Starting to Go Pro... Part Time

Wish you the best!

There are several Lumberjocks that have great business savvy and advice. A quick search of the site will probably turn up their posts.

I also wish you the best,

I don’t do many furniture items, I run mostly lineal footage, (flooring, log siding, etc.) but I’ve never had great luck on Ebay. I’ve done better with selling items to local dealers and let them worry about it after that, you can spend a lot of time showing and showing before you ever sell an item. I would also add make sure your as legal as possible so you don’t have any IRS problems later. You’ll sure sleep better.

Justin

-- justin@americanlogsandsiding

First off you are entering a field where lots of people sell for less then they pay for the material. Let alone the cost of the shop. So competition might look distorted. Lots of imports from countries that pay workers up to two dollars a day. Then they have the shops that just spew out cheep crap here. My first boss had me watch the yellow pages from year to year to see the large amount of changing faces, and that was in a good economy. Really check out what people actually sell on Esty. I’ve seen lots of folk with very cheap prices that have only sold 2 or 3 pieces a year while having 20 not sell. That is a lot of inventory. I’ve had a web site for 3 years and never sold a thing. I’ve done 3 shows and never sold a thing. Yet this is how many woodworkers make their living. Good luck finding your niche. My furniture you see on Lumberjocks is my passion. Some pieces even sell, but most of my work is just building “cheap” kitchens for contractors. Good luck to you. This is a great way to make a living. Please just respect the craft.

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

Been there, done that, never again. If your not nuts now, you will be.

I still have my shop but very little work for it. The competition is tough, especially from China. People are used to buying crap at WM and think we should work for those kind of wages. I wish you all the luck in the world. Maybe you can find a niche market that will really work out for you. There are several Lumber Jocks who have Etsy stores and some who work E-Bay. I’ll probably be back packing mules in Wyoming come summer. It still pays money.

-- Thos. Angle

I don’t think China is the only problem.

I don’t think China is the only problem either… However there seems to be a movement (according to USA Today) of folks asking for heirloom furniture and not wanting the “throw-away” stuff from overseas. I made two Media Cabinets for a University and they replaced two MDF style units. Also there has been a very good draw for Church raffles every year for 5 years so far for one of my garden benches or outdoor chairs.

So far, with the old houses here, I’m getting a few side jobs from the hardware referrals (A new drawer box, a replacement garage window, and right now a old cabinet door) so I’m wondering if that needs my focus, or do I make the new furniture switch, or both in moderation. (Seems to be based on the responses so far, stay with the hardware referrals.)

Thanks for sharing. More input is welcomed.

-- Tom, St. Louis, www.RhodesWoodsmith.com

Word of mouth seems to be the best way to contact buyers, because they usually seek you out. So give business cards to the customers that you make a window for or patch a door. It will pay off in customers finding you.

You can spend a lot of money on advertising like Dennis says but it can be a tough haul. I had a friend that took photographs of sports teams (little leagues) and he said when he made the same ammount of money from his photographs then he’d quit his job.

He did and he did. But, make sure that you keep food on the table.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

Personal experience – woodworking is still only my hobby, so take it with a grain of salt…

My wife (this is going back some years, she’s 15 years ex now) used to buy the cheap junk that craft stores in the area would sell. You know, like the cheap pine jewelry chest, unfinished, stapled cheap drawers that fell apart in a year, etc. She’d then bring it home and ask me to finish it. After a while I got tired of finishing crap and told her the next time she saw something she liked to show it to me. I would then proceed to make a much better one on the same general theme but with decent hardwood, better joints and maybe a little actual glue. Let’s face it: none of these are very complicated designs because they are made to be banged out as quick as possible. All I had at the time was an 8” table saw, a cheap router from Sears and a few hand tools.

She showed a couple of pieces to friends and I soon had more business than I wanted. It was my hobby, not a business and after the 3rd or 4th copy of the same thing I wanted to move on. Just to cut down on the orders, I charged considerably more than the junk they sold at the craft stores and I still had more than I wanted to do. I finally refused to do any at all.

Quality does sell!

-- "Find out what you cannot do and then go do it!"

