A little background: I'm in my 40's, majored in art at a state school for a few years and then decided I wanted something with more stability so I went to cosmetology school and then about 8 years later went to massage therapy school. I've been working as a licensed salon/spa professional ever since. About 17 years. I've always worked as a W2 employee. Was working at a popular and expensive day spa prior to covid, making pretty good money. Nothing to sneeze at considering the low low cost of living in my city. We were forced by the state to shut down and were closed for 3 months. I went back to work for about a month and then was put on medical leave by my employer due to an ongoing issue I'm having surgery for in a couple of days. Supposed to go back in mid Nov. Not sure I'll be able to but I want to try to keep my foot in the door because it's a really good job and I loved working there.Now onto the reason I am posting. Over the decades I've still dabbled in art as a hobby-ish kind of thing. Sometimes I sell some. Never made more than about a grand in a year. I always just had extra taxes withheld at my job to cover it and claimed it as misc. I did file a schedule C one year, over a decade ago. It was pretty godawful and probably not even worth the time spent and the aggravation. While things were closed I decided to spend a portion of my stimulus on supplies for a new art/craft/design hobby I was wanting to try out. While looking for the best pricing on supplies, I realized I could make a thousand of the things for less than it would cost to do a hundred of them if I purchased supplies from China vs the US. I had done ok for myself on etsy in the past, and at that time I had had another shop open for about a year which I was regularly clearing a few hundred a month after expenses from. So I figured I'd sell off anything I didn't want to keep, and maybe support my craft habit.When we were called back to work at the end of June, I didn't yet have all my supplies in yet, but the schedule at work was DEAD and I was making a fraction of my previous income. So I went ahead and made some stock with what I had, took some pics and opened shop July 1st. I had around $2500 in total revenue by the end of July. As of right now it's at over 13k since opening.I haven't dealt with the taxes side of things at all, which I realize was pretty fucking dumb. I was just overwhelmed trying to replace my stock while things sold out within days, and spent all my free time filling orders and making new stuff as my supplies came in. I'm spending around 70-80 hours a week on this, estimating conservatively. I pay my bills (around 1k a month give or take) and the rest gets reinvested into the etsy store. Either buying larger quantities of supplies to bring costs down further/not run out at as quickly, or buying higher quality and more valuable supplies to work with. Most of my items were $5 or less and I wanted to see, if I put some much more expensive items up for sale, whether people would still buy them. The answer was "yes". But the less expensive ones are still my bread and butter and I do both now, plus some mid-range inbetween stuff. My average order before shipping is between $17-18 right now.I also bought a printer after my first time hauling 25 boxes to the post office and waiting while they all were rung up.I have a few challenges that are becoming more evident to me as time goes on. I have ADHD and discalculia (like dyslexia but with numbers and it makes any sort of accounting or budgeting a total fucking nightmare). The ADHD also makes me struggle with impulsive behavior. This entire thing is the result of impulsive behavior. But at the same time the hyperfocusing comes in useful at times.My credit is bad. I mean really really bad. I got divorced two years ago, moved from a HCOL city to a LCOL city, had to buy a car, my income dropped significantly for the first year and a half but I still had HCOL levels of debt, plus all the moving expenses I had to put on credit cards. And medical issues. Lots of em. Was planning on filing a chapter 7 pre-covid, but I have a feeling it will be far more complicated now.Lastly I do not own a computer. I've been doing this 100% with my phone. I could buy one, I guess, but I don't know how to use it. I have a laser printer that I can sent files to from my phone, and it works most of the time.Also, I know someone is going to tell me to get off etsy and start my own site so I don't have to pay all the fees. I'm getting 96% of my traffic through etsy searches and offsite ads. I don't pay for the etsy ads at all. The offsite ones cannot be opted out of once you've hit 10k on sales and since the average order I get through offsite ads is almost twice as much as the across the board average, I have no complains. I do have a pretty high percentage of repeat customers and suspect that a lot of new customers are acquainted with my regular customers (get statistically improbable numbers of orders from different people in towns with a very small population. But I need to stay on etsy for the time being. I cannot take on more work till maybe after the holidays.The tax and financial stuff is not at all in my wheelhouse. I don't even know what to Google to find someone to help me. Or what to tell them I need. If someone could kind of guide me so I don't sound like a compete idiot, that would bw great. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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