Does anyone actually make a living from their own business?

[Moomoola]

I’ve a background in print and design, I’d like to sell my own gifts etc, like everyone else in Britain. Dp is very disparaging, but surely it can be done? I’d ideally like to take home £20 k a year, which seems enormous amounts. It just seems if I’m going to work 37 hrs a week for someone else, for this or less, I could do that for me? Of course I need to perused Dp and myself it’s possible. Obv some people make a mint ( most everyone on you tube it seems ) and some people won’t. So guess I’m asking for reassurance ( or not) and some tips , mainly on mindset as I seem to be too nervous of failing and Dp will be disappointed/ pissed off. Ta!

Sounds great, not my cup of tea. I love animals, but prefer to have no shedule, and I am not a fan of bad weather!

What brilliant answers, this is so inspiring. Well done delilahbucket for getting on the Santander course. Boymum9 this is exactly what I’d like to do. I struggle for various reasons, one is lack of support, so I will do it after kids are in bed . 20k is an amazing achievement well done. Well done all. I’ll reply to more later, just to say it’s fascinating and inspiring that so many people are doing this.

Our town centre has a pop up shop as part of small business enterprise too, where you can have your wares in a retail unit without the overheads. It's great for new crafting businesses and artists to get seen and see what sells. Your town might too

You haven't factored in the cost to sell the painting. If you manage to sell on eBay they take 12.8%, but it isn't really the place to sell art. If you sold through a gallery then much more, some up to 50%. Now you really see why prices are so high for art! Or you could sell prints, which is how most artists earn their bread and butter.
Thanks, DeliahBucket that is very interesting.

Our town centre has a pop up shop as part of small business enterprise too, where you can have your wares in a retail unit without the overheads.

That sounds a great idea Gr33ngr33ngr4ss - are you in a tourist area?

I have found that on eBay customers seem to need a lot more customer service and are looking for a bargain. I worked really hard for one lady to really help her at no profit - and she still seemed to think I was conning her. That was unpleasant as that’s so not what I am. Etsy seems ok, I haven’t tried not on the high street or Amazon due to costs atm.

I haven't tried etsy- encouraging that you find it good. There seems to be a lot of competition for me there in the type of product I sell. I do buy a lot from etsy though.
Bear in mind that it is free to list on Amazon- unlike ebay there are no listing fees, you only pay if an item sells.
No matter the route you take to sell there will always be costs involved with selling- whether online, a real life shop, pop up markets or fairs- all cost.

Similar kind of circumstances.
We have made money, not as much as people think, but it has provided a small nest egg for the future. Worked long hard hours for it for 12 years. Looking back on it though, for the actual hours we put in rather than what went down on paper, we would be lucky if we hit minimum wage. There have been many unpaid hours of work and stress.
Part of me would give it all back if I could get all the lost family time and happiness back. It sort of sucked the life out of me. I'm back in employment now and Im much happier.

Luxury to be working with your OH..........
Oh god, after 12 yrs, how we didn't end up divorced, or worse, killing each other, is amazing. Your relationship must be unbelievably solid or the relationship and business could bomb out. It's as hard work as running the business itself!

I would suggest really thinking about your target audience. Who do you want to sell to? Marketing is all about selling the dream of what life could be like with your product. The reader is thinking ‘why does this matter to me?’. So the more you can narrow it down the better. Would you be selling to individuals (b2c) or businesses? (B2b).

You can, yes. But it's not easy.
I have an Etsy shop and it now makes decent profit but it took a LOT of work to get there.

I run my own business that isn’t far off from what you aim to do. I used to be a full-time school teacher in middle management. It is possible to make it pay your bills!

The best thing I did was also one of the hardest - the year before I resigned from my old job, I decided to work both flat out as much as I could. It was ridiculous and 100% not sustainable so I could only do it because it had a firm timeline and I didn’t have any major life events scheduled for that timeline - no babies, no house renovations or moves, whatever. DH and I agreed that if a major unexpected event happened, I would need to stop this project so we could put life needs first but I was very lucky that it was a decent year really.

That whole experiment let me see with a safety net if I could earn enough to pay actual bills and when it did, it let me start my self employed life with a year’s earnings in the bank. (I will admit being an ex teacher has always been a safety net of its own: I could easily go back to a day job any time if I wasn’t earning enough. I have often thought illustration style trends would change enough that I wouldn’t be able to float but so far enough people have continued to like what I make!)

