Right on. You make a logical point and I understand what you are saying. For you, firewood is basically a commodity that can just as easily be sold as it can be burned yourself - so it's quite silly to ignore the market value of it.
But for me, I wouldn't even know where to begin selling it. I mean, I could make a craigslist post and probably find buyers, but that would mean a lot of additional time and effort by ME, to get it sold, and probably delivered since I don't want randos at my house. And really, I have no interest in doing that at this time given the small scale of my production, not even close to worth it (I may have to engage in this in the future if I get fed up with my engineering day job from cubicle land... lol).
Around here a facecord of nice dried hardwood is generally $100 all day long, and all the way up. I could probably get a minor bargain by ordering in quantity, so I probably burn about $1000 a winter of it for heat. $1000 for 5 months of heat = $200 a month of value (at ~40 hours of work to do annually, I guess my time is $25/hr or so to do it.... not great).
"Worthless smoke"? No way! It's a beautiful, warm, radiating heat that easily keeps my entire 1650 sq ft home around 70f +/- 5°, with minimal hassle. Thankfully my wife loves to make and stoke the fire, so my only real work in the winter time is to reload the rack in the screen porch once or twice a month, which I try to go do when the sun is shining for some vitamin D. Oh an btw, the leftover ashes make excellent soil amendment, compost additive, or icy driveway traction.
But really, from my perspective, I just don't want to sell the wood. Don't want to deal with that extra complication and hassle, and like I said earlier, I do this work in my spare time, somewhat randomly. So I can't commit to delivering to other people on time, etc. As such I just don't see it as a monetary thing - it's just a chore I have to do, that I knew I'd have to do for life when we built the house. So far I love it. If I get injured or disabled, I guess I spend a $1000 a winter, or maybe a bit more to keep it reliable and get it delivered/stacked for us. Still a win. Our house has no furnace or ducting to bedrooms, no natural gas service (our choice upon building) so I guess my only alternative is to run the expensive electric heat, or get a propane tank and figure out what kind of appliance to cram into the house. Yuck, no thanks.
It was 20°f this morning. No fire in the woodstove since Sunday night, was down to 63 inside so the family was complaining. I fired up the mini split just for kicks. It flashed "dF" - needed to run a quick defrost mode for a few mins before it started pumping out some nice strong heat. I was pretty impressed, but it was probably also sucking down 2000 watts or more to do it. Wifey can just make a fire after dropping off the kiddos, so I shut it down after 15 minutes haha.