When you’re looking to make money doing what you love — whether it’s making pictures, knitting dolls or baking cupcakes — you’re going to need a box full of tools. Not just to make your products but to sell them too. You’ll need a website, of course — that’s essential and a basic platform is simple to create — but what else will you need to turn a love for a hobby into a source of revenue?
E-Junkie
WordPress hands out basic platforms to anyone who wants them, and there’s no shortage of templates, even free templates, that can turn that platform into an attractive ecommerce store. Not all of those templates will come with shopping cart software that allows the user to make a purchase but a simple plugin will allow you to take orders from any site. That makes it a particularly useful option for hobbyists who blog about their passion but would like to offer their creations or their designs for sale as they write about them. Upload a picture of a photograph you’ve taken or a beany bag you’ve created, and you’ll be able to add a Buy button and make a sale.
If you’re not using WordPress though, E-junkie is probably the easiest solution. Fees cost from $5 per month and the site handles all the logistics. You’ll get a bunch of buy buttons that can be added to any site. The user clicks through to E-junkie’s processing software which takes the order, allows downloads and gives you the money. It even adds shipping costs for physical products and sales tax when applicable.
A 10’ x 10’ Tent
The Web is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive way to make money, even if it does have a huge amount of competition. But it’s not the only way to sell. Art fairs and craft festivals put hobbyists, artists and craftspeople in direct contact with the people who love their creations. Revenues from a day selling at a fair can vary tremendously depending on the fair, the audience and the items on offer. Even experienced sellers have talked of earning as much $5,000 in one day at a fair one year, then making nothing the following year. More typically though, you can expect to walk away from each day’s fair with at least several hundred dollars of profit selling your photography, your paintings, your handmade jewelry and just about any other craft you might want to create.
Showing at art fairs does require more effort than building a website. The best shows are juried, which provides an opportunity to win a cash prize and the kind of commendation loved by gallery owners, but they also add to the competition for entries. The Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival, for example, is fairly typical in showing the work of 200 artists chosen from around 900 applicants.
If you are selected though, you’ll need the main tool of the trade: a 10’ x 10’ canopy in which you can show your art. The options include:
- Cheap EZ Up Tents
The simplest method is to buy a low-cost canopy from a retail outlet like Sam’s Club or from companies like Ez Up, KD Canopy, and Caravan Canopy. You can expect to pay less than $200 which should make the investment affordable. The downside though is that cheap canopies are lightweight. They have a habit of flying away in a breeze, rainwater can pool in the corners, weakening joints, and if you hang anything from the struts, they can break easily.
- Professional Art Fair Tents
Professional tents cost from around $900 and rise to as much as $1,500. They’re sturdy, look professional and If you plan to sell at art fairs regularly, they may well be worth the purchase.
Many art fair sellers though have found that it pays to stay with cheap canopies, tie them down to prevent wind damage and replace them when they break.
It’s also possible to rent canopies, tents and even the display panels you might need to show off your work. The classifieds section on Art Fair Insiders, a forum for art fair sellers, contains plenty of offers for rentals and sales of used tents.
A Square Reader
Created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, the Square Card Reader is a small, white device that plugs into the earphone socket of a smartphone. It’s tiny, about an inch square, but it’s capable of taking orders by credit card. The reader is given out for free but Square charges 2.75 percent for each transaction, a cut that’s roughly in line with other credit card companies. Obtaining a card is as simple as signing up online.
The main competitor to Square will be Paypal, which is developing its own card reader. Like Square the reader will be free and the rates will be fractionally lower at 2.7 percent.
If you’re planning to sell in person, whether it’s at an art fair, a yard sale or an open air market, A card reader that plugs into a smartphone makes taking plastic simple, straightforward and without any of the bureaucracy involved in purchasing devices and talking to credit card companies.
AWeber
Sell online and you’ll be pitching to people who pass through your site. Sell at a fair or in a store, and you’ll be pitching to people who pass by your tent or your window. Collect their contact details and you’ll be to go out and find them again. You’ll be able to tell them when you have new products available, offer them discounts and stay visible so that they remember to tell their friends and pass on your details.
There’s no one tool for maintaining a contact list because contact will happen in different places. Your Facebook page will have one sort of contact list. You might want to keep a separate Excel file for orders placed by telephone or in person.
But the email addresses you collect on your website should probably be stored on AWeber.
MailChimp can work too and just about any email software will provide a way to maintain addresses. But AWeber is the service that many marketers use, it comes with a good variety of templates that are easy to use and it gives you access to stats so that you can track open rates and identify the people most interested.
The contact list should contain more than name and address. Smart email marketers segment their lists ensuring that only those people interested in an offer hear about it, a strategy that reduces the number of people who choose to unsubscribe. Your list should contain as many details as possible about the lead: what they bought, when they bought it, where you met them, and what they said.
When you’ve got a long customer list to match your online store and your real-world outlets, and a way to take their money, you’ll have all the valuable tools you need to earn from your passion.
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