Home Based Business Ideas (10 In 1 Bundle): How To Start Making Money Online With 10 Profitable Online Business Ideas

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Are you tired of the 9-to-5 grind? Are you more of a creative person than a pencil pusher? Are you looking for a way to break out of the tedium of the office, actually enjoy your job, and bring joy to your life? It’s not just a pipe dream! Turning your creative hobby into a profitable small business is within your reach. This book will walk you through the ins-and-outs of setting up an online crafting business from scratch. You will find out where to sell your crafts, learn useful shipping and pricing strategies, as well as some advertising ideas, and ways to deal with customers. Don’t waste any more time behind a desk; read on and learn how to make a career out of your creativity, and build the life you’ve always wanted.

Figuring Out What to Sell

What are you best at?

It might be hard to figure out what craft you want to sell online. You probably have a lot of projects on the go; after all, creative people are always creating. Narrowing down your list of crafts to just one type can be hard. But remember, you’re trying to create quality items that other people will want to buy. You want your finished products to be as close to perfect as possible so you can feel confident when sending them to a buyer. You don’t want someone’s new scarf unravelling on them because you haven’t quite figured out how to finish a knitting project. Consider focusing on the craft that you have more or less mastered. Maybe you can knit really well! Maybe you’re a painter, or a woodworker; maybe you make dolls, or bags, or are really skilled at leathercraft. You know your own skills and passions, so your final product is up to you. Just make sure you can make a high quality item you feel comfortable mailing out to buyers. If you wouldn’t give it to a friend, don’t send it to a customer.

Don’t worry if you aren’t already a crafter. Online selling isn’t just for seasoned artists. A lot of crafts are actually pretty easy to pick up. Check out YouTube or Pinterest tutorials for basic ideas. Then you just have to make a few practice crafts with some cheap materials from a dollar store, and you’ll be ready to start selling in no time. If you have some innate design talent, finding something you can turn into a profitable craft won’t be hard at all.

Cross-stitch is a great example of a craft that is easy to pick up, really simple to customize, and popular among buyers. Embroidery is the same; if you have an eye for design, and the patience to stitch a beautiful piece, you could potentially make a lot of money per item. There are so many possibilities for crafts you can learn well, and learn fast.

A short list of popular crafts:

Cross-stitched pieces or patterns

Embroidered pieces or patterns

Custom painted wine glasses or coffee mugs

Jewelry

Screen printed clothing and accessories

Posters

Buttons and pins

Patches

Candles

Knitted clothing and accessories

Soap and other bath products

All these crafts are fairly easy to do (especially if you’re already the crafty type) and the materials are pretty cheap, too! All you need is a few tutorials and some practice and you’ll be ready to set up your own online craft shop.

Made to Order vs. Pre-Made

The time it will take you to make a single item is a crucial factor in deciding whether you’ll be making your items custom, or sending out pre-made ones. Many crafters make their items as orders come in so they can leave room for customization, and ensure that the item is fresh for the customer. You don’t really want to be sending buyers old crafts that you have kept in your closet for several months before shipping. The problem is, though, that some crafts take quite a long time to create. Say you’re selling elaborate embroidery projects that take you a month of spare time sewing to finish, but you have five orders already lined up. Telling that fifth buyer that they won’t be receiving their item for at least five months will most likely result in them cancelling their order. Look at the time it takes you to complete one item and decide from there whether you’ll be custom making your orders, or creating a stockpile of pre-made items.

Remember you may be losing the opportunity for sales if your process takes too long to complete. Customers want their items as fast as possible, and many reviews for your shop will include whether the shipping time was impressive, acceptable, or disappointing. Include a processing time on each item in your shop to set reasonable expectations for when customers should receive their purchase.

If you decide to ship out pre-made items to save you time, and to get the item to the customer as quickly as possible after ordering, make sure you’re storing your crafts in a way that won’t result in misshapen, torn, scratched, dusty, or otherwise damaged goods. Consider individually wrapping your crafts in tissue paper or plastic, and storing them in a large plastic tub. This will protect your items, and make processing orders fast and efficient. Don’t forget to check each item for damage before it goes out!

