Why you need to enjoy/love to craft in order to sell those crafts

There are a bajillion and three reasons why you might want to make and sell your craft products.  From supplementing your income, to making a full-time job out of it.  However, if you are going to take this selling business seriously, there are a few things that must be considered.

 

You must enjoy making it!  I cannot stress this point enough.  Depending on the craft, you will have to make LOTS of the same thing.  Maybe in different colors, maybe in different sizes, or maybe identical ones over and over again.  If you don’t enjoy it, you’ll lose the motivation, and the idea will go caput.

 

You need to have the time to make it.  Either your building up your stock to sell “ready-to-ship” items, or you prefer to dapple in “made-to-order” items, you are going to need the time.  There are 4 million stresses on any one person’s time throughout a day: sleep, eat, clean, children, spouse, social, exercise, just to name a few.  So, do you have the time to put into your creations?  Or, a better question would be: Do you enjoy crafting enough to make the time (sometimes LATE nights or EARLY mornings, putting aside housework, trusting the kids to someone else’s care, *making sacrifices*) in order to meet deadlines?

 

There has to be readily available resources.  It’s a bit unreasonable to start up your business when you have to special order, or even travel an hour or more to go get your materials.  Not only would that be another stress on your already precious time, but you would also have to calculate all of that into your pricing (which can get a bit tricksy).  I think that this would be just fine for ready-to-ship products, but I can’t see how it works to well with made-to-order items; your delivery time would be multiplied by two or even three (gotta wait for materials, then make the product, then the customer has to wait to receive it).  Going back to our continuing idea, if you don’t enjoy making the product, then you certainly aren’t going to enjoy putting forth extra effort to get the materials to make it, especially if you have to travel, or special order those materials.

 

What about research for the furtherance of your work?  Do you really want to hit this high point and then just stop?  Whether it’s doing research on the internet, taking classes from a local expert, or just developing new products, your going to be devoting time, and possibly money into growing your business.  Is this something that your willing to do?  Maybe you are looking into expanding your crafting to other revenues (like monograming as well as crocheting), or you want to add someone else to your website.  Perhaps you just heard about this awesome class that the local community center is having that can teach you a new jewelry-making technique.  If you really enjoy crafting, then this wont be an issue at all, you will *jump* at the oppurtunity to further your knowledge on the craft, but if you don’t, it will be a drag, chore, something to be dreaded.

 

So, to recap, you need to really enjoy crafting before you even consider selling it.  You have to enjoy making the time to make it, you have to enjoy shopping for the needed materials, and you have to enjoy studying further about your craft.  I hope that you have found this post useful, and I’d *LOVE* any input you might have as to why it’s so important to enjoy your craft in order to sell it!