My side hustle is selling products on eBay. But it has constantly come into conflict with my full-time job. I specialize in a very specific kind of DVD that’s educational in nature but I’ve tried branching out into other areas, since obviously DVDs are so old that my children don’t even know what they are. Older people tend to buy these rather than pay for a bunch of streaming services. As the price of streaming services is rising, I don’t blame them. But they won’t live forever.

I’ve started looking for products on Temu (shop like a billionaire) and AliExpress. But before you immediately go to these sites, be warned that they are very gimmicky. There are numerous annoying pop-ups on these sites, especially Temu. They’re actually not scams, they are decent deals. But they are extremely annoying to the point where I want to smash my computer, Office Space style. Imagine having to go to this kind of site frequently to look for products. It causes me a migraine. But clearly it works since these sites are popular.

I even subscribed to AliInsider, and I don’t even know if it’s affiliated with AliExpress. It gives a more in-depth analysis of products and how they compare across other sites. To be honest, I haven’t put in the time commitment to really understand how it works. I thought it would be much simpler but it seems to be obnoxiously complex. But the thing I like is that it shows the product on eBay and Amazon and the price on AliExpress. So at least I can compare the prices to see if I could make money on eBay since that is my specialty.

The shipping time for some of these products, actually, all of these products, is obnoxiously long because they come from China. And I should mention the packaging is not good so things get dented and the boxes are not in good shape upon arrival. Also they are cheaply made.

If you find the right product you can make a few bucks. I’m still going through the analysis phase here to see what sparks people’s interest. It’s kind of like going on TikTok to see what popular items people are selling.

I’ve streamlined the process for selling on eBay. For each item, I find as much information as I can and plug it into chatGPT. I tell it to create a listing for this item on eBay. You have to edit it, but it saves a lot of time by giving you a fairly good rough draft. You can even save it for future use.

You have the option of selling items as an auction or a fixed price listing. I’ve tried both and gone with auction most of the time so it generates more interest among people who watch these items, but if there’s not a super amount of interest then it’s probably better to go with Buy It Now, but it’s frustrating because then you just have to wait and it could be a while before somebody buys it. Before you start commenting about how I should just drop ship these items, you’re probably right, and I am looking into that right now. But this isn’t a success story, this is a process story and this process is not super easy. If you enjoy doing this kind of research with items then this could be the way to go.

It takes time to list items, monitor the listings, and then of course shipping. It is not immensely time consuming, but you’ll have to arrange time in your day to do all this. I have children and there’s not much time for me to do this kind of stuff. In addition, you’ll have to plan when to go to the post office or enter a pickup for your items. And let’s not forget how the IRS, starting this year unless they change it again, will be taxing anyone who does this kind of activity so you’ll have to take out money for taxes on your own.

My next steps are to continue researching Drop Shipping and opening up some kind of store to do this. It’s a lot harder than it sounds and some people on here really make it sound easy. It is not. I will be updating my progress hopefully sooner rather than later. If you’re looking for a side hustle, this is a possibility as long as you have the time commitment. But just remember, side hustles eventually will collide with your primary job so have a plan for when that happens.