Joan’s Boomer Blog

If you need retirement income, or perhaps a productive way to spend your time in retirement, you might consider selling ebooks you’ve written yourself. There is a lot of time invested upfront, but once you have your ebook completed and a marketing system in place, you have a great profit margin.

Read about Dan Kennedy's information marketing system

Some websites I’ve looked at say you have 100% profit from selling ebooks but if you’re using a marketing plan, which will help you sell more products, then you will have a few upfront expenses, such as investing in a good auto responder system.

I’ve been reading Dan Kennedy’s ebook The Official Get Rich Guide to Information Marketing, which gives a complete road map to not only creating an ebook to sell, but how to market it too.

The first step to selling ebooks, is, of course, to come up with a topic. If you already have a blog or website, then it would probably be something connected with the topic you’re already writing about. If you don’t have a blog, then the topic could be something related to your work experience or a hobby. Remember the first rule of marketing - your product needs to solve a problem for readers and the more specifically you target your audience, the better.

How-to books are very popular and if you have expertise in any area, you could write a how-to ebook. Once you know what your general topic would be, do a lot of research to see what else is available. You don’t want to spend time writing an ebook on How to Invest in the Stock Market only to find thousands of other books and ebooks already available on the subject.

Take knitting for instance. A general ebook on knitting wouldn’t really hit a target audience. However, 101 Knitting Patterns for Baby Hats or 101 Knitting Patterns for Dog Collars would be much more specific. You can take any interest or hobby and break it down to a target audience.

Even before you actually write the ebook, you need to consider your marketing strategy. Here are some ways you can begin:

Start a Blog or Website to Sell your ebook.

Remember that to sell a large number of ebooks, you need traffic to your site, which doesn’t happen overnight. If you are going to sell your ebook somewhere else, your blog or website might just provide general info about your and your product.

Use Sites like Amazon or Clickbank to Sell Your Ebook

Amazon.com is a great resource for selling ebooks. Formatting Your Ebook for Kindle in One Hour is available on Amazon for just $2.99 or for free if you’re a Prime member.

Clickbank is a site you can use to promote your work too. People sign up with Clickbank and choose products such as ebooks to promote on their own sites, then you split the profits with them. Keep in mind that Clickbank earnings are usually about 50% for affiliates so if you sell your ebook for $29.95, you are only going to make half that amount. The upside though is that other people are out there selling for you.

I know about Clickbank from selling other people’s ebooks and programs which I found there and I can recommend it as a good way to go if you don’t mind splitting profits.

You don’t have to use Clickbank or Amazon exclusively either. They could be just one part of your marketing strategy.

Beyond Just Selling the Ebook - More Marketing

As part of your marketing plan, consider free information you can give away so you can set up a relationship with your potential customers. Part of this is called “lead capture.” In return for a free report or newsletter, readers give you their email address to add to your database. This is where some expense will come in because an auto-responder will make your life much easier.

At one time I was doing a health newsletter and sending it out monthly by hand. Once the number of subscribers reached 100, I decided I needed an auto-responder. This was a wonderful tool. People opted in to my site and an automatic response was sent to them. Then newsletters were automatically sent to them once a month. You can use this to send out special emails too, perhaps promoting your newest product or ebook.

I once did some freelance writing for a marketing genius - he really was! This man could take any topic, the one I worked on was cake and cookie decorating, and sell it. He first created a website with a forum and free stuff, then he began promoting his upcoming cake and cookie decorating video ebook. He had about 300,000 subscribers when ebook came out. A ready made audience was just waiting for his ebook.

He didn’t care that much about cake and cookie decorating actually. He did the same process with Barbecue tips and ebook, and, I’m sure, other products. The idea was that he discovered a successful formula and applied it to various informational products.

Dan Kennedy’s ebook is a great resource for teaching you that formula if you want to create a big business selling ebooks and other informational products. His book covers all sorts of products besides ebooks, like creating coaching classes, complete with DVD’s, books and other resources.

Available for just $2.99 to your kindle

One good auto-responder resource is AWeber.com. I am not an affiliate of theirs and don’t have my newsletter anymore but they are the one I used a couple of years ago on recommendation from a friend.