Are You Nuts? No.
I’ve been scratching a living (kind of) for 10 years with my woodworking (mostly). I’ve done cabinetry but it was too hard to get paid by the contractor, and too hard to find jobs on my own. I started with small craft shows with some cheesy wood crafts that was too much work for too little $’s I built really nice lamps & got in a few high end galleries..on consignment…with no sales I designed & made some great furniture pieces & did the high end shows for a few years….it was very expensive & I didn’t get too much to show for it. I’ve had a web site for 6 years but untill I started making cutting boards & put an actual shopping cart on the site I had no sales. (Now some of my larger pieces are selling too).
In todays economy & the penchant for ever cheaper imports you have to find a niche you like & crank out the pieces fast enough to actually make a profit.
You do not have to sell yourself out to make $’s. Build what you like, put as much quality as you are capable of into it & work hard to make your goods without spending too many hours doing it.
But FIRST figure out how you are going to sell your items. Furniture is never going to sell online unless you have a well established name, then only maybe.
Galleries are OK, but you will only see 50-60% of list IF they sell your piece.
A top show can cost $2000-$4000 by the time your all done.
Small gift shops can & will sell your smaller pieces ( jewlery boxes ) Go find some NOW. Take you first few pieces to them & see if they think they can sell them at ??$. Figure you will see 50% of list if they will purchase from you outright, 60% if they take them on consignment.
Etsy is okay——but it’s so huge that I don’t see a whole lot of traffic coming to my pages, 2 sales in the last month. At least it’s cheaper than Ebay.
Word of mouth is the cheapest & the best, but the hardest to achieve.
Try all of it, a little here, a little there, and you’ll find you spot if you work at it & are LUCKY
Bottom line—- Go For It.
GOOD LUCK

-- http://www.grandprairiewoodworks.com http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6453794

Pay for a few hours of a local business attorney and CPA’s time. Ask local successful business owners for names. One will make sure you’ve covered the bases with any possible registrations, licenses, etc… The other will tell you what records to keep, sales tax collection, and probably set you up with an accounting system to make income taxes easy.

Your statement about the LLC says you will get great value from the time spent. An LLC has nothing to do with taxes (income or sales / use) or making money, and has little value if you’re making all the stuff and doing all the installation work.

-- - Please help keep Lumberjocks an enjoyable escape by refusing to participate in political discussions. Simply spit out the bait and ignore the thread...

Ok Tommy I cant help with the mortise and tenons of wether or not your business idea is sound, but what I can offer is some advise on your website and some advertising. You have a nice website, but not a sellers website. If your going to sell something, in your case jewely boxes, that needs to be the first thing people see when they come to your site. (www.jewelryboxes.com as an example)They dont want and shouldnt have to search around for what you are selling. Put a few boxes on the home page with prices on them. These items should be easy and quick for you to make so if you do get orders for them you can get them out the door. Another page can contain some custom box designs people can special order. These should also have a price by them as well as the amount of time it will take you to get them done. Remove everything from the site that is not related to selling your product. Yes you are redoing your basement, your wife had surgery(hope she is getting better) and your dog passed away(I have had two dogs pass away myself I feel your pain)But guess what? The buyer has no interest in these things. They will either want to buy your product or not. You can and should maintain a blog on your site to keep people(customers) up to date on things like your wife, your cat, shop improvements, etc. but these should only be linked to at the side or bottom of the screen. The blog as well as emails will keep the customer up to date on when projects are finished and shipped. Remove the words “hobby” and “part time” anywhere you see them especially from the home page. As far as the buying public is concerned you do this for a living and are quite possibly the best in the world at it. If they are interested in how you started they can go read the blog, otherwise you are there to sell and they are there to buy. Come up with a tag line for the business “Rhodes Ave. Woodsmith: Heirlooms for You and Forever” or something like this. The pictures or your products will be of the utmost importance. If they dont look good, they wont sell. Buy a light tent from ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-PLATINUM-PHOTO-STUDIO-TENT-CUBE-IN-A-LIGHT-BOX_W0QQitemZ290282665048QQcmdZViewItemQQptZContinuous_Lighting?hash=item290282665048&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1234%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50 This will make you pictures look a lot better. At the very least have a neutural background without any clutter when you take the picture. Multiple shots of each box are best, open, closed, front, back.

