At some point, many crafters wonder whether they could make money from selling their work. Whether this is part of a dream that entails giving up the day job and making a full-time wage from selling their handmade items or simply a desire to earn a little extra cash for replenishing supplies, the idea of starting a craft business and selling handcrafted items is one that many crafters have considered.
While this is an exciting opportunity, it is also not without its potential pitfalls. If you are currently considering selling your craft items, then there are a number of points that you need to keep in mind.
Hobby as a Job
While your craft may currently be a thoroughly enjoyable hobby, will it still be quite so engaging and enjoyable when you are having to do it for a fixed number of hours or days to make stock to sell? The pressures of fulfilling orders or ´having´ to craft can sometimes destroy the enjoyment derived from the creative process.
Will Your Work Sell?
Family and friends may rave about your work, however will it actually sell? Creating saleable items is not just about producing high-quality handmade products, but it also means making sure that there is a market for your work.
A very crowded market can be difficult to break into and correspondingly, there can be very good economic reasons why another market may appear to offer little in the way of competition.
Pricing Your Work
Whatever handcrafted items you make, you will need to ensure that you get the costing and pricing right in order to make a realistic profit on your work. All the costs involved with making your items needs to be taken into account, including your time.
Is it Viable?
For a product to be viable, it means that you must be able to make the item so that it is affordable, even when the time it takes to make it is taken into account. Some very large or complex handmade items can take many hours to make and this may result in them not being affordable for the majority of potential customers.
Facing Rejection
Making and selling handmade items is a very personal process, particularly if you selling your work at craft markets where you are facing the customer directly. Therefore it can feel like a very personal rejection if a potential customer walks away from one of your products, particularly if they make negative comments about your work.
Once you have considered the points above and have weighed up the positive and negative aspects of selling your crafts you can then move on to completing more in depth research and drawing up your business plan. A great place to learn more about selling your handmade work is the Etsy forum. This is a lively venue for crafters and a lot of valuable information is shared. This is a great starting point if you are currently thinking about starting a craft business.
Kate Pullen - Kate Pullen is a freelance writer specializing in arts and crafts , and is an accomplished craftsperson. As well as being a designer / ...
