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.

[sin-n-dex]

---

@mam98031 wrote:

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

---

I updated all my templates today to have "5 days handling" now, instead of 10. But to avoid creating problems I don't want to adjust the ones that are listed (not right now anyway). Changing things on eBay puts them out of sync with SixBit, and if I have to update on SixBit it will undo all my changes on ebay.

Someone who knows the SixBit software can probably explain, I had an issue when I deleted photos in listings to save space (because of the size limit of the database) and it somehow synced so only the last photo was showing (replacing what was deleted). Then it synced on eBay to only show the one photo, and here I am looking for photos of all the corrupt listings to fix them.

All the problem listings are down, and I did get the postcards (one type of item that was badly affected) rephotographed. I'm working on fixing the corrupt stamp listings now, but I have all my photos since Jan 2022, so if it went live after 2022, I'm good. Some of them went up in 2021, so I have to photograph those again.

I have no end of problems sometimes, and part of that has to do with the sheer volume of items I'm juggling in my store. Tonight I spent my whole 4 hours of eBay time repricing silver so we'd make money. The coin shop wants the melt price of anything i sell, so if the prices online don't go up, we'll break even and I won't make anything on the sale.

C.

[sin-n-dex]

---

@keziak wrote:

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. 

---

I don't ship with boxes very often, but when I do have a big package to do up with many coins/stamps, etc, I spend half an hour packing it (between fetching every item, packing it properly, doing my shipping manifest, etc).

Sometimes when I am limited with what can get packed because of time, I might intentionally select more items that I know will ship quick (to get more items out in the next go) and skip over something that's a bit cumbersome. Of course I ship oldest orders first too, so sometimes there's no choice on which ones get to go tomorrow.

C.

[mam98031]

5 days is still something they count against seller in the algorithm for the search return.

[mam98031]

While this may be a personal definition of what a Hobby is, it is Not the definition the IRS goes by.

[ilsh_94]

Yes, many people sell on eBay as a hobby. You can list your manga, anime series, and other miscellaneous items in lots, which might attract collectors and enthusiasts who prefer bulk purchases.

[mam98031]

---

@ilsh_94 wrote:

Yes, many people sell on eBay as a hobby. You can list your manga, anime series, and other miscellaneous items in lots, which might attract collectors and enthusiasts who prefer bulk purchases.

---

You are absolutely correct.  However that doesn't mean you don't have to report those sales on your Federal Tax returns.