If you’d like some inspiration and to see where selling ebooks can take you, visit Dan Kennedy’s information marketing website.

Take a look at all the information he offers, starting with free and building up to more expensive products.

Keep in mind that if you’re going to try selling your ebook, it isn’t a get rich quick scheme. You aren’t going to write an ebook and then sell a thousand copies without some hard work. I have a friend who wrote an ebook on budget travel to Hawaii. She does no newsletter or marketing because she’s moved on to other projects. Operating this way, she only sells one or two ebooks a month. Granted it’s all profit, but she can’t support herself with the proceeds.

Your profits from selling ebooks totally depends on how much time and effort you put into creating a good product and then marketing it but it can be a creative and lucrative project if you’re willing to put in the time it takes.

Would you like to have your own home business as a coach, helping others reach their own health or fitness goals? Many people want to be healthier but need a mentor. There are programs out there to help you set up your business.

My friend Tom Grimes is a Certified Health Coach with Take Shape for Life. Here is what he had to say about his health coaching business:

Take Shape For Life is a long-term plan for healthier living that starts with healthy weight loss using the Medifast 5 & 1 Plan and the support of a Health Coach. Your Health Coach will work with you one-on-one along your journey to Optimal Health and provide support every step of the way as you learn The Habits of Health and apply them into your daily lifestyle. With the help of my Health Coach I lost 80 pounds in 23 weeks.

During this period I also became a health coach and have worked with men and women who also want to achieve Optimal Health. When I started most of the health coaches had experienced success with the program. Now others are joining us as coaches.

The good news is that weight loss starts healing your body even before you’re ready for your “after” picture. A study at the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center in Houston shows that shedding even a modest amount of weight can improve your health. In the study, doctors focused on weight loss among patients with metabolic syndrome, a constellation of risk factors (excess abdominal fat, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and others) that lays a foundation for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

“Our study has shown that weight loss of as little as 6.5 percent … results in substantial reductions in blood pressure, glucose, triglycerides, and total cholesterol, all factors that lead to heart disease,” says Christie Ballantyne, M.D., one of the study’s researchers. “These impressive results occur early in the weight loss, well before individuals even begin to approach their ideal body weight.”

It has been very rewarding watching people regain their health and their lives.  Just watching them reduce clothing sizes is exciting.  I feel I’m helping get American Healthy one person and a time.

if you’d like to know more about Tom’s coaching business or if you need the services of a health coach yourself, check out his website.

Another coaching business I’ve become interested in recently because of my daughter is Beach Body Fitness Coaching. She joined this business as a fitness coach and originally I signed up too, just to help her out. However, as I found out more about Beach Body, I began to see how the concept of health and fitness coaching could help Baby Boomers.

Beach Body products include Shakeology, a nutritional shake with over 70 healthy whole food nutrients. This program comes with a cd workout program called Shakeology as well. Other Beach Body fitness products include Slim in 6, a 6 week fitness program which promises to help you reshape your body in 6 weeks and even a Yoga program. Club membership includes meal plans, recipes, a community for help and support, and of course, the help of your own fitness coach.

Club members get a 10% discount on products and coaches get a 25% discount on their own purchases.

One thing I liked about the Company is that the products, Shakeology and P90X are nationally advertised and the company is doing an advertising push to raise awareness of fitness and their products. It’s really gratifying to help people have their own “before” and “after” programs, losing weight and getting fit.

If you’d like more information about becoming a Beach Body fitness coach, check out this short informational video about fitness coaching.

If you have an interest in health and fitness, coaching could make a fulfilling part time or full time retirement business for you. You can work at home, make your own schedule and help others at the same time. As baby boomers age, more and more are becoming interested in healthy aging. Nothing is as motivating to your own healthy lifestyle than motivating others too!

Create Retirement Income with Affiliate Marketing

Have you ever thought about starting your own blog or website, dreaming of piles of cash you could earn?

The Super Affiliate Handbook

Perhaps you already have a blog and you’ve considered affiliate marketing as a way to bring in extra income. Rosalind Gardener’s ebook, The Super Affiliate Handbook, describes how she made nearly $500,000 a year with affiliate marketing. Will everyone have this type of success if they read her book? No, they won’t. But if you are new to affiliate marketing, this book can give you all the basics you need to send you on your way.

