True Hourly Calculator
Your real hourly rate after all time. Find your biggest time drains.
The Time Tracking Reality Check
- Listing takes longer than you think. Photography and descriptions can quietly dominate your week.
- Sourcing eats hours. A quick thrift run often includes driving, parking, checkout, and sorting.
- Admin adds up. Messages, bookkeeping, inventory, and returns can drag down hourly rate.
Improving Your Hourly Rate
Batch Everything: Photograph in one session, list in focused blocks, and consolidate shipping trips. Reducing context switching can meaningfully raise hourly profit.
Use Templates: Saved descriptions, platform presets, and repeatable shipping messages turn common tasks into faster workflows.
Know Your High-ROI Items: Track profit per hour, not just profit per item. A high-margin item can still be weak if it takes too long to list, ship, or sell.
Common Questions
Why is my true hourly different from what I think I make?
Most resellers count obvious work like listing and shipping, but miss sourcing, research, photos, buyer messages, bookkeeping, organization, and returns. Counting all hours usually lowers the effective rate.
What activities should I count in my reselling hours?
Count sourcing, research, photography, listing, buyer messages, offers, packing, post office runs, returns, bookkeeping, inventory management, and reselling-related learning.
What is a good hourly rate for reselling?
It depends on your market and goals. Many part-time sellers start around $15-25/hour true hourly. Higher rates usually require better sourcing, faster workflows, higher-value items, or more efficient systems.
How do I increase my effective hourly rate?
Batch photos, use listing templates, reduce shipping trips, focus on high-profit-per-hour categories, improve sell-through, and outsource or avoid low-value tasks where possible.
Should I track time per item or per week?
Both help. Weekly tracking shows the business reality, while per-item tracking reveals which categories and workflows are worth repeating.
What is the biggest hidden time sink?
For many resellers, photography and listing are the biggest hidden time sinks. Batching, templates, and category focus can cut that time substantially.
Methodology & Limits
How it works
This calculator calculates a reselling scenario from your inputs, then surfaces the result as decision-oriented numbers.
Assumptions
Uses current platform fees assumptions where relevant.
Use it as a screen
Treat the output as a planning estimate. Share the current scenario URL when you want to revisit or compare assumptions. Validate the numbers with real payouts, costs, deadlines, and local rules before committing money.
Next action
Keep Going
Use your result as the starting point for one of these next calculators.
Profit Calculator
True profit after all platform fees. Compare Etsy, eBay, Poshmark, Mercari side-by-side.
Open toolSourcing Trip ROI
Is that thrift run worth it? Break-even finds and expected profit per trip.
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Turn your income goal into a concrete action plan. See daily/weekly targets for any hustle.
Open toolInventory Velocity & Cashflow Simulator
Model inventory velocity, cash tied up, and monthly profit over time. See your bottleneck.
Open tool