Wow, another year is coming to an end. With all that is happening we have to ask, how much longer do we have before Jesus comes back? Can we look at the increasing upheaval of the world around us, the rise in crime, the political and social unrest, and the acceptance of crime by people and governments and truthfully say that we have years and decades to come? How much longer before God must stop and say sorry to Sodom and Gonorrhea? How long before we reach our own tower of Babel point where God must step in and say if I do not stop them now, they will be able to do whatever evil their heart desires?
This blessed Sabbath day is definitely a good time to search our hearts to see if we have truly counted the cost and determined once and for all that we are willing to give up everything for Jesus.
And may this simple Bible quiz not only test your knowledge of the Bible but also help you to hide it within your heart so that when you need it, it can guide your feet and help you to be a light upon a hill sharing His love and truth with others.
A happy fall time Sabbath to you. I hope that you are enjoying some lovely fall color. God is such an amazing painter that He can take the sad remnants of this sinful world and transform it into a work of beauty. If He can take the dying leaves and turn them into an art piece, imagine how wonderful the new earth, where death will never be known, will look. Truly our hardest effort nor our grandest dream can even begin to come close to the land of glory that God is preparing for us.
Florida is not known for its fall color, but here is a dash of fall color that my family and I were able to enjoy one year on a bit of land that we were hoping we might one day call home.
May it be your aim to be part of God’s faithful flock and may this humble find the difference puzzle help you hide His word in your heart so that it may be a light unto your feet faithfully guiding you home.
I have spent the past few weeks trying to prepare for quarter 4. Last year, because I only had digital items like coloring packs and logic puzzles, which except for being travel friendly, are not that big a draw. Therefore, there was nothing major for me to do.
But this year I have added some POD or print on demand items like mugs, puzzles, and T-shirts. Because of their potential for being given as gifts, getting things right this year is going to be much harder. This year little details like price, photos, and keywords will require much more effort than it did last year.
After watching multiple videos on Etsy and the POD items I am working on this season, it was time to set down with a pricing calculator to try and set a price that was high enough to give me a few dollars of profit yet low enough to be attractive to buyers.
It would seem like after watching multiple videos and aided by the handy Etsy profit calculator on Erank figuring out a fair price should be easy. But for me anyways, it was anything but easy as within minutes my head was swimming with a bunch of unanswered questions. Was it better to go as low as I can and have no sales, or was it better to go higher so I could have a 50% or higher sale during Black Friday/cyber-Monday week? Free shipping, reduced shipping, or regular shipping which was better? Should i experiment with multiple price points or have everything set to the same price?
Talk about analysis paralysis, my head was so overcome with choices that within a few minutes my head was spinning and pounding so hard that I had take long breaks to rest and try and figure out what to do. The stress was so bad it made me wonder, which was worse, trying to navigate the new world of sales tax or setting up prices?
Because Etsy is a market place and thus is required to collect sales tax on our behalf, it would seem like it should be an easy answer. Etsy collects the taxes for us and Etsy turns it in for us, so what is the problem? The problem is that even though we only sell digital and POD items and only sell on market place platforms like Etsy and Amazon Market Place so we do not have the hassle to collect sales tax in many states we still have for a license to collect sales tax and turn in a $0 sales tax.
Talk about making your head spin. I had no clue where to begin. I spent an entire hour on hold, being switched from one department to another, just trying to figure out what form I needed to fill out and where it was. Thankfully the people at the state tax form were nice and helpful. They went out of their way to find the answer to my questions and even offered some helpful info to get me started on the right foot.
Thanks to their help I was able to set up an account and muddle my way through filling out the paper work. But it only took a few days, when I went back to try and figure out where and how to turn in my zero-dollar sales tax form, to realize that I had quite a few more questions. For a few hours it would have been hard to answer which of the two issues was harder to understand.
That was until I found a helpful video on You Tube about setting up for collecting sales tax and turning in a zero-sales tax form. I found there step by step tutorial quite helpful. Before watching their video I had no idea what form I was supposed to fill out. Thanks to their video, I found out that one I had found the correct place to sign in, and I was even using the right info to try and sign in. The problem was that I did not know that I had to remove the hyphens if I wanted the sign in info to work. Thanks to one video, the frustration of multiple unsuccessful log in attempts was solved and in 1/3 the time it normally takes me to figure out keywords for an easy listing, I was in and filling out the paperwork.
If you live in Florida or have nexus in Florida, you might find this series on Florida Department of Revenue by James Baker CPA to be helpful.
While I still have a lot more to learn about how sales tax and filing forms work, thanks to this helpful video, right now I can confidently say, that thanks to Etsy being a market place platform, filling out the required sales tax form is so much easier than trying to figure out how to price a t-shirt or a mug.
Click here, if you would like to check out my Etsy shop.
And if you are thinking about starting your own Etsy journey, click this link to get 40 free etsy listings. https://etsy.me/3MhfyfA
Happy Sabbath. I hope that you are enjoying this wonderful day of communing with God and reflection upon His many blessings such as the joy of watching a family of black birds crossing the street at a rest stop,
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