Ok all of that was the easy part and guess what most of it will help your site look better, but how to get people to see your site? Well thats the big hard question and the one that will cost the most money. Flyers, shows, newspaper ads, buy an ad in the church bulletin if they have one, have lots of business cards printed up and see if they can be left anywhere it looks like they might be picked up. Vista print has lots of ideas you can put a logo on and they are pretty cheap as well. Finally you can make yourself a small 30 second or 1 minute video and put it up on youtube and other popular viral video sites. Will it drive a ton of traffic to your site? Probably not but it will increase your hits in search engines the more time your sites name comes up the better.

You can see it doesnt need to be anything fancy. Just some music some pictures and your website on it. I did that one for one of the Lumberjocks here. Thats my real job, woodworking is just a hobby.

I hope some of this information helps and you dont feel that it is criticizing your current site. Its a nice site but as I said at the top not a sellers site. Please feel free to ask me any further questions you may have. Thanks for looking through this rather long winded post.

-- Say what you mean and mean what you say.

I looked at your website also Tommy, and see your working out of your garage like I am. After many years of working out in a garage, I’ll say it works for a hobbyist, but it’s pretty tough to make a buck when your constantly seting up and tearing down.

My website will get overhauled. It was generally designed to “show off”, but now with changes going on with what I want to do and somewhat need to do, it will be overhauled. Also I’ll be moving it to a hosting site and off the server of my day job server.

I know setup and teardown of the garage shop is a bit of a pain, but being in the city with street parking only there’s not too many options other than get proficient at setup and teardown.

Thanks for your inputs folks. It’s greatly appreciated.

-- Tom, St. Louis, www.RhodesWoodsmith.com

Great luck to you! Ebay is tough. I have sold a thousand Wood fishing Plugs on Ebay over the past 5 years. I took a loss on many sales but made up for it on others. If you do ebay would open an ebay store $15/month with listed items and put a few items on auction to draw them in to your store. You are selling somthing i dont know much about (profit margins ect…) but I do sincerely want to wish you luck and am sure you will do well.

-- Eric J. Walsh www.walshlures.com

I read this thread with great interest. Especially the great advice about a website. I would like to start a part time business. Firefighting is my primary job. I want to make enough to feed my habit of buying tools and still have time to fish for trout and smallmouth while sitting in a canoe.

-- Father of two sons. Both Eagle Scouts.

This is a great thread. Im just getting back into woodworking. I started with a coffee table and a couple of end tables for my girlfriend and before I got them done I already had orders for 2 or 3 more. That got me to toying with the idea of part-time business just to pay for some of the shop toys I still want to get.

It’s my opinion that it would be hard (at least for me ) to make products and sell them and get what there worth.
I can charge a lot more for an item that someone contracts me to build, plus when your done the item is sold. You don’t have to wait for someone to buy it.
My advise would be to sell jobs and then build them instead of making things and trying to sell them. But many people have done well by coming up with a product / product line of things to sell, It’s just nothing I have tried.
I also notice this thread is a month old, so how or what are you doing so far?

There’s a guy on ETSY.com that does that. I’m toying with it, but I need to figure out how to manage that part time without it managing me.

I have gotten (and have currently) small restoraion projects for the old houses in my area. Windows, cabinet doors and kitchen drawers where I’ ve repaired, replaced, or created a new one to replace the one missing. Two weeks ago, I was contacted by a designer for a custom cabinet. Hoping that will turn into something positive.

The plan now is to build 2 or 3 jewlery boxes to sell on ETSY or EBay. I may also list one or two of my large items and post my payment plans for down payment and final payment. Right now the priority is the restoration project I have and then the designer. I’ll keep you posted.

Tom

-- Tom, St. Louis, www.RhodesWoodsmith.com

From years of doing it professionally on an off I can advise you
to specialize. The only solid money is in house upgrades like
cabinetry and maybe stairs and things.

