Is there money to be made...

[hobbgoblin]

...making cards?

I could, if I wanted sell some handmade cards. I don't make cards and never have made a card but am artistic and have sourced materials, etc.

Question is, is it something you do for the love or something you can make a few quid from if you have someone willing to sell your efforts?

I don't know if this will help but the reason you find cards in so many different types of shops is because they are the single most profitable item a small retailer can stock.

So a card that I might buy from a shop for say £2 could have been bought from the supplier for pennies.

Guy in my work brings in cards that his dw has made.....really lovely. And quite a few folk buy them so I dont see why not.....and she will make personalised ones if you want.

Interesting...

The regular cards are bought at about 55p per card and sold for £1.89 upwards. So, as a minimum I'd be looking at getting 55p a card. However, I guess it's be more if the stockist maintained the same margin.

Depends.

You can spend a fortune on embellishments, stamps, nice inks/paints/pencils. It would take a long time to recoup that sort of outlay.

You quite often get people trying to sell cards at the DS's school fair and similar events and I don't think they make much - often they don't even seem to cover the cost of materials and the use of the table.

On the other hand, if you can buy the card for pennies and you paint or draw something you might make some money.

You have to have somewhere to sell them though and you would have to sell an awful lot of them to make a decent sum of money from it.

How about selling your designs to larger scale producers? I think Phoenix for example, have a bit in their catalogue encouraging artists to send in their designs so they can buy them and mass produce them.

you could make few and take them to shops to show, you never know, but somebody might love it!

It depends on a lot.

1. How many card sellers there are in your market areas. i.e. Locally, in a shop, on Ebay etc

1. How individual your cards are.

1. How much money you want to make !!! SAome people make back the cost of their hobby. I had chatted to a couple of ladies who sell cards to raise money for charities.

I would love to get good enough to sell my cards for a profit, but there is a lot of competition out there and my cards don't have an edge/good enough.

If you do decide to have a go, post a few examples I love seeing other peoples cards

All the best.

imo cards 'made'by people using those stick on embellishments type of thing are flooding carft fairs etc and i never buy them now. i prefer wholly original designed/ handmade things - home made, crafty/arty things myself.
did you know phoenix cards buy illustrations for cards and pay £400 a go?

it is really, really, important to factor in your time!! So... probably not but if you love doing it and can use the pennies to replenish your supplies, then why not.

I would suggest lots of self-promotion though. Have a card with contact details and website (if you go down that road). Have lots of samples and advertise that you will personalise.

Always give hand-made cards to your friends for birthdays, thank yous etc.

There is loads of power in recommendations and word of mouth too .

just re-read my last post and think it sounds a bit snotty which was unintentional - i just meant that carefullly handcrafted things are so lovely and lots of people seem , imo, to be jumping on the bandwagon sadly