Tell me about it. Good side gig? What platform do you use? Gumroad? Etsy? Amazon? Is any of this worthwhile?
No idea but recently on Amazon there seems to be an increase in scam seller listing various products way underpriced and having fake positive reviews. Then they never ship the product. All with similar type address or names.
it's becoming worse than ebay, and that's not counting the crap made in other lands products that are usually cheap copied garbage.
I've been selling rustic wood stuff on Etsy for about 5 years now. It's SLOW starting out. Plus the number of Etsy sellers has more than doubled in that time so there's more competition than before. That said, if your stuff catches on somehow, it's great. Just have to be selling something that is somehow different than the other 5,000,000+ sellers on the site. People say it's a snowball that takes forever to get going. I concur.
That's the sort of info I'm curious about. I get random stuff from shows I could flip just wonder if it's worth the time. They take a cut I guess? Do you get a break on shipping?
Get yourself a CNC wood router and a cricut and make live, laugh, love signs out of old barn board. It's the new MLM (moms losing money) scheme up here. Or better yet, start a CNC wood router company to sell to them through amazon. Next level thinking.
They take about 8-12% depending on whether the sale is generated by an Etsy ad(that you opt into) or via organic search. Their shipping service is somewhat discounted via USPS, but I generally use the Pit Bull UPS or FedEx account since we ship a lot of product and have discounted rates. The USPS Etsy rates are still better about half the time, but I prefer to use the other carriers 9 times out of 10.
I had a CNC router(Shapeoko) early on, but couldn't seem to make any money on it. I've got a big flatbed printer now so I print all sorts of crap on wood. I assumed it would be all that "Gather" and "Live, Laugh, Love" stuff, but here lately it's mostly football stadiums, dog memorials, and occasional nursery decor. I do build my own reclaimed barnwood frames...Gives me a way to unwind after work.