I sold my beloved van using TikTok. I had multiple daily viewings and got more than people offered on Facebook — here's how I did it.
Milly Struthers
- Milly Struthers renovated a van in 2021 while studying remotely.
- After driving around Europe, she tried to sell it on Facebook Marketplace but couldn't find a buyer.
- She got a huge response by making a TikTok and ultimately sold the van to someone who saw it.
I bought my beloved van in April 2021, just as COVID-19 restrictions in England finally began to lift.
I was still an undergraduate and had always wanted to travel after finishing my degree. Still, I never imagined I would travel around the UK and Europe in a van I had renovated myself.
When I bought it, I had no experience in renovation, let alone mechanics. But I was an avid fan of stories of other people's van life and thought: how hard could it be?
I went from Brighton, on England's south coast, back home to Dorset in the southwest, where my mom lived, near where the van was available for pickup. It cost £3,000, or about $3,800. Fortunately, the previous owner had already partially converted it, so I had a shell layout to work from.
Milly Struthers
I spent roughly £2,700 on renovations. I worked full-time in one retail job and part-time as a waitress, setting aside £400 each month for it.
I spent my evenings and weekends chipping away at the renovation from April to June. I watched YouTube tutorials while working out how to fit and wire my plumbing. Sometimes, I used the video guides sent with parts I ordered, such as the electric pump sink.
For carpentry, I called my grandad, who was always willing to help. My uncle helped fit the new flooring. By the time it was finished, it had a new kitchen area, a toilet, flooring, insulation, and extra home touches for comfort.
I set off on my first trip to Cornwall at the end of July 2021. During the first year of my travels, my trips were long weekends around the UK while I continued my last year of undergraduate study remotely.
In summer 2022, I took a two-month trip with my best friend, covering 4,000 miles traveling through northern France, Switzerland, Italy, and back up through southern France.
Milly Struthers
I returned the van to my mother's house and went back to Brighton to study for a master's degree in journalism.
By the time I came home, my van had a lot of costly mechanical problems after sitting in the driveway during wet and miserable winter months. As a student struggling for money, I knew it was time to sell.
Milly Struthers
Having bought it on Facebook Marketplace, I first tried to sell it there. I also listed it on various van-life Facebook groups.
I also began advertising the van on Instagram and Gumtree, with the asking price starting at £6,000. I wanted to get back at least what I had put toward the renovation on top of what I paid for the van.
After months of refreshing the ads and lowering the price, I was starting to think it would sit in the driveway for another winter.
One day, I was scrolling through TikTok and came across a viral post of photos of someone's van, with thousands of likes and comments. I had created a new account on TikTok to document my travels but it hadn't occurred to me that it was somewhere you could sell things.
Milly Struthers
I started looking at what music was making TikToks viral and what hashtags to use, such as #vanlifeconversion and #vanlifetravel.
I said where the van was and listed an asking price of £5,700 or nearest offer, along with all the key features that came with it. I used 11 photos of as many features as I thought people should see, from its fitted kitchen to its two beds.
The last photo was of the van on the driveway with a note asking people to comment or message if they had any questions.
I wasn't entirely sure how this would pan out. But I trusted that Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer" and the van's beauty would drive views.
Within a few minutes of posting it, I was in awe, watching the view count go up by hundreds.
Many comments were compliments about the van, and people said they'd love to live out of it at some point. With this post doing so well, I thought I'd try it on my personal TikTok account, even though it only had 25 followers, all of whom were close friends or family.
I used the same formatting as the TikTok on my van-life account. But this time, I wrote captions on each photo with fun emojis. This post generated over 118,000 views, far more than the first's 20,000. The second post has more than 6,000 likes and 250 comments. Hundreds of thousands of people had seen my van.
To keep up engagement, I would reply to individual comments. People were eager to be the first to see it in person. I had multiple viewings daily for two weeks, with people traveling from hours away to see it. A woman wanted to come from France to view it, but it sold before we arranged a date.
Despite the post's international reach, the eventual buyer lived 15 minutes away and paid £5,300.
I was pretty happy. I didn't want the van sitting on the drive for another winter and I was due to return to Brighton. Plus, I'd expected to receive an offer below my asking price for a secondhand van. It was also more than what people had offered on Facebook Marketplace, where the highest offer was £4,500.
The experience surprised and impressed me. I didn't realize I could use TikTok to sell something like this. Around the same time, my partner's family listed their house to rent. We all joked that I could post it on TikTok if they struggled to find someone.
Milly Struthers
But selling my van on TikTok left me missing van life. Ultimately, it helped convince me to move to New Zealand and take up van life there.
My visa has been approved, and by September next year, I plan to have a new van and take it on the road there for two years.
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