ebay as a hobby

[keziak]

Anyone here sell on ebay as a hobby, not as a business? I am trying to come up with a model in which I keep my hand in due to having stuff I can't just list on Amazon instead (such as lots). I am not quite ready to wholesale throw the stuff into a ravine. If nothing else I still have a ton of manga to do something with. Also anime series and some miscellaneous other stuff.

What does selling as a hobby mean to you? Strictly limiting your number of listings and/or the time you spend on the site? 

I am thinking of cutting back to listing only one day a week and not Sunday so I can take more of my weekends off. Maybe just 10 auctions a week or whatever. No more listing single books and gradually removing the listings. Maybe sales will end up being so low I'll finally take the plunge and close up shop. I just don't want to run two full-bore businesses anymore.

[keziak]

I want to do other things, too. I have a bad problem of work at home sucking up too much time. For example I know perfectly well I need to strength train and have everything I need here but I'll be darned if I manage it. The only way I exercise at all is to go to the gym.  I need to use their equipment when I am already there I guess. I also really want to garden but have problems due to sentence 2 and how quickly it hurts my knees, sigh.

[keziak]

I do most of my packing and label printing in the evenings when I am too tired to focus on listing. That helps with getting a head start on the next day. It's still a challenge to stay caught up though.

[keziak]

I've always found ebay customers to be understanding and really quite nice when I sincerely apologize for issues. Can't tell you how many times (many) I have goofed up and the customers went from piqued to falling all over themselves to leave good feedback, bless them every one. 

My surgeries have been a pain due to restrictions on weight. Since I deal mostly in books heavy weight is just a fact of life, even with some help from my son. 

[sin-n-dex]

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@keziak wrote:

I do most of my packing and label printing in the evenings when I am too tired to focus on listing. That helps with getting a head start on the next day. It's still a challenge to stay caught up though.

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I have a similar system. When the news is on at 9pm, that's when I print my postage labels. I know the weight of just about everything i ship without checking (and in some cases I guess a bit high to make sure there's enough postage, even if it costs a few cents, we're dealing with 4-15 oz packages).

They sit on the printer overnight and I pack in the morning before I leave for work. If I work at home, I pack them and let them sit in my office until the following day. I go into work 3 times a week, so that's my three shipping days (until they stopped being open on Mondays, now I drive to Burlington after work on Mondays to ship).

I know I can do 8-12 packages in the morning, pending on how much effort it takes to find the item, and how much effort it takes to pack. Postcards and stamps take a bit more effort than a token/coin type of thing. Lots of effort is needed for some coin sets to cut cardboard and pack so they won't bend. If I'm afraid I won't be able to find something in the morning I'll look before bed, but try not to let it keep me up all night if I can't find it. Also some types of inventory isn't here... another reason to have a few extra days handling. I have designated days during the week to stop by the store and pick up things that are there (which take 10 minutes to find everything since it's all organized).

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@keziak wrote:

I've always found ebay customers to be understanding and really quite nice when I sincerely apologize for issues. Can't tell you how many times (many) I have goofed up and the customers went from piqued to falling all over themselves to leave good feedback, bless them every one. 

My surgeries have been a pain due to restrictions on weight. Since I deal mostly in books heavy weight is just a fact of life, even with some help from my son. 

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I had a few less than understanding customers and found out it's because other sellers lied to them, so they are not trusting when they hear the same excuses, even if they're true when I say them. I have learnt to just fess up to the mistake. I also put in place a system to track stuff down if I can't find it, because it has to be around somewhere. if I don't have an email that said it sold, it's probably still here. Only exception is when I surrender inventory back to the coin shop (and take it off eBay) that there's a possibility of a ghost listing somewhere or it not coming down. I try to make sure that doesn't happen, but every now and again I see something listed that I know I gave back. Thankfully I haven't caught this in response to a sale (except once, and I tracked the item down in the shop and got it back for the customer).

C.

[mam98031]

Thanks. I think it's supposed to be laparoscopy which means quick recovery. I don't have a date scheduled yet, just been told I will need it soon.

Oh good.  I've had one of those before and they are pretty easy to recover from.  However, I was much younger when I had one.  Things aren't quite as easy as they once were for me.  🤣

[steve_stuff]

OK ...  As I said we gave you the ship one day a week -- and then repeating the same routine every seven days. There is also the list and sell one week, then shop and restock for the next three deal. So basically you're selling one week a month and buying/writing/scheduling the next three, then repeat the next month.

[mam98031]

Keep in mind that handling times 5 + days are lowered in the search returns.

