How to Start a Crafting Business Without Going into Debt

I was able to start my online craft store on a shoestring budget, and I can honestly say that from sale #1 I have made a profit. Here is how I did it, and I want to encourage you that you can too.

I started out by writing articles here on Associated Content about things that I knew. No risk, Associated Content is a totally reputable company that pays when they say they will. That gave me about $100 to start with. Next I thought up my shop name, and set up my store.

I committed to making only things I would be able to use for my own family, or give away as gifts that I would have had to have bought anyway so that if my 'store' was a flop, I wouldn't be stuck with a bunch of useless inventory.

And then I went to a fabric store in town (so I wasn't taking chances on blowing all my money on an unknown online store) and bought fabric with about 3/4 of my money, keeping the other part for other things that would come up, like listing fees, etc (I'm hyper conservative with money, if you can't tell). I made sure to buy material that *I* really liked, as I've found that when I work with things that I like, I do much better work. I also had some scraps left from when I made my daughter a doll, and I made a few dolls from that.

My store looked pretty bare at first, but I tried out different things to see what sold. I watched all the advice posts to newbies on the forums and asked for shop critiques. I learned how to make my cheap Olympus Walmart-bought camera take decent pictures (thanks to all the help here!) and after quite a while, I started selling things!

I was able to see what sold (for me, diapers and dolls) and what sat in my store (burp cloths and bibs!) and then re-invest in what sold.

When I sell something, I've always used this formula to make sure that I'm not sinking too much money into my shop. This allows me to be more relaxed about having slow sales, because I'm not having to pay credit card minimums, or interest.

This is what I do with my sales, I take the sale price, and subtract out Etsy fees (.20+3%), my Paypal fees (.30+?%), my shipping cost, and how much my materials cost to make a replacement. This leaves me with my profit. From my profit, I transfer 1/2 into my checking account, and keep the other half in my Paypal account to accumulate until I need to buy supplies again. So, even if I only profited $6, $3 of that is going into my checking account, so from sale 1 I have been able to say my store has made a profit.

At first my sales were pretty slow, but it's kind of 'snowballed' and now I'm able to purchase supplies almost whenever I need them. It's made my store grow slowly, but I'm a slow and steady kind of gal, so this works for me.