Make an income from the crafts that you make!

The absolute dream for Crafters would be to make a good income from your creative outlay.  For the vast majority of us this is not going to possible.  I thought I would outline a few truths about making money crafting.  Hopefully this will help you be a bit more realistic with how much of an income you are likely to have.

Niche taste

There are some handcrafted items out there that are only going to appeal to a select number of customers.  With any item that you create you need to realize that it is not going to appeal to everyone as we all have different tastes.  Therefore if your items only appeal to a certain niche of customer it is important that you can identify the best way to get your products in front of them.

This may involve a lot of trial and error to test where your perfect customer can be shown your items.  Bare in mind that venues or events that work for other people may not necessarily work as well for your items.

Maximize income

If you are intending to sell your crafts and earn an income from them you need to be realistic about the longevity of your sales.  Although it feels amazing to be able to sell your products if you are selling them with a very minimal profit it is going to take you a hell of a lot of sales to hit a reasonable income level.  Therefore if you are intending to live off the income from your sales you will need to think carefully about the amount of income that you will gain from each sale.

At the same time it is really important that you review your prices on a regular basis to make sure that you are still selling your items with a profit.  Fees like postage or online listing fees can slowly creep up and before you realize you are actually selling your items at a loss.  Trust me, this can easily happen. 

Earlier this year I did a review of my prices on my Etsy shop.  What I very quickly realised is that when the offsite ads fees were introduced along with a price increase of my postage carrier I was no longer making an income from sales.  In fact in many cases it was actually costing me money to sell my items, therefore I was running at a loss.

The crafters black hole

Now the most realistic thing that we need to bare in mind as crafters is we are notorious for never being in profit.  We can have a run of really good sales and the profit we have made from these sales will very quickly be absorbed into new craft supplies or a new crafting gadget.  This is absolutely fine if you are happy for your profits to be used in this way.  However if you are wanting to use the money you make in order to live on you will need to be very careful that new craft supplies are avoided.

Heavily inflated prices

Another pit fall that I see a lot of crafters fall into is trying to add a huge mark up on their items.  It is a fine line between charging for your time and expertise, and over pricing your items out of the market.  I have seen some crafters who have undertaken very basic crafts and then tried to ask for a ridiculous prices for these items.  Customers are very observant if you have just purchased a blank and slapped some paint on it, the customer will be aware of this.  The customer wants to pay for talent and creativity, they don’t want to be ripped off by someone who is just looking to make a quick buck.

One way to avoid this is to do some research and see what other people are charging for similar items.  You can use these prices for a benchmark and make sure that your prices are reasonable priced within these brackets. A simple search on a site like www.etsy.com or www.ebay.com should be able to give you some parameters.

So in conclusion it is possible to make a reasonable income off of selling your crafts you just need to be careful and realistic.  As a general rule crafters will never be rich we undertake our crafts for the joy of creating and the fact that we can make some money off of them at the same time is often an added bonus.  Let me know your thoughts on making money from your crafts.

For a bit of extra guidance on how to price your postage and packaging when selling online have a look at https://www.claireyatfairycrafters.com/price-for-postage-and-packaging/