A Time For Everything

Not book sales. A different kind of sales...

I've had an Etsy store for quite a while now. For the longest time, it had one product, and then, at some point, I decided to expand my offerings.

For the last couple years, one of my annual goals has been to double my inventory. That inventory never materialized in full.

Sure, I could have gone to all that time and effort, but I wouldn't have been able to list everything because as a public marketplace that has to manage back-end technology Etsy charges listing fees. Twenty cents per item for four months. So $.60 a year for item that may or may not get purchased. Multiply that by (currently) 41 items and that's $24.60 a year just in listing fees. Luckily I've sold enough to earn that and a wee bit more, but I can't list everything I have.

So that's a long winded way of saying I've been wanting to have my own website where I can list anything and everything I create--no listing fees for a few years now.

The two things holding me back? Sales tax to other states and a payment system...

The second one was solved recently. I think I mentioned that a couple of weeks ago in advance of the author event at the library. Getting a mobile card reader ended up being a lot easier and simpler than I expected and probably a lot simpler and easier than it was several years ago when I thought about selling books directly from my publishing website. (which I can now also do)

But there was still that pesky sales tax dilemma.

So I finally sat down a couple of weeks ago and researched it. I wasn't sure of what I found, so I reached out to a writer friend who's been gung ho on selling her books from her website for several months now. Not only that, her husband runs a business and sells products online... And she backed up my findings:

I, of course, have to pay sales tax to my own state, which I have done for several years now. I have a TIN and everything. :0) But unless I sell (a minimum of) $100K to another state (some have higher mins), I don't have to worry about collecting and remitting that tax. Woo hoo!!

Unfortunately, I don't know to set up a website hosting account, so I have to enlist the help of DH. I have submitted a help desk ticket and, in the mean time, I need to organize the patterns I have and create new ones.

I'm so excited about finally getting going with this.

Wish me luck and have a great week.