I bought this handbook because, although I’ve had my own blogs and websites for several years, and I do have affiliate products on them, I’m certainly not making $500,000 a year. I was hoping I could take my business to the next level with The Super Affiliate Handbook’s information.

So let me begin by saying, after I read the handbook, I asked for a refund (and got it promptly and pleasantly). I did decide, however, that I wanted to promote this book because I think if you are just starting out in affiliate marketing, or if you are considering it for extra income, or if you’re really struggling and wondering why you aren’t making more money as an affiliate, this book will save you time and frustration. It does contain valuable tips and I have to say, if I’d read it starting out, I would probably be much more successful now.

Rosalind’s clear, concise style is very easy to read and understand, even if you’re new to affiliate marketing and building an internet business. Her focus is on choosing affiliate programs carefully, building simple but professional sites, writing compelling text and building trust from your visitors. As an ebook, it is available for instant download too.

So what does the Super Affiliate Handbook cover?

• Overview of affiliate marketing and the many ways you can earn money with it
• How to set up your own website or blog - include everything from how to choose a domain name to how to install a Wordpress blog and design tips.
• Search engine optimization tips and how to add valuable content to your site.
• Then - detailed, step by step information about how to monetize your site. Where to find affiliate programs, how to choose the right ones for your site, how to set up accounts and install the ads on your site.
• Mistakes and how to avoid them-I have to admit I was doing some of these and promptly changed course!
• How to write reviews to sell products and other sales tools.
• 31 ways to promote your website - traffic equals sales and earnings.
• How to organize, manage and grow your business.

The Super Affiliate handbook makes it very clear that you have to get the details right first time, every time – which is how she’s generating over $1,000 a day in affiliate income.

This book isn’t about magic tricks or get rich quick schemes. What you will find is a detailed and precise process that has worked for the author, and it could make all the difference for you.

They used to say, everybody has at least one good book in them. Nowadays, that has probably been amended to “everybody has at least one good blog in them.” If you’d like to take a passion of yours and turn it into profits to fund your retirement, the the Super Affiliate Handbook is a great place to start.

Learn more about The Super Affiliate Handbook

Starting your own blog or website can be a great source of retirement income. Take a hobby or passion and turn it into a stream of income. This article, by my friend, Eunice Coughlin, explains more about how you can use small business web services to help.

Small business web services are desperately needed for business owners who want a website that will work for them.

Back in the day, when the internet first took hold of small business, it was believed that everyone needed a website. No one knew why, exactly, other than the fact that everyone was doing it. The prevailing wisdom was if you wanted your business to be relevant, you needed to have a web site because “that’s the future, dang it!”

Fast forward about 15 years later and people still believe in the necessity of having a small business web site but still not sure why, except that everyone’s doing it.

There are still some hold-outs, though, who refuse to give in and get one, either because they can’t afford the high prices web designers charge or they just don’t see a need for it.

There are a small number of small business owners who understand the value of a well-promoted web site and demand more than just design; they’re looking for small business web services.

Your business web site should be a major marketing tool for you that can bring a huge return on investment if you do it right. It should bring you sales leads that are ready to buy your product or service because you’ve pre-sold them through your website.

There are millions of websites in cyberspace competing for the attention of your customer. How do you get the kind of traffic to your web site that will result in a sale for you?

People are online looking for information about your product or service. You’ve got to develop an online promotional plan that will draw people to your site, provide the information they’re looking for and then develop a relationship with them so that they trust you and are ready to buy your product or service.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. It just takes time to do it. Social networking is a major part of web site promotion. Most business owners don’t have the time or knowledge to do it on their own but it is the wave of the future for small businesses who want to capture the business that’s available to them online.

The 2 main players in social networking are Facebook and Twitter. As a “bricks and mortar” type of small business where your product or service is limited by geography, use Facebook and Twitter to connect with prospects in your city or regional area.

For example, if you are a cake designer, you would want to follow people in the 20-something age group that might be considering marriage sometime in the future. Offer incentives in your “tweets” and status posts for people to like you or follow you. Every once in a while, post a link to your website or a specific page on your website that you’d like to promote.

