At our orthodontist's office, one of the staff has a home schooling sister who has made a decent living off of making home made (and the most amazing) toffee ever.
This stuff melts in the mouth, crisp, buttery, with loads of chocolate and nuts and its so -- soo --soooooo--- oh heck now I"m drooling....
Anyway, their toffee business has boomed! It was featured on the Food network and they get orders from everywhere. Her husband quit his job to become a full time toffee salesman! He goes to trade shows and business shows - he's found many different markets for their family toffee.
Find a niche, make the best of whatever it is - and then find creative ways to market yourself. Microsoft has free business websites for small businesses (and free downloading accounting program - not the greatest but better than nothing!) and they do a good job of helping small businesses. I'll give you more about that below.
I also make custom designed Rosary (Catholic prayer) bracelets and while I'll never get rich making them, I do get pretty good sales through the Microsoft website, through friends and happy customers handing out my home made cards to friends and Catholic gift stores. I also have a friend in England who found several pilgrimage sites with gifts shops that wanted good quality bracelets not manufactured in China, to sell to pilgrims to help support the upkeep of the shrines. Have friends give you a hand expanding your sales and your market. Nothing sells your items like a very happy customer or very devoted friends and family!
I also sell them at a local university gift shop (It's Catholic, and they liked the fact that I'm local, home schooling the kids, one daughter is a student there, and that I will make & supply whatever they need quickly. Knowing your market is half the sale!) I also offer to trade in any items that don't sell within that calendar year - if black beads aren't selling that year, I will trade them in for another color or style. That's a service that suppliers of larger companies often won't do, but little ones like me can.
Microsoft business
http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/ The website is free, but there is a fee if you want to open a webstore. I custom design and my business is mostly seasonal (Christmas to June with only sporradic sales the rest of the year) so I don't need a webstore, but I do use the offered slideshows and photo features to show different kinds of beads and bracelets. I also have a few sterling silver items for gifts, but don't have the paypal stuff set up on the site to make it a 'store'.
Microsoft small business accepts loads of pictures, and you get a lot of pages to use. I only use a fraction of the pages alloted to me. The site is easy to use, there are a lot of colors and design features and they do get back to you quickly if you need help with your site. I've been very happy with them. If you want to see my website shoot me an email - I'm new to this forum and don't know the rules about posting business websites on the forum. I can send you the information for the toffee business if you like, too.
If you have any friends who run blogs or websites that might run advertisements for you, ask! I have two friends that have pretty well read blogs, and both run occasional ads for me for free in an effort to get more people to run paid ads on their site. When they give me free weeks, they see many more paid advertisements come to them. In turn, I keep a log for them of how many new visitors I got with each run, and they can use that information to entice more people running paid ads who might ask for that information while considering the cost of the ads vs the number of potential buyers. (Microsoft business will give you that information in their record keeping and it is great to know where your business comes from!)
Once you have a website, you can also use the url in postings on blogs and as a tag in your emails. When you post things, that information appears with your name and you will often get people coming in to see what your website is all about. About a quarter of my customers come to my website through my signiture in various blogs around the internet. You can also put your information into Google and Yahoo so your business site comes up during internet searches, and that is also about a quarter of my new sales. Nothing, though, beats friends, family and happy customers for new sales, especially when your business is new!
I hope this information helps!
If when you get one I would suggest a machine with at least 6 needles. Having said that, I started with just a one needle machine. It depends what you want to do.
