Remembering How to Fly
Micobusiness Dreams
January wasn’t the best way to start off the year, as you can see below, but I did get the underlying structure of the business settled into place, so it wasn’t a total wash.
I have the rest of the year left for things to sort themselves into working order, so there’s lots of room for mistakes and wild tangents. I just need to remember to learn from my mistakes and it should be shiny…
So onto the carnage! Continue reading
One of the things people often forget when thinking about starting a crafting business is the overhead costs.
Overhead costs are those costs not tied directly to a single art or writing project. In a normal brick and mortar business these would be things like rent, utilities, and administrative salaries. They are all bills that have to be paid, but folks don’t always remember to figure them into the sales prices! Continue reading
I really haven’t done much with the Etsy store since the first— for the most part it’s been a placeholder until I can finally get some products uploaded, which I hope to do this weekend.
The basic rule on Etsy is that you can sell finished crafts, crafting supplies, and vintage items (things over 20 years old). Oddly enough, I have stuff that will fit in all of those categories, so it’s time I started taking advantage of that. Continue reading
Because I use project costing to calculate COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) for the model horse customs, my micro-business is responsible for keeping track of the cost of the individual finished and average unfinished inventory costs.
Now that my first ‘body order’ has come in, it’s on to the fun part of breaking out how much of the invoice total is associated with each of the model horse bodies. For molds that have multiple base costs, I average them together instead of going through the headache of labeling each body. Continue reading
Even though I am tracking the average costs of each model horse body that I buy (details to follow) I use the Replacement Cost to calculate the body costs for custom orders and for bringing in stock from my own personal collection.
Replacement costs are calculated from what it would cost me to buy a specific mold at retail (market value). Since I use these to figure out the ‘body cost’ portion of each sales listing, I will be updating these at the end of each month in order to keep the prices current. Continue reading
Learning From My Mistakes
This is the smallest of the yearly updates, but probably the most impactful in terms of what’s planned for 2012.
Sure, the three NaNo’s, fifty-two horses, and 366 miles aren’t to be sneezed at, but starting the small business again will make a much larger (and longer lasting) impact on my day-to-day life.
This year there will be more informational posts, based on my own learning curve. I’ll be covering things as I hit them, but I’ll also be revisiting topics as I learn more or change my stance. Businesses are meant to be fluid things and buyers are a fickle breed! Continue reading
I scooped up a PO Box on Monday (running a bit behind) and today the first of the forms went out in the mail. Due to the oddities of Newport News, the second set of forms won’t go out until the first, but starting a home crafting business is much easier than I remember it being!
In the end all I had to fill out was Virginia Form R-1 and the Newport News Business Classification Information (BCI) form plus the Newport News Business, Professional, and Occupational License (BPOL) check. But that doesn’t mean it was easy to figure out… Instead I ended up running around on the various Virginia and Federal websites to make sure I’d covered all my bases. Continue reading
I’ve heard horror stories about PayPal for almost as long as the company has existed. There are numerous websites about the various folks they’ve taken money from and sellers that they have screwed over. I actually setup a second bank account back when I did this the first time, just so PayPal wouldn’t have access to anything but the business funds.
But most of the bad things I knew about happened years ago and thus I’ve been waffling about using PayPal or not when it comes to my business.
And then this happened. The story is still spreading across the internet like wildfire, so hopefully PayPal will fix this in the next 24 hours. (Check out this wonderful post by GreenGeekGirl that breaks it down step-by-step.)
Now I am firmly now in the NOT camp. Continue reading
Hammering out a sales plan to meet the January 2012 income goal is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
Going into this project I was fairly confident that the first $42 would be the easiest to earn, after all I’d made that easily when I was doing only model horses, right?
Well, no, not so much when I start looking at the numbers. That first month income goal is for a net amount (after costs), not gross amount (before costs) and I rarely pulled in that much from the horses due to high material costs vs. price points. Continue reading
Due to some shuffling of future plans, it looks like the business needs to start picking up some expected income drop-offs come 2013. So instead of ambling into next year, I need to ramp things up a little faster than I had planned on.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m not trying to make a living from the micro business, but it does need to start paying the bills (literally)– right now the scariest one, aside from the mortgage, is my student loans.
Yay for higher education? Continue reading
March 2011 WiP
Well, this little project didn’t quite turn out as planned.
I figured I’d sort through the piles and make a list of things that were finished and Ready-for-Sale (RfS)– but I have one thing for that list and a very very long list of Work-in-Progress (WiP) pieces that will probably be finished by January 1st.
Some of them are very heavy on the probably… and it’s not just the horses. Continue reading
Planplanplan
There are now 120 days left in 2011 and I’m starting to buckle down and get this business plan off the ground. If all goes well I should be ready to roll into 2012 with posts in queue, product in place, and everything shiny.
But making plans = good, putting plans into action = better.