As your posts appear on your followers walls and Twitter streams, people will begin to follow you and check out what you’re posting. It begins to have a “viral” effect and the next thing you know, you have a huge list of followers and a steady stream of visitors to your website. Google and the other search engines like Bing takes note of all this online activity that’s directing traffic to your website so that when someone searches for your business in your area or region, your website will pop up in the search engines first. The result is more customers and more sales for your small business.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/how-small-business-web-services-can-help-you-reach-customers-in-your-area-3986623.html

About the Author

Eunice Coughlin, Online Marketing Specialist, started Simple Internet Strategies in 2010 to help the small business owner attract more customers and make more money with their website. To see how she can help you, sign up for a free evaluation of your website here.

Who wouldn’t like a Four Hour Work Week? Make all your money in just 4 hours a week, then use the rest of

The 4 Hour Work Week

your time to do all the things you enjoy? If you’re a 20-something with your career ahead of you, or approaching retirement but still need or want to work part time, or perhaps you’ve lost your job in the recent economic downturn and fear you won’t find another, the book The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated could very possibly change your life.

In The 4 Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss puts forth the idea that there really is no “fulfilling” job. The best job, and the one we all really want, is the one which takes the least time and makes us the most money. Just imagine, if you someone offered you a job you could do anywhere in the world, paid you the amount of money you desired to support your lifestyle and took only 4 hours a week, wouldn’t you take it? The beauty behind Tim Ferriss’s book is that no one has to offer you this job, you create it yourself and he tells you how.

The first part of The 4 Hour Work Week pertains to employees who are currently working 80 hour weeks and want to escape the rat race. Tim tells you how to do that. The part of the book I was most interested in, though, was the part that told you how to build your own 4 hour work week business. Every single resource you could possibly need is there and the entire process is laid out for you with steps to follow. This is the part of the book you could use to finance a permanent retirement, working minimal hours but still having the income to enjoy life in any way you choose.

In Timothy Ferriss’s best life, he travels, living in different countries for months at a time, operating his business remotely using just 4 hours a week of his time. He even offers tips and guidelines for anyone who wants to do the same. Instead of working for years and then retiring, he says you should take “mini-retirements” all through your life.

While I would love to travel and spend maybe three weeks or a month in England or France, living abroad for months isn’t really on my list of things I want to do at this stage of my life. However, my husband and I do want to travel the US in our RV and it would be nice to have a income from something that only took 4 hours a week.

I got a Kindle 3G Wireless as an early Christmas present because I was going to spend nearly 3 weeks with my parents and my husband thought it would be great for the trip. I subscribed to the 14 day free subscriptions of USA Today and my hometown newspaper and bought a nice book of fiction to occupy me on the trip. While shopping the Kindle store, (from my Kindle!) I stumbled on The Four Hour Work Week. I thought, “This has to be too good to be true,” or some other type of come on.

I love reading reviews of books or other products before I buy and this book has an astounding 911 5 star reviews and 112 4 star reviews. Out of over 1,000 reviews, there were only 24 1 and 2 star reviews. I read all the negative reviews first and the only hesitation I had in buying the book was that it sounded too good to be true. However, I decided to go with the majority and buy the book. I am so glad I did!

You don’t have to be an exec working 80 hour weeks to build a 4 hour work week with this book. The process is simple really. You invent or find a product to sell, test it thoroughly and then market it and Tim explains how to do this. If you want to invent a product, you might think along the lines that I am and come up with an information product to sell - audios, a guide book and other materials. If you choose to find a product or build a store, Tim offers resources for that as well. They drop ship the product for you an the entire process is automated.

One thing I love about the Kindle is that you can highlight and bookmark different parts and then review them later. I have lots highlighted in this one.

I’ve seen that this remote business management work in my own business on a small scale. I have blogs and Amazon affiliates and earn money from Google Adsense. When I am home, I spend about 5 hours a day on various computer tasks, writing articles, promoting my blogs, etc. When I travel, I spend one hour, 5 days a week or less, and the money still comes in, without me doing a thing. I can put my business on remote control for 2-3 weeks without affecting anything.

