Craft ideas for profit

Doing this extensive research that will either get a new business idea set of in the best direction - or put an existing business onto a slightly different direction that could double or quadruple the turnover.

I am a firm believer that ANYONE is capable of starting up a business, and as long as you apply sound and basic business rules, with the correct research done in the beginning - you will be a success.

Not only that but the easy ways that you can apply to the marketing of your business puts owning a business well within everyone's grasp.
Best of all you do not need to spend thousands of dollars to get results.

My short and easiest help method here would be to tell you to go and get a copy of the report that I wrote out in detail on researching your businesses potential.
It is less that a burger and coke price wise, and well worth the cost.
Click on the image to go to the report.

Your research will put your business 20 steps ahead of all your opposition, and give your confidence a boost like nothing else.
Knowing that your business is going to definitely succeed and grow is a great feeling.

However if you want the short version, with less details read on.

Firstly do extensive keyword research.

Take the main keyword of the item or product that you want to sell or produce and enter it into the free Google keyword research tool.
Now I do not have the space to go into a lot of detail here, (there is a lot on my website) so let me tell you this.

You need to learn a lot about keyword research!

It is the most important aspect of planning your business.

Look for related keywords that could perhaps be a lot busier than the one you chose.
For example - I used to manufacture hammock chairs - they only get a few hundred inquiries a month in my home country (South Africa), while hammocks get about 1500 inquiries.

This tells me that it is wiser to make hammocks as I can get a lot more visitors to my website.

HOWEVER! ... (I love this !!!)

If I switched my production to patio furniture - I can get my website in front of 25000 inquiries a month.
Now which do you think is a better business?

So having discovered that I would then do new research into "patio Furniture" and see which exact aspect of patio furniture is getting the most searches.

You need to understand the difference between a buying keyword (get patio furniture) and a non buying keyword (patio furniture maintenance)
Sorry that is not a perfect example, but the more keyword research you do, the better you will understand this point.
It is far better to be on page one of the search engine results for a buyer keyword that only gets 200 monthly inquiries, than to be on page one for a keyword that get 3000 searches.
You are going to make a lot more sales from the buying keyword.

However what I can teach you is to get your website onto 200 first page keyword search page results, and that way you will be getting thousands of visitors a day. Naturally depending upon your product.

So start with your keyword research to be 100% certain that you are selling or producing something that people are actually looking for.

Please remember that your craft product is very likely going to be a gift, and so you need to research the "gift" keyword to see where the best potential is, and while I am telling you that, you need to look at other "gift" markets, like anniversaries, weddings, birthdays, retirements, awards and a dozen more markets that you could find a pile of buyers just waiting for your product.

Remember that I do a lot of different details in the report I mentioned, click on the image to see that report.

Once you have done your keyword research and you are aware of which aspects of your craft business seems to have the best potential, I have a few more methods that you need to do to confirm your research and your profitability.

Start with this one...

Check out all the craft markets locally, spend the whole day there, seeing who is really busy and who is not.

It is well worth your efforts to talk to these guys, see the amount of stock they carry, their range of stock and a lot more.

The more you see and learn from those successful traders the better your chances will be for survival.

I sell a complete product relating to how to succeed on the craft markets, and trade shows, and the details and tips and tricks I have in there are massive.
However I want to tell you a few of them for free here, so as to give you a powerful advantage from the very beginning.

Tip number one - Go Big.

The more stock you can carry to a market the better. I am not just talking about ten more, I am talking about 500 more. I mean it - by going big you will not just double your sales, but very likely get 5 x more.

Tip number Two - Sell big items

If you made clocks, and had 200 clocks on your table at $30 and 200 more at $ 20 and ten at $70, you will have a nice mix of products - right?

Yes true, but now imagine if you made 5 stock items of grandfather clock size clocks. These need not be actual grandfather clocks, but just very big versions of clocks, like you would expect to see at a school or business.
Make these 5 or 10 times the price.

