How to Make Money from Your Handcrafted Jewelry

So several years after you started taking on a handcrafted jewelry hobby, you are probably now an expert in the craft. Perhaps your drawers and cabinets are overfilled with necklaces, earrings, bracelets and other trinkets. Maybe you have already run out of friends and relatives to give these things away. Now is the time for you to make money from your handcrafted jewelry by selling them.

For many hobbyists, taking the next step of making a pastime into a means of earning is an exciting phase. However, there are also many of those who could still be quite hesitant take their handcrafted jewelry hobby making to the next level because of many uncertainties that may come along the way. If such is the case for you, read on and discover how you could make your hobby not only pleasurable but lucrative as well.

Where to Sell Your Handcrafted Jewelry

For many people, selling would mean putting up a store or a boutique, but this should not always be the case for beginners. Building a shop can be intimidating, and not to mention risky, especially during the early stages. The best thing to do is to test the waters (i.e. the market) first before taking the plunge into a full-pledged handcrafted jewelry business. Here are some great venues where you can start up.

1. Handcrafted Jewelry Parties at Home - this is where many successful handcrafted jewelers start out. They invite their friends for some snack or dinner one afternoon or evening. As desert is serve, and small talk begins, you can show your guests your latest creations. Let them take a look and feel of your products. Have mirrors handy and allow guests to try your jewels out for size. This relaxed and friendly environment could be a great venue not only to take pride of your handiwork but also to sell them to people who are close to you.

2. Handicraft Fairs - after hosting some parties, you may now try to venture into the outside world, and a great place to do this is in handicraft fairs, where people of the same interest gather to look and shop for interesting finds. Fairs provide great settings novice jewelers as they provide good learning experiences such as the latest trends in the business. This is also where you could meet with potential contacts for your future handcrafted jewelry ventures.

3. Online Jewelry Shops - you may also take advantage of the convenience afforded by technology by selling your products online. The great thing about online shops is you could reach a wide market without having to leave your house. You may join an online shops that specialize on accessories or you may also sell you goods in online auction sites. For a minimal cost you could enter a vast ocean of potential customers. eBay is now a phenomenally popular site that sells everything from pets to computers, and you could greatly take advantage of his wonderful channel.

You may also put up your own website so that people would associate your products directly to you. Publishing and maintaining websites these days are no longer costly and considering how much you would earn with your handcrafted jewelry business, this could be a venture worth taking.

For How Much You Can Sell Your Handcrafted Jewelry

This is another area of handcrafted jewelry business that perplexes a lot of people, however it is actually very simple. You just have to take not of the costs of your materials, how much work you have placed on the crafts, and the overhead. To do this you need three steps:

1. List the cost all the materials and tools you used for making the jewelry.

2. Carefully think how much time and effort you gave to make your goods and decide how much you are willing to pay yourself. Perhaps in the beginning it is reasonable to pay yourself $10 or so for every hour you worked. You can increase this as your business grows.

3. Finally, take not of all the other expenses that is related to your jewelry making. This could include the rent of the stall in the trade fair you joined, or the website maintenance expenses, or the telephone charges you got from calling contacts. Usually, these miscellaneous expenses can be estimated by taking 25% of the your material and labor costs.

With these in mind you would know how much your goods are worth, so that you would neither overprice nor under-price.

Making money out of your handcrafted jewelry is not as difficult as it seems. With determination and hard work you could be earning from your hobby in no time.

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Stay At Home Mom Small Business Ideas

Would be and will be, mom and dad, entrepreneurs are usually in a quandary as to what small home business ideas they should follow for possible long term commitments.

Unfortunately most start up small home businesses do not make it in the first six months of operations.

The reason for this is because their small home business idea is not workable in the real world when frequently they will look so good to us.

The secret here is to test them out on a small scale. Sort them out.

Another reason is they turn out to be too ambitious for their present circumstances.

You frequently will not have enough money to make it through this critical first six months.

In order to avoid the common pitfalls of small start up business, as much as possible, you should first take an inventory of available resources before embarking into any business.

This would be for a small or big enterprise.

Taking an inventory of your resources does not only mean financial resources but also other available resources such as talents, manpower, existing space in the house, equipment, available software and the like.

There are many small home business ideas that are very feasible depending on your present financial, reality based and knowledge circumstances.

This is why taking an inventory of your present resources will greatly affect the outcome of your small business venture. Let us narrow down our list of small home business ideas, let us focus on five areas where a stay at home mom could engage.

First, cooking is usually the forte of stay at home moms so let us explore the possibilities of a home based food business. If you live in a neighborhood full of busy people who do not have time to cook their own meal, you could get busy in the kitchen and cook for your neighbors.

Men will look at something like this and say, no way, that just will not work. Women, for some reason, will be more open to something like this which is good for them because their mindset can make it work.

Many people take lunch boxes to work and these lunch boxes usually contain sandwiches day in and day out. Most of us would welcome a variation in our lunch especially if these variations are home cooked. Sound good already? Good! Let us keep going.

Offering some tasty and delicious food packed in lunch boxes which people could pick up from your place on their way to work should be a good idea.

For your customers it will get to be an unbreakable habit real fast.

For creative stay at home moms, a small home business idea such as scrapbook making and handicrafts would be good for you.

Scrapbook making services could be profitable. A lot of people would like to put their pictures in nicely designed folders but never have the time to do so.

Professional athletes are a great target market for this.

They do not like to read articles about themselves in the papers everyday, during their careers, because it is very distracting to their mind sets.

They wish they had a service like this after their careers are over. That is too late.

There are thousands of professional athletes, men and women both, who would be glad to let somebody do the work for them for a fee.

Another option for you if you are artistic and really love handicraft is to design greeting cards.

Assembling greeting cards is really fun and many people would love to get a card made specifically for themselves.

You can even get your kids to help along by handing you over some colored papers and tapes. This small home business idea could be a very interesting activity for you and your children.

Handmade greeting cards are usually in demand during big occasions like mothers day, fathers day, Christmas, New Years and others.

You can expect to get big orders at this time of the year so it would be better to start making those cards well ahead of time to beat the demand.

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Handicraft - The Traditional Indian Art

Handicraft as the name suggests is the art of making various articles with hand. Also known as craft-work, this is an art to be learned by constant practice and firm determination. Handicraft is being associated with India for long. This is a prevalent art of the country since the Mughal reign. The handiwork products are specifically made by skilled artisans, who have gained proficiency by tradition.

It is a universal law, that everything changes with time and get dissolved in the flow of time. But, it seems that handicraft is an exception to this law. The reason being, it neither get changed nor vanished yet. However, now it is showing some signs of advancement. Influenced by the changing fashion trends, the art of handiwork is witnessing a significant change. The artisans are striving to give a contemporary look to the hand crafted products. The outcome of this change is really preferable.

Unlike the traditional products, the modern artifact products include candle holders, wooden coasters, Christmas hangings, fashion jewelry, photo frames and many more. These products are widely demanded the world over. Handicraft in India is not only helping millions of people in earning their bread, but is also a source of foreign exchange earning for the government. These handmade products are not only demanded in India but abroad.

Handicraft has really changed the picture of our world. No doubt, that hand crafted products are one of the best decoration items. Despite of so much modernization and technological advancement, these hand made craft items have not yet lost their charm. Instead, their national & international demand is constantly rising, crossing all the barriers.

For further information on handicraft and the various kinds of products associated with it, you may refer to the following sites:

http://www.handicrafts-world.com/
http://online-handicrafts-center.blogspot.com/

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Vivek Kumar Gupta - EzineArticles Expert Author