The blog dedicated to all things crafty business!
Preparing to attend a trade show can get overwhelming. You have travel arrangements, making sure everything at home and work can survive with your absence, and what the heck to do first once you arrive. I’ve prepared a few check lists to help make attending a trade show a little less frantic and a little […]
You have arrived at your trade show destination! Now what? Trade shows generally have an education day which is usually the day before the trade show opens so you hopefully found some classes or presentations you wanted to attend. It’s time to put all that pre-show planning and scheduling into practice. You have a set […]
Have you ever heard of the saying “Less is more”? The more you have to do, the more stressed you are. Learn to do less and love more. Craft and keep yourself busy. Using reusable items in your home makes things a lot easier as well. You don’t have to go out and buy materials […]
An open house is one of the ways that you can earn money to offset your craft habit or earn some extra income for your household. Many crafters would like to sell items they make, but don’t want to make a commitment of “becoming” a business. An annual or seasonal open house is the perfect […]
The Craft and Hobby Association (CHA) is a trade only organization that has several categories of members including retailer, manufacturer, sales rep, distributor, Publisher, Designer, Teacher, Professional Crafter, and Media. Trade organizations are important because of the networking and exchange of professional/business information. If you are serious about working in the craft industry you should […]
The tough questions: What’s an original design? How do I know if I’ve violated copyright laws or infringed on someone’s copyright? How do I make sure what I’ve created is original? One of the most important elements of earning income from our creativity is that we must only sell what is original. We can’t copy, […]
One of the ways to cash in on your creativity is to sell your finished craft items, but you can also earn income by selling the instructions to the crafts you make. The first rule of trying to sell a design for publication is that the design must be original to you. You had to […]
Learn the basics of photo copyrights to be sure that all your scrapbooking and photo projects are made with the proper legal permissions. Copyright Awareness For The Photo Artist & Scrapbooker At some point, you will need to copy some of your photographs for preservation purposes. These are usually older photos that no longer have […]
I could go on about search engine optimization, or how to take better pictures, or go into the whole philosophy of Winnie the Pooh, but this is easier, more basic, and I believe more necessary. Five Basic Lessons of Marketing You are not what you sell. I don’t care if you literally put your own […]
We get quite a few letters at Creative Income that read like this: Dear Maria, How do I get started in the craft show biz? What should I make? What is selling? How to I sell my crafts? How many do I make to sell? How can you make a profit? How can I buy […]