Very often the work to make a normal clock is the same (almost) to make a massive one, and time is more a cost than the material, but people will expect the big ones to be expensive.

You get another advantage out of this, someone who arrives at your stall and sees the big ones will more than likely ask the price of that one first, and if they get shocked, will decide that your normal ones are much cheaper.

This is a very powerful selling tool, as it sets the buyer up in a correct buying frame of mind. The are likely to pounce on your others saying something like "ah - this is more like it"

Naturally you will also sell those bigger and more expensive clocks and easily cover your days costs from a single sale and the rest of your sales become profit.

If you need to know more about my big crafting product that I sell - you can find the links in that free report I have on this post, click the image to get a copy.

Not a massive long explanation here, but no matter what your product - this can be a great double check method.

As in all research cases some businesses will,not do great "magazine" research - but most will.

What you do is to go down to your local bookstore and see what topics are written about the most.

The idea is that if publishers are willing to spend money printing and publishing reports on specific topics then they are possible in demand.

Do not ever rely solely on this method as you can get excited about an article - see it as a trend, and find out that it was a dead squib.

Double check everything that you find in all your research with the keyword tools.

While you are on the bookstore look at the books written about your chosen niche - If a published is paying to publish a book there is likely a much bigger need for that topic, and worth looking in.

Use general topic ideas to find seed keywords to dig for small sub niches in your chosen product and you could uncover a gem.

PS, If I start to talk computer speak and am not making myself clear, please follow links to my contact details and simply ask me questions. It is often the easiest way to results.

Never leave out the shopping mall as a great research place.
Sometimes you are a crafter (or a manufacturer of any other product) and it takes a wake up call from shopping mall visit to realize that you might need to adjust your focus slightly.

What it means is this.

Go to a mall, plan to be there for a long time, never do any research badly, and look through everything very carefully.

You are looking for your chosen product first.
The quantities that they are in stock, their selling prices, the actual quality and standards.
There are more details that you need to look into like how they are displayed, how much variety is at that display spot, does the product have a set confined display area, or is it spread all over the shop?

Keep thinking and looking into all the possibilities relating to your chose product.
Then look at what is similar to your product, or perhaps different but still within your capabilities to produce.
Do the same research for that item.

If it is crafting that you are planning to stick to - look at every single craft item in the entire mall, and compare notes. See which has the biggest presence, remember that that one is likely to be the best seller, as it is already in demand.

Then look or think as to how you can up-sell that item. Plan a bigger version, or a version that comes in a bulk pack, than sort of thing.
As I mentioned earlier, the easiest way is to produce a massive version (OK - not silly massive - but like the clock vs the grandfather clock idea)

Do not confine yourself to only one mall, as you know that malls can differ in a massive way from suburb to suburb.
Finally remember that when you get to marketing your product you might need to come back to get your product into these stores, so think about that while you are looking.

Sometimes it pays to just use a store for a two week promotion and then walk away, or do mall space marketing etc, but that is all related to marketing - which I am not getting into here, sorry.

To find out more follow links from other posts on this squidoo, or click on the images.

While I do cover more research methods in my report, it is enough to say that as long as you have done keyword research you are the best placed for getting your stock and products noticed online.

Setting up your website is important, and you should follow these short guidelines.

Initial website research

This has to be keyword orientated, and you will need to get a domain that also is keyword related.

Just knowing how to start a craft business is not enough - you need the website to be set up correctly.

Then you need the content within your website to be well written - interesting and definately original.

You must include as many images and videos as possible.

Your craft business online will rely on a lot of external social bookmarking to be well placed online.

Either way, I need to really stress that if you do your website wrong, you could be cutting out 80% of your potential income. The steps that you use to set up your wordpress website and the tags etc will all combine to get your website noticed and busy online.

Just slapping somthing together or letting a brother of cousin do your website is silly.

Rather learn how to set up a website correctly.

Click here to learn more...

How to start a small business online

Thanks for reading my squidoo on how to start a craft business