If I can do this on a small scale, I can see how it would also work on a large scale and I am eager to try the steps laid out in The 4 Hour Work Week. I still have a week or so before I return home but the ideas are already working as to what I can do and how. I intent to follow Tim’s steps letter for letter and see how it turns out.

Even if I don’t become a citizen of the work and take tango lessons in Brazil like Tim Ferriss, I have some great ideas about how I would like to spend my time (The first step in the process is deciding how you’d like to spend all the free time you will have.)

I’ll keep you posted on how the process is going for me but in the meantime, get The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content for yourself, try the process and let me know what you think of it.

This book is going to be in my daughter’s Christmas stocking this year!

Lots of women have wanted to buy Avon or sell Avon at one time or another. My first experience with Avon was as a kid growing up in the 50’s and 60’s. My aunt could always be relied on to give me Avon jewelry or perfume for Christmas. Those fragrances, Imari, Sweet Honesty and Timeless are still around after all these years and they’ve been joined by dozens of new fragrances as well.

I’ve been an Avon Representative off and on three times over the past 20 years and usually only quit when we relocated. I always seem to gravitate back to Avon as a home based business. Nowadays, with Avon websites available, it’s possible to reach even more customers than it was back then.

In the current economy, everybody is looking for a good home based business to make some extra income and Avon offers the added bonus of having products you and your family can use too - products you can purchase at at great discount, depending on the size of your order.

These days, everybody can use more income and an Avon home-based business can provide full or part time income for retirees, working or stay at home moms, or just about anyone.

As a home based business idea, selling Avon has lots of advantages:

1.  Low sign up fee - It only costs $20 to become an Avon Representative, which includes your first 2 campaigns brochures.

2. Low Cost or Free Website - These days a home based business needs a website and Avon offers each representative a personalized website at very low cost - the website is even free if your customers place at least a $25 order through your site.

3.  Products have name recognition. Avon is known for its Skin So Soft line, quality make-up, jewelry, wellness products and more. Their Anew line of anti-aging products has expanded in recent years to provide a great selling opportunity for Representative.

4.  Avon brochures offer something for everyone. Some people like Anew products, some like Avon make up or Skin So Soft. Holidays are a great time to sell Avon. There are dozens of quality, budget conscious gift ideas for all those people on your list. Need little gifts for teachers, grandchildren or Great Aunt Sarah? Avon has it all.

5.  As a Representative, since you sell Avon, you can also buy Avon at great discount prices. The amount of your discount depends on the size of your order so even if you only sell enough to pay for your own purchases, you can save your family quite a bit of money by shopping Avon.

6.  Sales! Buy Avon by shopping the sales and save money. Every Avon brochure has great sales and you can usually get whatever you want at a discount on an already low price. You and your customers can order from the current brochure or the past one so you can compare prices too.

7.  For a Representative, Avon offers lots of local or online training and support.

8.  There is only a small minimum order required each 2 week cycle to stay qualified as an Avon Representative. Orders can be placed online to save time and effort too.

9. When you sell Avon, you have an enjoyable business. You get to know and like your customers and since Avon has a total money back guarantee, you can always keep your customers happy.

Click here to Buy or Sell Avon

As a retirement income, Avon is a natural because many retirees have grown up using or knowing about Avon products and they like them. Buy or sell Avon to make money and save money too!

If you love reading blogs, you may already have a blog of your own. If you don’t have a personal or business blog, but you’d like to, it’s easy to get started witht his simple guide “Create Your Own Blog.”

There are many, many books on blogging out there and I own many of them! When you’re starting out, it’s a good idea to have one or two blogging reference books to help you get through the initial process of setting up and publicizing your blog, helping you avoid beginner’s mistakes. A good book on the basics, like Create Your Own Blog, really simplifies the process for you and from then on, it’s simply a matter of creating useful content and doing some social marketing to reach a wider audience.

I’ve been reading many retirement blogs lately which are entertaining and give me lots to think about as far as retirement issues. Whatever your stage of life or whatever your interest, there is an opportunity to share what you know and what you think with a ready made audience.

