Affiliate marketing for crafts

[bluefelump]

Hi All,
I am a Mum of 3 boys under 5 and am desperately trying to establish an online business selling craft supplies and jewellery. I am a qualified Art therapist but am not able to work much through the week due to child care issues. Also for my own sanity I want to do more of my own creative stuff. I currently sell at local craft fairs and am hoping to set up classes in the long run
The main problem however is that we have no money to invest, as we are already 2 months behind with our mortgage payments! and my husband is a self employed graphic designer with very little work coming in.
On the up side though I have designed my own website www.mycherrypie.co.uk and have heard of the potential income from affiliate marketing. Has anybody had any success with this ? Any thoughts, comments or support would be greatly appreciated as I am in stress city at the moment.

If your DH is self employed, I guess he works from home, why doesn't he look after the kids while you work part-time? and if I am being brutally honest, if I was 2 months behind on mortgage payments, I wouldn't be so fussy about the work I did and just got any job!!!

Yeah just get a job, anything will do to pay the mortgage. Maybe evening shift at a call centre or something, an ddo the site in your spare time.

Affiliate marketing can take a long time to never to generate a decent income, so you can't be relying on that to pay your bills at the start.

Affiliate marketing will not earn you a living, it is pocket money on top of what your business might earn.

Wow to the advise!

I like your blog on the website, really good touch and you can keep customers updated with your new lines. Glad to see you are doing fairs etc and getting your business out there.

Someone up thread was talking about craft clubs, have you thought about running a couple of these in your community, may bring in a few quid a week and getting your name known locally.

I'm having struggles with my own website at the moment, trying to get more traffic etc. Have you applied to all the search engines, tweeted and got a facebook page?

I tried ebay for a while, and although it got sales it wasn't really our market as there was a few sellers with the same (ish) items but of a far poorer quality and this reflected in the price.

As for affiliate marketing, ditto the others.

Good luck, hope things start to turn around for you.