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When you began your crafting business, what did you envision? Did you envision financial freedom? Did you roll in the math of “if I can get 35 orders a week, the would be a profit of $$$” If so, you’re not alone. But what I bet you didn’t plan for where the highs and lows of the seasons. How November can bring the best sales and then January can make you cry. How being burned out is a real thing and sometimes you just want to run away from that machine (or throw it out the window.)
Burnout is one that always gets me. Which is why I am always exploring new ways to bring revenue sources to my business. Some ideas flop, some don’t. So this month I wanted to help you explore 5 areas where you can bring in additional income to your business that can help balance out the ups and downs and even provide options that can be set on autopilot to produce residual income. This is just a taste of ideas to get your juices flowing. You could probably spend HOURS thinking through ideas for each of these!
1. Craft Shows
Let’s start here because this is the least foreign idea. You may have already tried craft shows or currently do them on a regular basis. I have found that the consensus is that you love them or hate them. Many people have great success with one weekend show, but there is a lot of prep work that goes into it. You may spend WEEKS preparing but walk out with no sales. Just like your product presentation in your online shop, your craft show success’s destiny is reliant upon your presentation of your items, finding the right shows to attend, offering unique items, and many times… closing a sale. Sometimes this takes 2-20 shows to finally find your style and what works for you. But once you get the hang of it, you may find that you can prep for craft shows in your “down time” and that they balance out your year in full!
There are many resources that will help you find the most success with craft shows. Here are some e-books that are packed full of information if you’re wanting to get your feet wet before diving in!
2. Host Craft Parties
This one is one you can do from your home, at someone else’s home, or even at a public event space! We all know that the “paint and drink” parties are huge, so why not a CRAFT party? Add a bottle (or box) of wine and you’re set! You get a project that you can teach a group to do in a short amount of time, provide the materials, charge a flat fee per person, and boom a mini side hustle is born!
The ideas and possibilities are LIMITLESS on this one! If you want a great place to start brainstorming, here’s a wonderful e-book, 15 Home Parties To Host With Your Silhouette Or Cricut that has lots of ideas! It’s focused on Silhouette/Cameo owners, but can completely extend to other crafts as well.
3. Teach Classes Locally:
Craft stores are popping up left and right. Not just Joann’s and Hobby Lobby. Small, independent crafters are opening supply shops for cutting and embroidery businesses all over the place! Many of them are looking for teachers to conduct classes to draw customers into their store. Typically, these classes are done in 2-hour master sessions, and/or 4-6 week courses. You can mix it up and offer some of each to provide variety!
You can also offer these classes at your local rec center! Sewing, embroidery, cutting, and sublimation are areas that people are always wanting to learn!
4. Teach An Online Course
Maybe you’re not an “in person” teacher but you have a desire to teach people something in some way. An online course is a GREAT way to go! You teach it once, have a Facebook community for questions from your students, and you’re set! Teachable is an online platform that makes setting up e-courses super easy! They provide SO many learning materials on how to make your course a success. If this one tugs at your heartstrings, it is a fantastic option for residual income! You can click here to see the different plans that Teachable has for course creation!
5. Affiliate Marketing
Huh? What’s that? Affiliate marketing is basically a way for bigger businesses to cut down on marketing costs by asking YOU to market for them in exchange for a small commission. Amazon, Target, Walmart, Etsy… MOST businesses have an affiliate program you can join. To apply to join, visit the website of the business you’re looking at, scroll to the bottom of the page and you should see something called “affiliates.”
Or, you can even just Google the company name followed by “affiliate program” like “Amazon Affiliate Program” and it’ll come up that way as well!
ShareASale is a hub of sorts that a lot of companies use to host their program. If you click here and join ShareASale, you’ll then be able to apply to the other businesses that use them for their program. It makes things very easy and centralized so instead of having payments coming in from 72 places, remembering 72 logins, it’s just all done through ShareASale. Easy peasy.
An excellent e-course for affiliate marketing is offered by the MILLIONAIRE blogger from Making Sense Of Cents. She is simply inspirational. If you haven’t ever checked out her blog, I recommend doing so! Her course is packed full of information and the cool thing is, is that when you sign up for her course, YOU can become an affiliate of the course! Meaning if you promote the course, YOU get a commission of each sale you refer! Here is the link to her course as well!
How do you incorporate these links into your business? Simple! Say you offer home decor signs, and your product photo shows a blanket from Amazon that matches perfectly, you post the link to the blanket as well! Or if you offer kids t-shirts and know of the perfect shorts from Target that would complete the outfit, post the link to those! Usually, if a customer uses your link to shop on any site you suggest, you get a percentage of the ENTIRE sale. So if they follow your link to Amazon and buy the blanket, plus toothpaste, candles, and office supplies… you’ll get the credit on ALL of the items! Even if they DON’T buy the blanket, you’ll get credit JUST by them using your link! Cool, huh?
And there’s 5 ideas you can chew on for March! Spring is “typically” a slow season, so hopefully these ideas boost your creativity and focus!