Author Tris Hussy is a long-time professional blogger and gives many workshops and classes on blogging. His book guides you through every step, from getting started to building a worldwide audience. No matter what your purpose in blogging, whether you want a personal blog or a business blog, you want it to look professional and meet your goals. Hussy’s book got 39 four and five star reviews on Amazon, out of 44 total reviews.

Create Your Own Blog covers:

• How to find free or low cost blogging tools
• Portfolio blogs for artists and hobbiests
• Blogs for podcasting
• Video Blogs
• How to make money with your blog
• How to build an audience and publicize your blog
• Lots More!

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Blogging for Dummies is on the best-selling books on how to blog for money. The Internet in general and blogging in particular, is always changing and evolving. This updated version of Blogging for Dummies explains these latest tools and techniques.

There are many things to learn about blogging, from choosing a hosting service to how to monetize your blog and write engaging articles. All of the “for Dummies” books are informative and fun to read. I have them on several different topics, including knitting, building a home business, Real Estate Investment for Dummies and a few others, and always find them full of comprehensive, easy to understand information.

Blogging for Dummies covers:

• Choosing a topic and finding your niche
• Setting up your blog from A to Z
• Widgets, plug-ins and themes to customize your blog
• How to build a readership and connect with readers
• How to make money with your blog and track your success

One part of this book I got a lot out of was the section on using social marketing to promote your blog and how to do videos and podcasts, which I’m planning to delve into in the near future.

If you’ve always wanted to start a blog for profit or for fun, or if you already have a blog of your own and want to take it to the next level, Blogging for Dummies is a great addition to your home business library.

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Book Review Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a 6 Figure Income

Recently I saw this list of bloggers’ salaries which is topped by Markus Frind with over $3,600,000! Never heard of him? Markus Frind owns a free dating website called PlentyofFish.com. I think every blogger dreams of making a six figure salary, just like nearly every actor dreams of winning an Oscar - But how do you begin?

There are millions of bloggers out there today, writing away, wondering why the big bucks eluded them. What are they doing wrong and what could they do better?

What is your level of blogging expertise? Are you:

• blogging as a hobby and not making a dime
• Are you facing retirement and looking for supplemental income?
• Are you unemployed and really need to start generating income?
• Are you in a job you don’t care for and would like to start a blog as a part or full time venture?
• Do you already have a blog that generates income but you would like that blog to make more?

Wherever you are in your blogging career, ProBlogger can help guide you to a higher level.

Authors Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett cover:

• How to choose a (profitable) subject for your blog
• How to handle the technical parts of blogging
• Different ways to generate income with your blog
• How to evaluate your blog’s success
• How to keep your content fresh and interesting to readers
• How to use your blog to generate income indirectly

ProBlogger offers a complete how-to on blogging from from two top-performing bloggers. If you’re one of thousands of aspiring bloggers who launch new blogs every day hoping to boost their income or someone who already has a blog, you can benefit from ProBlogger’s advice. Without solid advice from experts, most will fail. This best-selling guide, (more…)

When you retire, you may need some extra retirement income and what better way to make it than doing

One of my most recent beaded creations.

what you love? Turning a hobby into retirement income may seem like a good way to go and there are many ways you can go about it.

Retirement gives us lots of time, hopefully, to pursue those hobbies we’ve picked up over the years. But after you’ve knitted a dozen scarves, made a bunch of woodworking do-dads or turned your beautiful photos into posters, what do you do with all of them? Everybody in my family now has a knitted scarf and hat so turning my passion for knitting into profit might be the next step.

Keep in Mind:

1.  If you want to turn a hobby into a business, once your hobby becomes “work” it may not seem like as much fun.

I used to have a passion for bead work and created some beautiful (if I do say so) pieces. I worked in a bead store and taught classes and soon I was sitting at a booth at a craft fair selling my wares. Production work isn’t like beadiing, or doing any craft, for fun. If you’re going to do a craft fair, for instance, you need a certain amount of stock. Your wrists and hands begin to hurt, your shoulders have knots in them and your eyes are burning. Not so much fun.

2.  If you are going to rely in any way on the money you make from your hobby, realize that you still have to spend money for supplies, entries into craft fairs, etc, so your profit margin may not be that big.

