Looking for extra cash to keep your household afloat in this storm-tossed economy? Maybe it's time to turn your hobby into a business.
Whether you wade in part-time or dive in full-time, there are several advantages to launching your hobby as a business. For starters, you already enjoy it. You also have the knowledge base and skill set upon which to build, and may have a network of fellow enthusiasts to help get you started.
It's likely that you also have a sense for pricing and market dynamics surrounding your hobby.
Finding the time and space to create a new business can be challenging, especially if you're working another job as well. But with a few simple marketing moves and the help of a willing mentor or two, you can turn your pastime into cash time in no time.
"Your hobby has to translate into a product or service for which there is an identifiable market," says Barbara Brabec, author of "Handmade for Profit" and a 25-year veteran of the arts and crafts world. "You may love the product you make, but the bottom line is, will anyone actually buy it?"
Brabec says the biggest fear for most hobbyists is ... well, fear itself."Everybody is scared because they're stepping outside their comfort zone. The only way you can get past this is with some experience and doing it more than once," she says. "You have to be able to take some rejection. It's not rejection against you personally; it's the product or service you're offering. It's not you that's being judged."
Here are six lucrative hobbies you can start from home today.
Custom Baking
• Skills: baking, cake decorating, on-site catering.
• Market: retail, special events, office parties.
• Opportunities for growth: .
• Market: retail, special events, office parties.
• Opportunities for growth: .
A few years ago, 27-year-old Katie Schwarz, a special education teacher in Austin, Texas, took a cake-decorating class and fell in love with it. Soon, she was decorating cakes and treats for children's birthday parties.
In 2007, inspired by the trendy treat of choice in New York City, she started Let Them Eat Cupcakes, a Web and phone-order home business.
Let Them Eat Cupcakes specializes in custom-decorated cupcakes in more than a dozen flavors. The cupcakes are delivered directly to the customers' doors.
Schwarz, who still teaches every other day, estimates she spends 10 hours baking and delivering to three or four events a week. So far, her marketing consists of word of mouth and her Web site.
Professional Organizer
• Skills: organization, work flow, creative problem solving.
• Market: home businesses, busy executives, harried stay-at-home moms.
• Market: home businesses, busy executives, harried stay-at-home moms.
Arts and Crafts
• Skills: ability to produce a saleable art or craft product.
• Market: retail or wholesale, the sky's the limit.
• Opportunities for growth: license product for mass market production.
• Market: retail or wholesale, the sky's the limit.
• Opportunities for growth: license product for mass market production.
Brabec has sold nearly a half-million books that help fellow crafters turn homemade items into cash.
She's also seen the same mistakes over and over -- such as the little old seamstress who made pudgy-faced soft dolls but failed to patent her creation and hence didn't receive a dime when Cabbage Patch Kids exploded.
"The concepts are the same, whether you're selling quilting or stitchery or woodwork or steel sculpture or jewelry," she says. "Arts and crafts is a multi-billion-dollar industry all by itself."
How can you get your share of that?
Start with a computer. Even a technology holdout like Brabec admits you won't get anywhere today without one.
Computers are essential, not only to do the necessary market research, but also to sell your products beyond your city limits, she says. Although you'll probably begin at local craft shows and farmer's markets, your ultimate market may be half a state or even half a world away.
Next, test market your product any way you can.
"One woman who makes jewelry said, 'I just wear my new pieces and if a stranger stops me on the street and says 'I love your pin,' I know I've got a winner,'" she says.
Many crafters make the mistake of not charging enough, Brabec says.
"Build in elements for profit and overhead because if you really take off, if you've set your prices too low and then find you have to hire help, there's not enough profit in your pricing structure to pay for an employee," she says. "It's a lot easier to lower prices than to raise them."
"Build in elements for profit and overhead because if you really take off, if you've set your prices too low and then find you have to hire help, there's not enough profit in your pricing structure to pay for an employee," she says. "It's a lot easier to lower prices than to raise them."
Brabec maintains that the ongoing flood of imports only means a brighter future for homemade arts and crafts.
"People want the quality and beauty of real handmade products," Brabec says. "They understand that there is a part of that artist within each piece, so they're buying more than just a product. There's always going to be a market for handmade products."
Exotic Birds
• Skills: knowledge of care, feeding and breeding of exotic birds.
• Market: wholesale to pet stores, retail to breeders and the public.
• Opportunities for growth: depend on whether pet store consolidation hampers growth locally. Startup expenses for an exotic bird business can be steep.
• Market: wholesale to pet stores, retail to breeders and the public.
• Opportunities for growth: depend on whether pet store consolidation hampers growth locally. Startup expenses for an exotic bird business can be steep.
In addition to the cost of cages and food, exotic birds come with a range of exotic ailments. Securing the services of a good aviary veterinarian is as critical as it is costly.But pedigreed exotic birds also fetch a handsome price, even wholesale.
Personal Shopper
• Skills: shopping for men, women, children and pets.
• Market: busy professionals, the elderly, disabled or fashion-challenged.
• Market: busy professionals, the elderly, disabled or fashion-challenged.
Twenty-five years ago on a whim, Ellen Macklin bought a computer and a handful of business cards and became one of Boston's most successful personal shoppers.
A former art teacher, Macklin had what it takes to make it in her new field: infallible taste, an outgoing personality, a love of shopping and a fiercely independent spirit.
She was one of four personal shoppers listed in the phone book then. The other three weren't in business long.
In recent years, the personal shopping field has expanded greatly in bigger cities , or so the get-rich-quick scam artists would have us believe. Macklin receives a flood of resumes sent her way by innocent wannabes who've been led on -- for a fee, of course -- by phony placement specialists.
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