If you want to do the art side of it, making stuff that is labor
intensive and charging fairly for it – court the ladies – they make
the decisions.

Big stuff is a pain to store and it gets damaged.

1. boxes are good.
2. Ebay is not a good place to sell nice work.
3. furnerary boxes and urns can be a good thing to look at.
4. there is money in building coffins.
5. collectible clocks can be a good thing too.

You build small stuff and people don’t have to hem and haw
about where to put it. You build large stuff and you force
them to hesitate.

Sell to the affluent only. They are a growing population and
if you learn to market to them in such a way that you are
a go-to guy for gifts you can do well.

Specilize for your own good and also so your clients can pigeonhole
you – they like to do that. Affluent people especially have
a bitof a hard time believing you could be equally good
at many specialty areas of woodworking. Since they prefer
to own “the best” for vanity reasons you should consider
positioning yourself as “the best jewelry box maker” – not
a guy who does a mish-mash of work.

You can do different work for different market – ie. jewelry
boxes for the rich ladies and cabinets for the contractors -
but try to not let the jewelry box buyers know your bread-and
-butter is the cabinetry – it dispells the illusion of your
pre-eminence as a box artisan – the illusion that
will justify a fair-to-high price for your work.

-- Would you like to recession-proof your present business using the internet? - my revealing 9-page free report gives you the straight facts: http://copymatch.com/rec/cap.html

I wish you luck in pursuing the dream! glad to see another LJ in st. louis!

Great idea
I think you will do well, treat it as the adventure it is, have fun, try new techniques, learn and practice your fundamentals, hone your skills. Anything worth doing is going to take some effort and sweat after all if this were easy everyone would be doing it. Set the standard of your craft high never settle for OK or good enough. Never look back at what you have done because your best work hasn’t been done yet.

-- magmano7

Thank you MagMano7! I’ll take that to heart.

-- Tom, St. Louis, www.RhodesWoodsmith.com

I’ll tell you that the old house market is one to work. I am not working it yet but am working on working it my parents bought one to retire. and I have gone done to help them fix this and that. I got a price on some spindles a very fair price but for the money I could buy a lathe, chisels, a duplicator, a set of calipers, the lumber, sand paper, a stand, many lunchs, and some Cd’s to listen to while I mindlessly drone out those spindles and still pay half

Rough lumber find a small saw mill old houses need odd sized lumber. I needed 4.5” x 4.5” x 10’ post comercial i have to buy 6×6 $60 and cut u’m down or 4(3 5/8)x4(3 5/8) and ad 3/4” to em which usually ends up bad. I bought 11 of them cut to speck for $60. If you live in TN Cooks I’ll give you the number Tell em I sent you maybe I can get a better price. So I could of made all my profit on material before the labor.

on the same project I had to have 4×3 7”x’4.5”x 8’ beams go ahead and get those prices I payed $45

-- jay Rambling on and on again

I will agree that word of mouth has brought me prospects and work. I took a little wooden key box with a raised panel door to a comission shop and from there I have gotten more work with modifications. “Can you make the box this big or out of this material?” Which leds me to another aspect, if you don’t want the work say it will cost more to change the set up or no that is the way it comes. you will get OK’s and no sale at all.

I have gotten carpentry work, cabinets, and restoration work. I have looked at several antiques that need work and even some plumbing has come my way. I was laid off several months ago and it makes ends meet but does not help with savings. I need to look into a tax ID myself. Thanks and this site has kept me at the PC more than usual. GOOD LUCK

-- Humble Wood Servant

I would definitely read through the blog from closet guy there are about 5 posts with comments regarding pricing, setting up to do craft shows and finding/keeping customers which I really found great.

http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/closetguy/blog/7074
Go for it – it is part time …DO NOT QUIT YOUR DAY JOB peoples disposable income is lower – so your jewelry box idea is good, furniture will be slow for the year – but you get your name out there, and have some pieces going, even if it is for yourself and get people to pick up their boxes from you at your shop so that they can see “what else” you can do for either them or people they know!
You love woodworking anyway and already have the tools so what is there to lose?

Dave

-- Its never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.