Was your flip actually worth your time? Factor in every hour spent to find your true effective hourly rate.
When you start reselling and flipping items, it’s easy to focus solely on the dollar amount of your profit margins. But treating your time as free is a quick way to burn out. This calculator helps you determine your effective hourly rate to ensure your side hustle is actually paying off.
Imagine you buy an antique chair for $20 and sell it for $120. A quick glance says you made $100 profit. However, if you spent 1 hour driving to get it, 4 hours sanding and refinishing it, 1 hour taking photos and listing it, and 1 hour packing and shipping it, you spent 7 hours total. Your effective hourly rate is actually just $14.28/hour. If your goal is to make $25/hour, that "profitable" flip was actually a loss of your valuable time.
A good starting point is your current day job wage, or what you could easily earn doing gig work (like driving for ride-shares). Many advanced flippers aim for $30 to $50 an hour to account for the lack of benefits and inconsistent income of self-employment.
To improve your rate, you must either increase your gross profit or decrease your time spent. Try batching tasks together (like taking photos of 10 items in one session), improving your cleaning processes, or pivoting to sell higher-value, higher-margin items.
Sometimes yes! If you're a beginner learning new repair skills (like fixing electronics or restoring wood), the low hourly rate is offset by the educational value. But once you have experience, you should prioritize high-value flips.