Tips For Online Craft Business

As our online craft business winds down I have been asked to reflect upon what I have learned from it.

Consider setting up an LLC to protect your personal assets from liability. You may also need business insurance.

Decide how big you are willing to get and whether you want to just retail, wholesale, or use distributors for the product you decide to sell. You will need to set up your pricing structure around this. If you plan to distribute to large companies, consider joining a women's business organization or other another minority organization you may belong to as this will assist you in selling to bigger companies.

If you are not afraid of your computer, learn to set up and operate your own website to save big money in the long run on maintenence costs. Also use the internet to advertise cheaply as much as possible, lean search engine optimization (as opposed to marketing which includes pay per click and costs big $$ in a hurry!), as well as using press releases to promote yourself for free; it provided the best results for us.

One thing it might not be bad to pay a pro for if you do not have a digital camera or artistic eye:
excellent professional photos of your products for the website, flyers, press releases, etc. Ensure that your company and products look the part.

Things that surprised me about our online business:

Complicated credit card processing; after beind dissatisfied with two different companies we then found PayPal to be the best fit, easiest to set up and one of the cheapest and most trustworthy. It has an integrated system, makes it easy to print packing slips, ship orders and transfer money to your bank account. Lots of customer assistance and tips there as well.

Potentially a heavy physical demand: especially if you have children, you will want to take time to set up your infrastructure to take it easy as possible on your body and your vehicle. Craft shows, lifting heavy tubs of product, traveling to obtain supplies, driving to UPS or the post office are all time consuming and hard on the body and car. Plan out to get everything delivered to your home or picked up as much as possible.

Check your bottom line: ensure you are getting paid fairly for the work you are doing. Many entrepreneurs do not pay themselves enough. You will have to really love what you do if you are not making more than $5 per hour!!!

Want To Work At Home? Don't Expect That It Will Be Easy

I know two young mothers who have attempted to work from home part time recently, one as a bookkeeper, one as a medical biller. Both perform these jobs on a computer and both gave up doing them from home in less than a year due to the multitude of distractions and challenges those working from home encounter.

Although the two women described above did get to the point where they decided to just get out of the house for work three days per week, I do know one new mother whose child sleeps or plays quietly while she diligently works on her computer throughout the day. She has also recently started her own internet based business as well.

While all three of these women were disciplined, patient, and motivated, working from home turned out to be right for just a third of them.

My Journey Toward A Work At Home Career

I am a mother to be and have about four years experience working from home part time.

After graduating from college I went to work full time for a pharmaceutical company. When I got married, I made the decision to start my own at home business instead so that I could develop a work from home income. My husband and I had both decided that we wanted jobs that would allow us the flexibility to spend plenty of time with our future children as they arrived.

My husband works in the information technology industry and was able to transition into a full time work from home job a few years ago.

In 2004, a good friend and I set out on our own to create a computer based business that we could operate from our homes.

We set out to develop and sell our own line of products over the internet. I did not know the first thing about developing a web based business at that time, but quickly learned as we could not afford to hire professional help.

After developing our web design, we launched our products over the internet and at local and regional craft shows. I quickly learned the need for a search engine optimized web site and began to write many articles related to our website business in order to draw visitors to our site.
As I gained experience and developed a popular website, a local web designer hired me to perform search engine optimization on his web sites as this was becoming more and more necessary.

Our at home business would go up and then down, never extremely predictable, and I was often required to find part time, flexible work to fill in the gaps self-employment left in my income.

Now faced with the birth of our first child, my husband and I have recently decided to close the current internet business in order to allow me more time for our child. I will still work two days per week away from home as a legal assistant and continue to develop my computer skills as I see these as my best stay at home work option in the future.

I plan to share my experiences with developing new income streams from home with other stay at home parents.