Looking at doing this as a site hustle; run a few scenarios and I appear to be able to make some decent money which makes me step back a bit and look into this further.

Good/bad experiences?

I've sold on Etsy. I don't think it was any different experience than selling something on Ebay. One thing is I was selling about the time there was a tax change in which Etsy is responsible for paying the sales tax. Beforehand, I had to pay the sales tax so that change made it easier but you will still need to keep accurate records in case audited.

I am pretty sure it is required if you plan to do "business" in Texas, but I also applied and received a Texas Sales and Use Permit which gives you an account with the comptroller to pay taxes.

Between selling on Amazon, Ebay, and Etsy, I think Etsy was the easiest followed by Ebay and lastly Amazon.

Etsy was easy to setup account, product page, and selling with very little hiccups from buyers.

Ebay was similar to Etsy but the buyers were more of a pain to deal with.

With Amazon, you have to jump through hoops to get product page created and sending in inventory if you are doing Amazon Prime. You get more sales being Prime but there are a ton more returns/negative comments, etc. Selling Self Fulfillment with Amazon, you don't get near the sales.

I had more sales through Ebay and Etsy than through Amazon self fullfillment but more with Prime than Ebay and Etsy.

My wife does. Last year did well in passive income on there. Digital files that can be purchased through the site for a small niche product. Etsy does a good job at breaking down the income, expenditures, etc for tax purposes.

social media marketing (tiktok, instagram) was where the vast majority of her sales started at.

ForeverAg said:

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…and I appear to be able to make some decent money which makes me step back a bit and look into this further…

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Ya, TikTok makes it look pretty easy

I've also thought about doing it

I dabbled with it a couple years ago and decided to give it another try this year. I've put up about 90 listings in the past month and have about 20 sales so far. All of the sales have been digital products, only 2-2.50 profit per sale after fees and such, so not even profitable yet. I'm also giving print on demand a shot but no sales on any of those yet. It's definitely not as simple as the tiktokers and youtubers would have you think but its probably not impossible. My plan is to get to 300 listings with 30-50 each in different product types and see how they do and then decide from there if its worth going further.

Using Etsy itself is very easy...my wife is an artist and sells on there.

Not sure what TikTok and others show, but my guess is they vastly overstate how easy it is to get people to your site...at the end of the day, Etsy is like any other marketplace - the mechanics of it are very easy to learn...it's all the stuff you have to do to drive people to your site that is going to probably make or break your store, but those aren't really etsy specific.