Other than that, I will echo the two big things that have come up many times already:
Anywhere like Etsy or NotHS will take a big cut (and then your payment processor will take a smaller one too, and postage is an ongoing bloody nightmare).
Successfully selling your work now will involve you being very much to the camera, telling your stories, sharing your process, constantly marketing what you do. You will feel like you repeat yourself a lot. If you don’t feel that way, most of your customers haven’t heard you say it yet. It is possible to batch this work if you prefer and have a day each week doing all your photos and captions and such, but to build an audience you will need to log in and interact with your audience most days for at least a bit. I started with a teensy following and was earning with even small numbers but growing helps so you aren’t relying on the same three people to buy every product you create.

good luck!

Yes, the bad weather can definitely be an issue 😂

I set my own hours and I'm generally done 2pm at the latest, with the odd evening visit for cats/horses thrown in.

Ha! Nooooo! Chorley!

Just reading this. There's a lot of good advice! Of course I am super curious about what it is you successful people do.

My tip is to go onto companies house and look up the most recent set of accounts for companies you admire that seem to do this successfully and for other similar start ups that are earlier in their journey. It can sometimes be quite informative.

Just to say thankyou for advice! I’ve been looking for work and am amazed at some of the people I’ve chatted to who run their own businesses. I’ve realised more than ever it’s a mindset thing and I was never going to get anywhere being timid and with a Dh that was incredibly unhelpful. One of the women who interviewed me asked why I wanted a job as my shop was so lovely! That’s a real boost😀so am re approaching with fresh heart and your wise words ringing in my ears 😀

Not rtft so apologies if this has been mentioned, but have you looked at the Start Up Loans scheme? You can get a loan and mentoring to get your business started and there's business advice etc.

It might be possible, you just need to speak to someone who can help you work through the specifics.

We do but I think gifts are risky; and not that it’s gifts in itself - but that I am assuming you are going for direct consumer sales.

We offer a professional service which is nice because our overheads are flat regardless of growth and we offer the same service (slightly different levels of delivery) to commercial, public sector, and private residential.

This gives us lots of potential revenue streams. If one area is down it doesn’t matter because we can go hunting in another area. Without that we would have many a hairy time I am sure.

Perhaps you can use that and offer merch design for other companies, corporate branded gifts, sell your gifts direct to other companies etc.

This with bells on. My husband and I made money too, but now we're out of it, I look back on our achievements and struggle to be proud of them. I should be, but the effort it took to get there just doesn't seem worth any money. We sacrificed so much, the family time we will never get back, and my husband's health due to stress.
To top it off, people we got to know well during our time running the business have dropped us like a hot cake, why? Because we were no longer there to fix their cars when they want at the price they like, they actually now completely ignore us after 12 years of being very loyal customers and singing our praises!
Our lives revolved around their needs for so long at our expense and it kind of stung a bit!

The last few years have been very hard due to covid and a couple of my income streams have taken a big hit. I am aimed at the high-end luxury market with an expensive product and my sales have almost dried up. My profit per item is excellent, it's just becomming increasingly difficult to sell in a crowded market. I don't think cutting prices would help, it is just a luxury people are doing without or maybe the product is no longer as fashionable as it was. I am a the stage of working out whether to re-launch with something slightly different or give up one of the businesses entirely.

Currently no. Recovering from lockdown and dealing with rising costs is just causing us problem after problem after problem. I've been running since 2008 and if I give up now we loose everything. It's devastating.

Really depends what business area you operate.
My revenue soared during covid and shows no signs of slowing.
My profit margin is high ( my earnings in the higher tax bracket).
I have to stop taking orders every few weeks to allow me to catch up.
I have streamlined my work to some extent and have a constant pot of new projects on the back burner.
I am at the stage to take on employees but I rather like my life!
I can go to yoga classes 4/5 mornings a week, pull the plug if I need a break- with 48 hours wind down time to fulfill obligations.
I know I could quadruple revenue easily with a couple of staff, but really don't want that responsibility.
I rather enjoy being a one woman business.

@speakout you've got it absolutely nailed. Meanwhile I've >20 staff and am currently the only one not getting paid...............

We started our own business 5 years ago - we provide strategy advice to large companies - but here’s the thing we also employ a strategist to help us - which might seem mad but the type of advice we need - to run our business, is not the same type of advice we are paid to give to our clients. We work closely with other businesses/suppliers on rare occasions encouraging them to charge us more when they are too timid in their pricing.

We have been very successful but at times it’s been brutal - the day my dad died, I had to finish a piece of work, there was no choice - no one else to take over - the buck stopped with me. We have made enough money now to weather any storm that comes our way - which has helped but every holiday we’ll be working most days or thinking about work or discussing work - same with weekends, I could do with a very long break..

You are in cloud cuckoo land. Try and get your business making more and more money. Cut back your main job as you do, down to 4 days then 3. Then in time you give up your main job if your sideline makes enough.