10 Steps to Turning a Hobby into a Home-Based Business
1. Research your hobby and compare prices to find out how profitable it can be as a business. You can search the Internet to see if people are already selling scrapbooks or whichever else it is that you enjoy. You will find that many people sell little crafts out of their house via the Internet. Homemade soap is a common item or even gift baskets. Some people like to sell candles too.
2. Is there enough interest that people would want to buy the craft or service? Check around to see how many websites is on the Internet already selling similar products. If you can’t find very many websites or none at all regarding the hobby or craft then it doesn’t mean that it isn’t selling elsewhere. Some people choose to only sell their crafts locally instead of via the Internet too.
3. See which price range that you will be able to sell the products or service. This is important to make sure that it isn’t too much of a high price. You need to make sure that you include in the price how much time that it takes you to complete the craft for sell or service. You need to make sure that you are still making a profit be time the business transaction is complete with customers.
4. You need to advertise. A website on the Internet can get you more customers so you need to make sure to advertise your website. You can purchase advertising space on other peoples website. You want to advertise on a website that is similar to your items or service. You want to advertise on a place that will catch the interest of the customers of another website. If you don’t have enough money for advertising then you can always ask the website owner to link to your website then you can link to their website in return. Don’t be afraid to send out e-mails asking website owners if they can link to you or if you can link to them.
5. Check with the city to see if you are allowed to have a home business. There are certain laws regarding home businesses so make sure that it is okay with the city. You have special regulations that you have to follow since home businesses aren’t in a regular office building and are located in the home. You usually need to have one room available to operate your home business and it can only take up a certain amount of space in the home.
6. You need to choose a business name and get a business license. You want your business name to catch peoples attention. You want the name of your business to be memorable. You want your customers to think of your company as the best company to buy from when they want a certain craft or service. You want the customer to remember your company basically.
7. You need a professional website that doesn’t have weird ads on it. You want to get your own domain name for your website so it will look very professional. Most companies usually make sure the domain name is the name of the company. Most customers usually type in the business name when looking for a company website since it is most popular that businesses use. Make sure to check to see if your domain name is available for purchase.
8. You need to get a shopping cart for your website so people can buy crafts or services online. If you don’t want or can’t afford a shopping cart then you can always have customers just order via the telephone or regular mail instead. You can also include a short order form that customers can print out and mail in with a check or credit card information.
9. Be available to answer your customers questions or e-mails within two days. You need to be able to provide excellent customer service to customers. It may be a good idea to set up an auto responder if you aren’t able to answer the customers question the same day. You need to at least acknowledge the question so an auto responder works out fine. You need to at least answer the customers questions within 48 hours at least.
10. Be reliable and dependable so that the customers will want to do a business transaction with you again in the future. You need to send out the crafts or complete the service within a reasonable time frame. You don’t want them to wait forever so make sure that your customers are happy.