[keziak]

I have all kinds of boxes, bubble mailers and bifolds. The stuff that sucks up time requires poking around for the right box.  Then of course hauling all that up the stairs and to the car. I did finally get out of the business of shipping the heaviest loads like big sets. A good argument could be made for quitting the business of other lots that don't bring in that much money. How amazing it would be to basically only ship with the bubble mailers and bifolds. 

[keziak]

I make  mistakes and I guess customers can tell that I am apologizing sincerely. Of course they usually get a speedy refund, too.  Once in a while there is a scenario in which I could buy a replacement for them so I offer them that option. About all I can say is that the old days of the "switcheroo" doesn't happen anymore. It seemed to date mostly to when my child helped me with the  mail. I must have gotten distracted talking to them and somehow managed to mislabel TWO packages.  😯

[keziak]

Surgeries are better now but around here they bounce you out of the hospital so quickly. Last time when I had an operation they literally did not check to see if I could WALK. It was straight from bed, to the wheelchair, to the bathroom then to the car. 

[aldet_4021]

Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed reading the responses.  I'm actually having trouble thinking of how to respond!

I sell on eBay, Etsy and Marketplace and I operate as a business, have an LLC, etc. But the challenge that I have is that I consider a hobby "fun", so is what I'm doing work (can work actually be fun)? I still consider myself new at all of this, like 10 billion other people, I started doing this in 2020. I worked in a corporate job for just under 21 years. That was work - it was mostly enjoyable, but I don't think I would ever call it "fun". So the challenge is that selling on line - even with all the stress and frustration of making sales, unhappy customers, buying and listing things that just don't sell - is fun, I love it, and I think I'm getting better at it. 

My main income today is as a landlord. But since I have wonderful and long term tenants right now (you have no idea how grateful I am for this), that does not take up much time per month.  As much as I can, I am selling things on line. Right now, can I actually make enough to live eBay/Etsy/Marketplace alone? No way. Is it a good supplement? Yes. I also see it as something I can do when I am older - there will come a time when I can't climb ladders, clean snow off of awnings, etc. so I picture myself years from now in a very basic apartment working on finding and listing small items to sell every day. 

So I guess for me it's a hobby that is also a business. However, I take it very seriously and treat it as work - my occupation and/or career - because of the amount of time I spend on it each week, and I want to keep doing this as long as I am physically and mentally able.

[mam98031]

@aldet_4021 

There is nothing wrong with enjoying your job as a seller.  Because you enjoy doing a job that does NOT make it a Hobby, it just means you enjoy your work.

I've had my account set up as a Sole Proprietorship from the first day I started selling here almost a quarter of a century ago.  But I don't sell stuff that I could potentially need the protection that an LLC can offer.

All we need to remember is that at our heart it may be a Hobby, IRS does not define it like many do here.  If you sell for a profit and/or purchase stuff for resale, in IRS eyes you are a business and need to treat your tax returns with that in mind.

[keziak]

I feel the same way;  my husband counts the days to retirement but I've always said I want to keep my businesses as long as I physically can. Selling lots of books is hard though, especially with a 3-story operation.  I know many people who got knee replacement and after the initial recovery do well so maybe that's in my future. But as a major time-suck I also want to gradually cut back to fewer hours a week. I haven't quite decided what that will look like. Taking Sundays off sounds good except that there is no way at all I can spend more than maybe an hour a day gardening (thanks, knees). So I may take time off most mornings instead. 

[sin-n-dex]

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@steve_stuff wrote:

OK ...  As I said we gave you the ship one day a week -- and then repeating the same routine every seven days. There is also the list and sell one week, then shop and restock for the next three deal. So basically you're selling one week a month and buying/writing/scheduling the next three, then repeat the next month.

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I had a similar setup (to your one week a month thing) back in 2013-14 when I first started, and I had a really big collection to liquidate. I'd get a box of coins from the coinshop, divide it among the number of weeks I was going to run auctions, spend a weekend doing all the listings in turbolister and then have 3 weeks or so running after that. My plan was to not have them end on long weekends (in Canada, at that time I had some pretty regular Canadian bidders and some of them didn't have smartphones to bid from anywhere). Then I'd run my auctions and focus on shipping which was happening every day... literally I had 50-100 unique buyers each Sunday.

Once the auctions were done, we migrated to putting things in the store as fixed priced items and selling them willy nilly whenever.

I'm back to auctions on Sunday, but now I spend time when I have it getting a week ready in SixBit and uploading them when the time is close enough for them to run. I'm a few weeks ahead at doing listings, so if I have to divert my attention to something for a couple of weeks I've got my listings ready to go. All the auctions are running from the same basic template, so it's pretty quick to make listings.

C.