If you are the crafty type of person like my buddy Marc Hagins who likes to make his own furniture, why not turn your gift for design into a money spinner! There are many ways in which you can sell your hand-made furniture in order to make a profit and today we are going to take a look at just a few ways in which you can sell your goods and earn some money from your hobby.
Etsy
Etsy is a website which specializes in people who make things with their hands and it gives you an opportunity to set up your own store through the website and connect with people who are looking to buy hand-made pieces. Make sure that you spend some time on the website first so that you have an understanding of what your competition is and what people are most likely to buy. Once you have done this research you can make tweaks to your products in order to make them more appealing.
Local Market
Selling your furniture the old-fashioned way is still a good way of earning some money from your designs, providing of course that they are desirable. A market is a better place to start than renting your own shop as you will not have to pay for very many overheads. When selecting a market you need to make sure that you can find a place which has heavy footfall and is in an area where people would actually want to pay money for hand-made goods. You may need to be prepared to wait on a list until a pitch is available and then once it is, you will need to work hard on your salesmanship so that you can shift as many pieces as possible.
Online Store
Aside from a website like Etsy you can use the internet to sell your goods through your very own online store. Regardless of your technical knowledge when it comes to computers, you can set up a website for low cost and low effort if you make the time to do some basic research. The most costly part of the website design will most likely be the addition of an e-commerce section which is how you can allow people to actually pay for your goods online. Once you have your website set up, make sure that you are pushing hard on social media so that you can drive more people to your site and in turn make more sales. Word-of-mouth is vitally important when it comes to online shopping so you need to ensure that not only are your products great, but so too is your service and speed of delivery.
These are just some of the many ways in which you can turn your love for furniture making into a viable way of making money but there are many more, you just need the desire and the creativity to go out and sell.