Turn an Everyday Hobby into a Successful Business
When I became pregnant I started to knit. It was a way of saving money and creating outfits and my midwife recommended I take up the hobby after I was told to rest up due to some complications. I like to keep busy so I found ‘taking it easy’ very hard. Anyway as I began to master knitting I would receive loads of compliments from my friends and visitors, and soon I started having people request some items for their own children. I obliged happily and thought the interest would die down, but to my surprise I had more and more requests from my friend’s family and their friends.
I was Being Offered Money for My Knitted Creations
People were only too happy to pay for the cost of materials and soon they started demanding that I was paid for my time too. My husband suggested I make a few items to sell on eBay and see how they sold. I began to get private messages asking about different colours or if I had a shop people could visit to see more stock. I was truly astonished by the amount of interest. It wasn’t too long before I decided to come up with a website and see if I could sell a few bits online through my own site, and so I could take on commissioned work.
This is where I faced my first problem as I had absolutely no knowledge of how to make a website. I found lots of free blogging sites but none of them seemed to have what I was looking for, or if they did I didn’t know what I was looking at. It needed to be a site where I would be able to sell directly to the public so a basic blogging site wasn’t enough. I decided to contact someone to help me with the website after I spent one very long day getting nowhere trying to make my own. I ended up in tears and rather stressed out which wasn’t good news for me or my unborn child.
Investing in a Decent Website
The money I had received from friends and family for my knitted garments went into setting up the site. I thought it would cost a lot of money but I found someone who was able to design my site for a reasonable amount. I was provided with a lot of information about what I could achieve and told I needed an ecommerce site. The designer also informed me about ‘SEO’ which was something I had never even heard of. They gave me lots of advice about how to help search engines discover and rate my site which has proven to be very useful.
One of the suggestions I was given was to include a blog on my ecommerce site. That’s been a lot of fun for me and I am confident in adding and editing content on their now. I use the blog as a behind the scenes diary and I also provide tips and advice to anyone who comes along looking for help with knitting. I have found this to be one of my favourite parts of running a website and I have gained many followers. I show off my latest creations on their and often have my baby modelling a new cardigan or holding a gorgeous new toy I’ve made.
My Hobby is Making Me Money
Since investing in the site I have slowly managed to secure good rankings in the search engines (which is a good thing I have been told) and I’m making money. It’s wonderful to have a career that I am able to work round my duties as a mum. If you have a hobby you’re good at, and there’s a demand out there why not have a shot at making a living out of it.
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