Some people are very good at crafting various items and turning various bits of materials into a beautiful or useful item. These DIY skills are much appreciated among family and friends, especially when you present them with a unique handmade gift, but could it be more than just a hobby for you?
Many people have turned their DIY and crafting skills into a successful home-based business. They realized that once they do something they truly love, they won’t have to work a day again in their lives, as the saying goes. However, you should always keep a clear mind when assessing the potential for your DIY skills to become a lucrative business. It is always easy to fall in love with your business idea and become overconfident in your ability of making money from your hobby.
If you really think that your crafting hobby could become a successful business, we are here to help you with advice and tips to help you prepare for the moment when you open your home-based business. Here are some of the things you should consider:
1. Focus on Creating Reproducible Items
It is great to craft and sell unique handmade items, but this would only last you as far as your imagination can create something new, which people are willing to buy. Once you have created the last unique model or pattern, you are out of business. Instead, focus on developing a process for creating identical items – this means, of consistently the same size, color, quality, with the same features and functionality, and bringing the same benefits. Businesses prosper from many sales of the same product, not from one-time sales of a special item.
2. Test Your Prototype before You Open Your Business
There is always the chance that your bright idea is not commercially feasible. In other words, people would not pay money for the things you make, because they do not need them or do not see a point in owning them. In order to prevent a bitter and costly disappointment, create a few prototypes and give them to family and friends without telling them what they are or that you plan to start selling them. Thus, you improve your chances at getting honest feedback from them. If they love your product idea and they find it useful, then you have a positive starting point.
3. Learn about Costs and Pricing
One of the most challenging aspects for new entrepreneurs is to learn how to estimate the costs of setting up and running their business and how to determine the fair price for their products or services. However, without a clear and accurate estimation, to the best of your ability, you will never make money from your home-based business.
Initial costs mean all the fees and taxes you have to pay to register your business, create and launch your website, and create the first batch of products. Ongoing costs involve insurance, cost of raw materials for crafting your items, hosting costs, and marketing and advertising costs.
As for pricing, you should explore the market of similar products and determine a range of prices. If you want to have a chance at selling your products and being profitable, your prices should be within that range.
4. Decide How You Want to Sell Your Products
In the specific niche of DIY-crafted products there are two lines of promotion: either setting up your own online store, or create a shop section on specialized websites, such as Etsy or eBay. There are pros and cons for each option. If you set up the website on your own, you have to invest time and money in promoting it in order to create a traffic and sales funnel. Etsy and Ebay have their own promotional strategies, are well known and ranked by Google, but you will be one tiny shop among many others.
5. Understand That You Are No Longer Indulging in a Hobby
Once you have opened your home-based business, you need to become very neat, determined and professional in your craft work. You will have to set aside business hours every day to work on creating products, promoting your business, keeping in touch with your customers and processing orders. You cannot afford to stop doing it for a couple of days just because you do not feel like it, because it will cost you in terms of lost revenues.
Turning a hobby into a business takes away a bit of its magic and excitement. If you do not feel that you could do it every day and remain enthusiastic about it, then you should probably continue practicing your DIY skills as a hobby.