels the country at least once a month looking for thrift items to flip, while filming and editing online content and livestreaming multiple times per week, she says.

Still, even if you only have a few dollars in your pocket, you could turn that into a profit if you know what to look for, she notes.

"I think anyone can do it if they put the work in," says Elizabeth. "Anyone could go to Goodwill and pick something up and be like, 'Oh my gosh, how much is this worth?' And find out it's worth $50 ... If you're willing to put in the work, if you're willing to learn, I think anyone can really accomplish this."

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