Creative But Bored

Are you the creative, arts, crafty type who gets bored easily? Do you want to make a business out of selling your hand made products but don't want to commit to making 10,000 of the same thing for the next 5 years?

Well, don't quit your day job just yet. You could probably pursue the marketing of your arts and crafts while maintaining your day job. During evenings and weekends you can make your crafts and make calls to stores to try to get them to carry your products. You might also want to try reducing your work week to 4 days a week instead of 5 (if you think you'll still be able to keep your job). That one day a week would free you up to visit local stores in person and meet with the business owner. (Don't do Mondays. Most small stores are closed on Mondays) You could also offer to your boss to work longer days in exchange for having off every other Friday.

Present your products to the stores as a line of "Unique, Seasonal, Limited Edition items" . Show them pictures or samples, but don't commit to any one product. Each season they'll get something new. That will help you keep interest and they can present your products as Limited Edition and push the sales harder because of it. You can also pursue online stores.

Alternately, or even in addition, you can open your own online store and stock whatever you want. Again I would market your own store in the same manner. Then you'll get customers coming back all the time to see what you have that's new. If you do this route, make sure you offer for customers to sign up for a monthly newletter that you send featuring your new "product of the month". Definately do monthly for this, seasonal for online shoppers is long between contacts. They'll forget about you.

And finally, there is always the craft shows which are always held on weekends. CraftLister is a great site that lists craft shows all over the country.