Craft/design business

[scorpiogirly]

Hi all,

I was just looking on the how to make more money threads and working from home.

Someone mentioned they run a craft business from home which obviously allows them to wfh.

I also do this, but at the moment time is tight for me what with being a single parent, decorating and working. I mainly sell cards and invites but just moving into personalised sublimation items slowly.

My question is, and I realise this may be a bit cheeky so olesde forgive me, but for those of you who do this from home, how much money do you make? I assume you'd have to become established on etsy or whatever. A ballpark figure is totally fine if you'd rather not say.

Is it enough to live on etc? Are you worried about the insecurity of not making many sales in a given month compared to other months?

I don't think it's very useful to know how much other people make from their crafts. Their items will be different, the time and money spent on advertising will be different.

Etsy is a saturated market, and no longer for solely homemade goods.

You would be better contacting some local craft shops and seeing if they will stock your products.

I wouldn't expect to make a living from crafts (those who do are a minority), but would want to recoup costs and make a small profit.

An acquaintance of mine has her own business and works from home. She has a significant number of followers on her social media, she makes stuff that I’ve not really seen anywhere else and she’s really, really good. I’ve bought from her and would buy again.

She does it because she’s absolutely passionate about it and was making herself ill by working in her previous job, but she’s never going to be driving a flash car or having exotic holidays. She has so much going out (cost of materials, maintenance of machines, business insurance, product insurance, accounting costs etc, that she barely scrapes a living. She earns well under minimum wage, she’s working seven days a week and does bloody long days. If she’s not actively making stuff, she’s designing and researching, or desperately trying to keep up with her social media presence (which is where most of her orders come from) or doing her accounts. She doesn’t have children and doesn’t have time to date. If it wasn’t for her parents acting as a safety net, there’s no way she’d be able to do it. And of course, when people are skint, the last thing they’ll be spending on is craft stuff.

Sublimation is an even tougher market since the pandemic, when the world and his wife bought Cricut machines to try and earn a few extra pounds by ignoring copyright, not bothering with insurance and undercutting wherever possible. So it’s possible to make a few quid on the side but you’d be mad to try and rely on it.