A couple of years ago I started tying myself and it added a whole new dimension to fishing. In short I love it.

I consider myself pretty proficient at most patterns now and ended up having a handfull of people on my local resevoir requesting flies from me. They pretty much gave me what they thought the flies were worth in their eyes and over the space of a year it about paid for my yearly Membership (£130)

On average people gave me about a fiver for 6-8 flies.

It got me thinking, I love fly tying but money was tight, the missus seems to live on ebay so I thought id give it a go. I started buying my materials off ebay and generally it saved me some cash.

Then the idea came to me, why dont I sell a few flys on ebay. Maybe it would help towards my "buy a decent fly rod" fund or even help out with the bills a little.

Giddy with possibilities I bought in a large amount of materials and had decided i'd tie up flies in bags of 6. Start off small, I'd offer either 6 buzzers, 6 lures or 6 of my best cating flies and sell them on ebay.

I started working out how much id charge, as I saw it

Each fly, nicely finished would take about 10 mins of my labour + a hook + threads + materials + varnish.

Working on making 100 buzzers (I decided 3 parachute and 3 epoxy per pack) I Estimated costs at :

100 hooks - 10.00
Threads - £1.00
Cheeks - £0.50
Tinsel/ribs -£2.00
Varnish -£0.50

Total £14.00 and about 16 hours of labour

This would make me 16-17 packs of 6 buzzers. I estimated at say 2.50-3.00 per pack this would make about £44. So by the time id taken the material cost off about £30 profit for 16 hours work. Far from a fortune but if it tied a few a night it would almost keep me in fishing over the year.

Well this is where the shock hit me I checked on ebay to see what packs of 6 flies were selling for, as low as £1.00. How can people afford to do this??? So now I'm sat on the materials I bought wondering if its even worth it. (at £1.00 for 6 id make about £2.00 for 16 hours work!!)

Has anyone any experience with buying flies from ebay? Is there a market for them at the price I thought of originally or should I just not bother?

thanks

That is indeed the labour rate for china, india etc where a lot of these flies are tied.

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Just My Tuppenceworth!!

If you want a half decent fly, on a good hook, using good materials then the absolute minimum should be about 80p (really more like £1 to £1.25). Below that level corners are being cut and you will get an inferior product.

So I would say even at £3 for 6 buzzers you are underselling yourself by about 100%.

Would people pay £1 for a buzzer? - look at the trade threads and the feedback that Scratch gets for his, the people buying them think they are worth it.

Hi Guppy

At such low prices the flies on Ebay must have come from a country where the fly tiers are paid pence per hour. They're not good flies. Shops are selling flies at a £1 each . Good tiers on this forum get an economic return for their flies.Don't be discouraged but let people know your flies are not imported and of a high standard.

Good luck

BK

To make money selling flies on Ebay you need to be selling in massive quantities (like most things on Ebay) and make small margins - you can't do this on flies you are tying yourself as you simply couldn't tie enough and you would be better off with a paper round.

Most flies on the market are tied outside of the UK. Even the shop bought flies will be tied somewhere such as Kenya but they obviously require larger markups due to their overheads. Don't assume that you can't get decent flies for a low price - you can!

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Guppy,

Add eBay / paypal - listing and selling fees to the outgoings

A couple of shops I know stock the 'range' from the likes of Fulling Mill but also have a good selection from a local fella who ties up general patterns and local favourites not stocked by others... They can be popular flies at about £1 each (I don't know what mark up, if any, the shop makes). This approach might be worth a whirl in various shops?

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Time is a stream I go fishing in.

Rather than try to compete with the mass produced/low overhead market why not pitch yourself higher and go for the bespoke "hand tied in the UK" prestige approach?

Perhaps customers will be prepared to pay the extra for that type of service (or maybe not). Just a thought.

I started tying flies when I was 9 years old and within a year was good enough to sell them to my classmates and some teachers, this carried on to secondary school and even when I was working as an apprentice, I'm now 50 and still make flies (as some on here have had and tried to great success), about 3 years ago I tried (locally and on the net)selling some spider patterns in packs (sizes 16, 14 & 12) of 12 for £7 posted and hardly got a sniff, but some people will gladly pay a pound per fly from an unknown source and think nothing of it.
I do have several buyers who contact me with a list of what they want, they are made and posted and I've never had one complaint. I also used to make fully dressed salmon flies on old fashioned single irons for display, I made some into paperweights and broaches for a while but they tailed off. I've given up making them in bulk to sell, only making them for myself and my regular customers, I concentrate on something else now, but would turn my attention back to making flies if I could get more business.

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If it wasn't for pickpockets I wouldn't have a sex life.

I buy my flies on ebay at the cheap prices because I am on a budget.
They seem to be fine to me, but then again Im not that experianced with flies.
Is there a big difference between the ones I get and the 'good' ones ?

The good ones won't straighten when you're about to land a fish