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When it comes to side hustles, there is no question that selling stuff online is one of my least favorite ways to earn extra cash.
Getting rid of clutter and earning some extra money is great. But I just can’t stand the whole process of selling items … especially online.
In the past, my wife and I have sold some things around the house on eBay and Amazon. Most of the time, the items we sold were brand new and never been used. Stuff we got as gifts or bought when we shouldn’t have that we just don’t use.
We have had other items we bought on clearance at a brick and mortar … and tried to flip them for a higher price online for a little retail arbitrage. Sometimes this worked … sometimes it didn’t.
Overall … we have made a few dollars from this side hustle. But personally, I don’t feel that it is sustainable income and the time spent is not worth it to us.
Why I Don’t Like Selling Online
I am sure if my wife and I enjoyed flipping items online for extra cash … we could make it into a profitable income stream. But there are just a few things I don’t really like about it.
I don’t like to print labels, find packaging to ship the items in, taking them to get shipped … you name it. There is nothing fun to me about the process of shipping.
And then there are times when I forget to ship the items we have sold. That is me just being lazy … dreading the entire shipping process.
Plus … finding things to sell at the store seems to be very time consuming. I am sure we probably were not very efficient in the past when trying to find inventory to sell. But do we really want to spend time at the store combing clearance racks looking for products to flip? Not really …
Which leads me to my next point … we are back to selling stuff online … again!
Selling Items on Amazon to Raise Extra Cash
So despite dreading the whole process of selling online … we are back to listing a few things to sell on Amazon … again. But this time is different … sort of.
A few years back, we tried the retail arbitrage game by selling items on Fulfillment by Amazon. I think we profited an astounding $.74! Well, maybe not that much … but it was under a dollar.
This time however, the items we are selling is serving a different purpose. We are not necessarily selling items on Amazon for retail arbitrage or earn huge profits … although I wouldn’t mind getting huge profits.
Instead, we are trying to adopt more of a minimalist lifestyle by getting rid of junk that is taking up space in the house. For now, we are mostly trying to sell brand new books (mostly children’s books) that have never (ever) been used.
Over the past month, we have listed 33 items (mostly books) for sale on Amazon, of which we have sold 3 books. This time, we are selling everything by Merchant … I just don’t want to deal with selling by Fulfillment again.
Sold 3 Books
So far, in about 3.5 weeks, we have sold 3 children’s books. Each book was paperback and brand new … never been used. They all had been sitting on a book shelf taking up space in our home.
After Amazon fee’s, our books brought in $14.40 in extra income. But … we also spent ($7.22) on shipping and packaging to ship. All items were shipped via Media Mail.
Total Profit = $7.18
That certainly doesn’t seem like much money (and the reason why we don’t like this as a side hustle) … especially with the time factor it took to list the items and ship them.
And even though we didn’t earn much, we got these books out of our house. It is sort of liberating to be honest. Plus we added a little extra cash that will be sent to our Hustle Account.
Remember – our hustle account is setup to eventually fund our IRA’s for next year. Any monthly savings cut from the budget will be sent there. Along with any money earned from side hustles … which this is.
So we have cleaned out part of our house and added $7.18 to next years IRA contributions.
Hopefully we can continue to sell our remaining items and list a few more. I would really like to see our earning go up from this … even though I can’t really stand selling online!
Note – This latest side hustle income brings our Hustle Account running balance up to $313.24.
