10 Ways to Grow Your Crafting Business Today

 My goal when I started, Maria’s Valentine Rose, back in 2007 was to be able to support myself and my family with no other income. Well, it has been a few long and hard years and I am slowly moving up the totem pole. Along my way I have met hundreds of people who offered their opinion on what I was doing wrong and I took as much as I could from as many of them as I could. The results? I started realizing that not every advice was good advice.

I joined the Army Reserves and put my business on hold which may have not been the best idea in the world as far as my crafting business went. I learned that when you put something as great as I had on hold, the damage is great. I finished out basic and then set out a plan to build my business back up and here is what I learned that helped my business. These are a few of the things that I used before that worked and are now working to help my business grow. I hope that you can take a lot away from it and that it will help you.

1. Stop wasting your time with social networks: I guess I should explain this one a bit more. Social networks are a great source to grow your business but there are such plugins that allow you to set everything on auto-pilot so use them. I post to Twitter and Facebook like it were a godsend but I no longer manually do them. I also quit trolling around on sites like Pinterest in hopes of finding people to re-pin my post. I come to realize that if you write quality information or offer something that people like, then they will re-pin it without you bugging them. Now, with this being said, I do like to roam on my free time to find cool stuff and I do re-pin those that I feel are interesting enough.
2. Set your goals monthly: I started by setting my daily goals but then I realized that this was not good enough. I then realized that I was doing it all wrong. I should have set up my goals in increments of 5 years and working backwards so that I would know exactly where I stood when each week passed. Money is always a goal but you need to be more precise such as, what steps do you need to add to get you to where you need to be? Figure out a goal and set your plan to help you reach that goal. (I will be talking about this more in a future post)
3. Become a frequent reader of the SBA : The Small Business Association has a lot of interesting and helpful links and articles to kick-start your business. They have a learning center that is awesome. If you haven’t been by their website today might be the day for you to do that.
4. Always have extra stock on hand: This was one of my first mistakes when I started my business. I didn’t keep enough stock on hand because I assumed that I could get the merchandise or make the merchandise with each other. What I learned was that it is better to have the stock on hand because no one likes to wait any longer than they have to. I think I probably used my first three months of profit to buy even more material and merchandise so that I could ship the orders out as they came.
5. It’s always a good idea to have multiple streams of income: I use websites like Ebay and Etsy to create multiple streams of income. I use these sites because I know that there are people on here that are looking for deals. When I mail out the product, I slip a business card and a coupon code to my website to spark their attention. I have gained many buyers by doing this. It cost me a little more money than what I normally spend to sell a product but in the long run, I gain a customer and so my profit actually increases.
6. Direct your energy to what you know will bring the greatest sales: If you have been in business for a little while then you probably already know what will bring you the most sales. For most of us, we tend to drift away from this over time. Most of your sales will be done by marketing. Marketing can be done in many ways such as creating a blog, word of mouth, social networking, and many other ways. Before you start marketing though, you need to have the products in hand. So, build up your stock and then start marketing them. Create a schedule and stick to it.
7. Create a business plan: I know, I know, you have heard this one before. We all need a business plan and one that we can stick to through thick and thin. Here is a great article on creating a business plan. Business plan elements
8. Don’t get stuck:  For most of us we tend to get stuck in making the product instead of trying to figure out new ways to grow our business. At least once a month, you should try to make a new product to market. This keeps things fresh and can help grow your business since this might be just what that one customer was looking for. If you find that this one product isn’t doing you any justice, move on to the next item. I tend to use the internet for inspiration when it comes to making new items to sell.
9. Expand your business as your customers grow: I wish I would have had someone to tell me that as my business and customers grow, so much my products and knowledge. I try to never stop learning about my business or how to grow it. I thought it would be as simple as putting it up on the internet and then collecting the profits. Boy was I wrong! There are other issues associated with it like taxes, website building, outsourcing help, budgeting, and many other things. Every few months, I take a step back and look at my business to see if it is still meeting my customers’ needs. Some of my customers have requested certain items and with those items, usually comes more items that associate with them so now I have to make room for those items in my shop and figure out the cost associated with those products. Wow! I verily have enough time to take a breath.
10. Outsourcing help: I thought I could do it all by myself and then one day, I realized I couldn’t  It wasn’t about not wanting to pay someone else to do something that I could do if I had enough time. It was about letting go of the reins to let someone else in. I had too much pride and I didn’t want to say I had help along the way. I wanted to be able to say that I did it all on my own. The truth is, we can’t do it all on our own no matter how much we want to. There will always be someone along the way that is going to have to help us. My shipping needs was what was taking most of my time. I hated the shipping process and sometimes my customers suffered because of it. I finally broke down and got my two oldest daughters to handle this process for me. I had to take the extra time to teach them how but I am proud to say that they handled it very well.

What have you done to help your business grow and what have you learned along the way?