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Turning a hobby into a business by katiyana

How to turn a hobby into a business - one knitter’s perspective

I learned how to knit when I was 13 on a couple of old watercolor paintbrushes, using scrap yarn, and following the pictures in a how to knit book. I had decided I wanted a hobby, and knitting was going to be it. As I got older, I made lots of afghans, sweaters, vests, mittens, and slippers. It’s something that I find very relaxing and fun to do.

Back in 2002, as I was cleaning out some storage, I found some doll clothes I had made for my Cabbage Patch Kid dolls, and put them up on eBay. They sold, and one of the buyers told me they loved it, but would have liked it in a different color. That’s when the light bulb went off in my head - that I could knit doll clothes made-to-order so the buyer COULD get the sweater in the color they wanted. That’s how Katiyana’s Collectibles expanded into the handmade doll clothes, and later bear clothes, business. What started off as just cleaning out a closet, has turned into a business that crosses multiple sales venues including eBay, Etsy, Bows-End, as well as 3 websites that I’ve created. They are http://www.katiyana.com, http://www.katiyanascollectibles.com, and http://www.katiyanashandmadecollectibles.com.

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So - how do you go from turning a hobby into a business? Let me share how I got there, and hopefully I’ll be able to give you some ideas and insight to help you get there too.

What things should you think about before diving into this project?

Can your hobby really become a business?

That’s the first question you should ask yourself - am I going to make money on this? If so, how much, and is that enough payback for the effort involved. What I always told my husband was I could be sitting at home watching TV in the evenings making nothing, or I could be knitting doll sweaters and making something. As long as something is bigger than nothing - its worth doing to me.

Here are some things you should think about when deciding to open a small business based on an existing hobby.

What hobbies do you do that create merchandisable products? Are you a craftsperson who knits, crochets, leatherworking, tilework, scrapbooking?
What other ways can your hobby contribute to a business? Does your hobby require supplies? If so, you can buy the supplies in bulk from suppliers at cheaper prices, use what you need for yourself, and make a business selling supplies to others like yourself who engage in that hobby. For example, as a seller of trading cards, I needed trading card sleeves and top loaders to use to ship to my customers. I buy in bulk, and sell them to other collectors, and ACEO artists who need them. Its become its own business segment in my overall scheme.
Start small - eBay is an excellent way to get started, dipping your toe in the ecommerce water so to speak. Sign up for eBay if you don’t already have an account, make a few purchases to see how things works from a buyer’s point of view and to build up your feedback rating, and then list a couple of items for auction at prices you’re willing to accept, and see what happens.
Sign up for Paypal to accept payment for your items. Its very easy for buyers to make their payments using Paypal, as eBay has it integrated very well. You get your payment fast, and can even use the money in your Paypal account to pay for the postage to ship the items to your buyers, or buy more supplies or inventory.
Check into the best way to ship your items - USPS, UPS, Fed-ex, determine how much it will cost to ship the items, and make sure you charge enough shipping & handling to cover those postage and handling costs (boxes, bubble mailers, packing material). While your business is based in a hobby, you aren’t doing it just for the fun of it - you want to make money. Don’t let yourself lose money on the shipping & handling part of the transaction.
Is your hobby collecting things? If so, maybe you can sell some of the items you don’t like quite as much as you used to, and use the money to buy more goodies for your collection? Sometimes a small business starts by cleaning up around the house, like I did, and letting it grow from there.

So how did this work for me? read the rest…….

To learn everything you ever wanted to know about how to turn your hobby into a business, visit the entire lens by clicking: Turning a hobby into a business