I’ve been putting off a lot of the work that could be done on the business because I don’t want to do it ‘early’. But this is not NaNoWriMo, there’s no penalty for starting early and truth be told, it makes zero difference whether I do some of the tasks now or in November/December. Continue reading
Hobby AND Business
One of the things that sets me apart from other folks dreaming entrepreneurial dreams is that I’m focusing on building a retirement income, not a replacement for my day job. I expect the bulk of the work to happen now and the bulk of the income to happen later, which is at cross-purposes to everyone else I’m reading.
Not that I wouldn’t love to stay home and pay my bills chasing my various hobbies, but realistically I don’t see myself turning a huge profit from artwork and writing. You can make a living blogging… but I’m neither a personal consultant nor a business consultant—and that’s how most of the bloggers make it work. Continue reading
The internet changes fast and online sales venues change with it. Six months is forever in internet time, so five years away from the game means I have to start all over again.
As I get the older customs touched up and the newer customs finished off, it’s time to start looking at marketplaces for the model horses. I’m still not looking to start selling anything until next year for tax reasons, but it never hurts to get things in place beforehand. Continue reading
Pile o' Books
In previous posts, I’ve covered the general idea of the ‘tickets to read‘ and in this post I’ll be going over the general foundation that I’m building my price points on. Nothing like a little math to spice up a rainy week!
Normally I would use materials cost plus man-hours in order to calculate a price, but in this case the market has already set expectations on how much writing is worth.
This will no doubt change as I get more in-depth information on the market (and see how folks respond to the tests), but I figure it’s a solid base to start from. Continue reading
Yet another step in the planning process is complete! Abet an easy step, but one that needed doing.
After a quick trip through US Postal Service website, I now have all the information on what’s required to set-up a post office box. Soon that little metal door will be mine! MWHAHAHA!
Achem, yes, moving on… Continue reading
In the very simplest sense, running a business consists of exchanging a good or service for money. When I started Custom-Models.com back in 2003, this was really all I was worried about. I was going to paint model horses, sell them on eBay and make some moola.
Well, that and pay taxes (of course).
I didn’t worry about how I was going to paint them, or photograph them, or list them, or advertise them, or ship them, or track them, or keep any useful metrics beyond ‘I made a profit.’ Continue reading
Tickets to Read
The first product I am working on for next year is the idea of selling ‘tickets’ to serialized novels and short stories.
Serial stories look to be a great way to keep folks coming back to the website on a regular basis. As long as there is a free reading option, I think that an audience could be built over time that would be willing to throw a few bucks my way.
But first I have to convince the world that my stories are good enough to spend money on! Continue reading
SunRunner Stables
The last time I was selling custom model horses I was a relatively familiar name in the hobby. I wasn’t the best artist by a long shot, but I was out there having a blast and making new friends.
I was active on Model Horse Blab and the various Yahoo Newsgroups. I tried to keep at least one horse up in action every day. I even ran the Hampton Roads Classic –a small live show in Virginia (small, but hopefully enjoyable!).
If people wanted silly colored Stablemates, they knew where to turn…. But that was five years ago and now I’m pretty much starting over from scratch.
So how do you gain name recognition in a loose-knit organization like a hobby? Continue reading
SBA Business Plans
I am trying to write a business plan for my home micro-business and I keep hitting dead ends.
Mostly because the generic business plan that the SBA suggest above is for companies, not micro-business. Even in my rosiest forecast I don’t plan on having employees, investors, or business loans. In fact, the only person who will ever be seeing this plan is me (and my readers).
But having a plan seems to be a core requisite for being a ‘real’ entrepreneur as opposed to a hobbyist who makes a little money on the side. So I’m trying to find a way to hack down the extra bits until I get what I need.
So what’s in a plan? Continue reading
One of the sad realities to working for myself is that my goal income really isn’t my goal income.
For instance, say I’d like to be bringing in $30,000 a year (or a little over $2,000 a month) in order to feel comfortable in my normal spending habits. Assuming our debts continue on their current trend, by the time I’m ready to step out of the corporate rat race our debts should be very close to zero. Combined with my husband’s retirement income this sounds like a nice solid figure, after all I’m not looking to end up in a mansion, but it turns out to be significantly short of what I’d really need.
Since the theme for this month is baby steps, I’ve decided to find ways to make my favorite hobbies a cost neutral exercise. This would allow me to continue to enjoy my down-time if money gets tight when my husband goes back to school and to experiment within the available markets. I will be using them as a base to develop costing and pricing methods as well as polish my marketing and records keeping skills.
Amusingly, ‘running a home business’ could also count as a hobby since I enjoy creating and maintaining systems as much as anything else!
At the moment the two hobbies that cost me money are working with Model Horses and Dual-boxing on World of Warcraft. While neither of these aren’t things I have to have, they are things I enjoy doing– hence the investigation into finding ways to make them ‘free’.