I spent more than I ever made, I think, on beads, yarn, etc, for any hobby I tried to turn into a business. If you have a real passion for your hobby, you’re likely to spend more. The flip side of this, of course, is that if you want a real business and you make some money, you can deduct many of your supplies on your taxes.

If you’re still sure you want to turn your hobby into an income producing business. Here are some steps to take.

Start by Assessing:

1. What is your skill level? – Whatever your hobby, can you make them quickly, in quantities and make your product look professional?

2. How much time do you want to devote? Making enough items for a craft fair, for instance, is very time-consuming. If you decide to create a website or online store, you also have to devote time to that as well.

Next:

1. Find a Niche market – Rather than trying to be all things to all people, it’s easier to make a profit if you cater to one niche, or group of people, and be specific. Take knitting, for instance. You could make your pieces from organic yarn. You could stick to baby clothes or blankets. You could specialize in prayer shawls or knit only with hand painted, hand dyed yarns.

Specialize in knitted baby hats

Knitting examples are easy for me because that’s what I love doing but if you are a photographer you could specialize in nature photography, scenery, animals, cute puppies, whatever. If you do woodworking, you could specialize in wooden toys, fancy shelves or cradles.If you make candles, you could make only soy or natural fragrances.

4. Research your market – Who is your competition and how do they manage their businesses? Visit some craft fairs and see if you can spot a niche that needs to be filled and talk to others who are doing what you want to do. Crafters are generally very helpful and nice people. Try to find a  niche that is popular but where the competition is less.

5.  Decide HOW you will sell your product. Are you willing and able to spend your weekends holding down the fort at your craft fair table? Are you willing to travel to get to craft fairs? You can also sell with a website such as Etsy.com or Artfire.com. Setting up an online store is free on these sites which feature only handcrafted items. They just take a small percentage on what you sell. Keep in mind too that people are paying through pay pal usually and pay pal also takes a percentage of your profits so price accordingly.

6. Once you decide on just what you will make, set up a plan and choose some goals - How much money would you like to make? Just enough to pay for your own materials? Enough to pay for one of the household bills or give you some money for that extra trip? It’s important to know the purpose for your hobby business.

Other Ways to Profit from Your Hobby

Write about Your Hobby

Even if you don’t get into production, you can still profit from your hobby. One way is to create a blog or website and put some affiliate ads on it. You can talk about books or products you like or don’t like and if giving a good recommendation, sell it via the Amazon.com affiliate program or a google adsense account, or find your own companies to represent.

If you would like to create a for profit blog, I can highly recommend the program The Niche Blogger. The Niche Blogger is a subscription site so you can set up your blog, or blogs, and then cancel anytime. The Niche Blogger takes you from step one, day one, through the entire process of creating a self-hosted wordpress blog. A blog like this will only cost you about $10 a year to keep online.

The Niche Blogger can help you choose a niche topic for your hobby as well so it is most likely to be profitable.

Write an ebook About Your Hobby

If you’ve been doing your hobby for a while, or you’ve gotten into a good niche, you probably have a lot of expertise in that area. Consider writing an ebook that will help others enjoy the same passion for the hobby that you do. The Niche Blogger program does into exactly how to create an ebook and market it, I think around month 4-5 of the program.

Teach Classes

If you’d like interacting with others and sharing your hobby, contact your local craft store, like Michaels or Joanns, or your local hobby store. Find out if they have a need for a teacher or there is a special technique that they don’t currently offer, that you could teach.

You can also create podcasts and teach online (again, this is covered in The Niche Blogger Program)

Other Resources for Starting a Craft Business

How to Create an Etsy Store to sell your knitting online

How to Create An Artfire Store to make money knitting.

If you’re interested in knitting for profit, Liz Raad has written a terrific ebook on Knitting for Profit. Liz also has a helpful newsletter for those wanting to learn how to make a living from knitting and sign up is free.

The Savvy Crafters Guide To Success: Turn Your Crafts Into A Career

Another good resource for turning any type of hobby into income is Complete Idiot’s Guide to Making Money with Your Hobby which takes you from A to Z.

If you want to turn your hobby into retirement income, realize that there will be work involved in making it successful. However, the fact that you are able to spend your days focusing on your passion, makes it different than any other “job.” You’ll have fun and probably make a lot of new friends along the way.