Starting a home craft business and building it from “kitchen table” beginnings to something that can provide you with a full-time income has never been easier. If you produce quality, original work it’s now possible to advertise and sell your crafts to anyone, anywhere in the world. The internet has revolutionized business and selling crafts online now offers opportunities that crafters a generation ago could never have imagined possible.

It’s not just the size of the potential craft market either. What about the start up costs? Not long ago you had three choices: craft fairs, craft galleries, or opening your own shop. Craft fairs are infrequent and you sometimes have to travel large distances with no guarantee of getting a return. Craft galleries, if you can persuade them to offer you an exhibition, will generally charge at least thirty per cent commission and can go as high as seventy!

Opening your own craft store involves costs which are so prohibitive that few, if any, can even consider it. Even the most optimistic business plan would see such a business running at a loss for probably the first two years.

Which is one of the major reasons why the home craft business has for so long been seen as the province of stay-at-home-moms (and a few stay-at-home-pops!). Something to bring in a few bucks extra maybe, but not what puts the dinner on the table.

Well not any more.

Now you can set yourself up to sell crafts on the internet for less than the price of a family-sized pizza each month. A craft blog can be a hugely powerful tool and the software is so user friendly that even complete beginners can pick it up in no time. There’s no need to be scared off by the technology, these days if you can point and click, copy and paste, you can run a successful blog.

But there’s more than just the obvious benefits. What about development costs for new ideas? If you’re selling at craft fairs you can’t just make one, you’ve got to do several in case they sell. But what if they don’t? You’re stuck with them. If you’re advertising your crafts online and you want to try a new product you only need to make one, photograph it, put it on your blog and see if people like it. If it sells, make more! People even expect to wait a while for hand-made crafts to be delivered.

If you’re selling your crafts world-wide, production might be your only problem! You could end up with so many orders you can’t keep up with demand. Wouldn’t that be a nice challenge to have? Hey, it could happen.

Truth is, of course, that despite the obvious benefits and the incredibly powerful tools you have available, a home craft business still has to be run properly if you want it to change the way you live. It takes work and dedication. The internet isn’t a magic button for instant success, but it has made it considerably easier and quicker if you want it.

Put it another way. If you could work at what you love and make a good living doing it, isn’t it worth a bit of effort?

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