Materials

The materials you will use to create your crafts will also help you decide what to sell in your shop. Are these materials rare? Easily accessible? Seasonal? You don’t have to create crafts from only readily accessible materials. Vintage items are in high demand and can definitely be used to make beautiful, popular crafts. However, consider your ability to restock certain materials. Maybe you have the time to go to flea markets, estate sales, and vintage shops every weekend to find rare materials you can use for your crafts. But if you’re short on time and don’t really have the ability to go out trolling for materials you’ll want to create your products with materials from craft stores or other common, easily accessible stores. The last thing you want is for your shop is to run out of items to sell, and for you to have to shut down your whole shop.

Legality

Another important thing to consider when you’re working out what to sell is whether or not you’re actually legally allowed to sell your items. While crafts centered around TV shows and movies are popular and might sell well, they could be breaking copyrights held by the companies that own those brands. Occasionally the legal departments of these companies get wind of someone selling a copyrighted image on a site like Etsy, and they have the listings taken down. Several of these types of infractions can lead to your entire shop being shut down. There are certainly loopholes to this situation, and sometimes copyrighted images fly under the radar on such large online marketplaces, but the threat of having your items deactivated, or your whole shop shut down is real, and should be considered before you create any crafts. Look into the specific legalities surrounding what you plan to sell before you list your items.

Where Should You Sell?

Etsy

Etsy is probably the most popular online marketplace for crafters, and for good reason. Etsy guides you every step of the way while you create your online shop. It makes setting up an online business a truly simple step-by-step process. You attach your shop to your PayPal account, and/or your bank account, create your listings (adding prices, pictures, descriptions, shipping options, shop policies, and tags to help buyers find your products) and you’re all set.

Etsy charges a nominal fee per listing, and takes a small percentage of each sale you make. As a result, your bill will be different every month, and be based on how many items you sell and the price of those items.

There are options for you to pay to promote your listings so they are seen first under a certain search, but even if you don’t do that, the detailed subsections of products and the tags you use on your listings can help bring people to your store without any extra effort on your part. You’ll be able to make a fairly passive income depending on the nature of your products. If you’re pre-making a bunch of your items then you just have to send them out as the orders roll in.

The downside is that, unless your product is truly one-of-a-kind you will have a lot of competition. Vague searches for products turn up 250 pages of results. A buyer will most likely attempt to narrow their search using keywords, though, so make sure your descriptions and tags are accurate and specific. Coffee Mug turns up that 250 pages of results; Cat Coffee Mug turns up just over 70 pages; Blue Cat Coffee Mug only has 3 pages of results. Use Etsy’s tools to help buyers find your items. They’re there to help your business flourish!

Your Own Site

You could always create your own e-commerce site using sites like Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify. The tools on these sites are easy to use and you can end up with a professional looking online store. However, you do just end up with your own website that isn’t attached to a known online marketplace, and doesn’t provide you with the opportunity to be found through simple internal searches. If, for example, you’re selling hand-knitted woolen scarves and someone types wool scarf into the Etsy search bar, they are likely to eventually find your listing complete with a picture of the product, and the price of the item. But, if you have your own shop independent of an online marketplace, then someone would need to wade through the pages of unrelated websites that Google would offer up for the wool scarf search in order to maybe find your website. They would more likely come across websites for larger chain stores selling wool scarves. The SEO for your new site will almost certainly never rival that of the major clothing stores, and your site will get lost on a page of Google that searchers rarely visit.

That’s not to say having your own site is a horrible idea. Creating your own customized website makes your business look professional and established. Regardless of the popularity of your Etsy store, or how much money you make being a seller through Etsy, people still occasionally look at the site as a place for hobbyists and non-professional artists. A stand-alone website could help your business look more legitimate. You will have to spend a lot of time and money on marketing efforts to bring people to your site, as they probably won’t be finding you through Google, but if you’re willing to put in that work then your own site could be a great basecamp for your business. You could try to focus on SEO for local visibility to start, rather than attempting to outrank the major chain stores. That way people in your area will be able to find your shop faster, and you can build a local following.

You can also get the best of both worlds with Etsy’s new service, Pattern. It allows you to make your Etsy shop into an e-commerce site that runs alongside your existing Etsy shop. It basically moves all your listings over to a customizable e-commerce site and allows you to have that more professional-looking, independent site, as well as a regular Etsy shop.

Note that having your own domain name, or using Etsy’s Pattern service is more expensive than just using Etsy. You will have to pay a flat monthly fee regardless of how many items you sell, which could potentially mean you’ll be losing money in initial months as you ramp up your marketing efforts, or in months you just don’t sell many items.

Honestly, the best option for selling crafts online is Etsy. It’s internationally known, easy to use, and it helps new and seasoned artists alike find their niche.

Shipping

You may think that shipping is one of the last pieces of the puzzle, just because it’s the final stage for you in setting up an online shop and selling your items. But shipping is one of the first stages for your customer in eventually receiving your product. It is absolutely essential to have your shipping plan entirely in place before you even set up your shop. Don’t leave it until you get your first order to figure out exactly how you’ll be sending your items to your customers.

Shipping Costs and Concerns

Before you even list your first item on your shop you have to navigate the complicated world of shipping. The best thing you can do is to mock up a package of one of your items exactly how you want to send it and go get a quote from the post office for how much it would cost to send the item to various different areas of the world (your country, neighbouring countries, and farther international countries). The shipping cost will vary widely and will depend on the size and shape of your package, its weight, how far it has to travel, whether you require a tracking number, insurance, or a signature for drop off, and how quickly you want your item to get to its destination. Your national postal service will most likely have online tools to help you figure out how much shipping an item will cost, but these tools can be confusing and hard to use. You might end up underestimating the cost of shipping and actually lose money on initial sales. Don’t guess! Go to the post office and get a real quote. Shipping can get surprisingly expensive and you don’t want to be caught off-guard after you get your first orders.

Materials

How are you going to ship your items? This seems like a simple question but shipping materials can be as complicated as shipping costs. The size, shape, and fragility of your items will be your jumping off points for figuring out how to ship. You have the choice between so many different styles and shapes of envelopes and boxes that it can be hard to figure out which is right for your item. Using normal everyday envelopes for small, sturdy items can seem like a good option because you can buy them in bulk for a very small price per unit. But there are regulations in some areas on what you’re allowed to send in envelopes through the regular mail (aka the lowest cost shipping option, that is supposed to only be for bills, letters, and other paper documents).

If you’re selling small pieces of jewellery, for example, the item may fit in a regular envelope, and you may technically be able to send it through the regular mail by just dropping it in a mailbox, but it can easily be stopped at a customs point because it is not a paper document. It should have been sent as a different form of package, with a higher price point. You may not even know that it was not allowed to reach its destination. Even post office workers make the mistake of sending normal envelopes through the regular mail when they should be classifying them as small packages or other forms of package.

Padded envelopes are more expensive per unit but will ensure that your item is protected during its journey to your customer, and will better ensure your package will be sent with the correct postage, and reach its destination. Sending items as cheaply as possible and just hoping to fly under the radar of customs makes every order a gamble. If you’re selling one-of-a-kind items that take a lot of time and care to create you can’t afford for them to get lost in the mail. Again, you should go to the post office and ask what materials and shipping process you should use for your crafts before you set a shipping cost for your items on your shop.

For larger, and more fragile items, you’ll want to consider using boxes and things like tissue paper and bubble wrap to protect your items. Remember that the size and weight of the box will inform how much the shipping will cost, so choose wisely. Bigger isn’t necessarily better. A big box with a lot of padding will help keep your item safe, but you’ll be looking at a much larger cost to ship it. Try for the smallest box possible that will comfortably fit your item and the necessary padding.

Packaging

You don’t necessarily have to create your own packaging (that’s one of the upsides of selling online) but having customized packing and marketing materials to send along with your item lends a legitimate and professional air to your shop. It makes your shop feel like a real business with an established brand, and makes the customer feel appreciated. Free design sites like Canva.com can help you create a logo, custom business cards, flyers, thank you cards, gift certificates, and