I’m so happy! My sister has decided to join in the Craft Business fun and open up her own etsy shop. Just before Christmas my sister finally treated herself to a proper badge making machine. She’s a busy full-time teacher who isn’t always that great at treating herself. So I nagged and nagged her to go get the machine and indulge her creative streak. She finally did and this Christmas she came to visit me and she brought her new shiny new machine along. Before long she had a stack of badges to sell. Then Wendy asked me ‘OK what next? What do I need to start selling?’  So that got me thinking back to when I first set up my web shop and all of the preparations that I made in order to be able to make my first sales. I thought it might be a handy checklist for some of you folks too

1. Get yourself a separate bank account - it doesn’t have to be a business account, it should just be separate account (with cheque book and debit card) that you use for depositing money from your sales and where you draw money from for your craft business. If you keep this account separate from your personal bank accounts you will be able to clearly keep a track of what you are earning from your business, and it will make doing the accounts sooooooooooooo much easier.
2. Look into what status you will be as a self employed person for accounts and tax purposes - it may not matter so much at the early stages or even if you plan to just run a low-key craft business, but if things are beginning to take off or you are looking for this to be your sole source of income than you need to look into things like tax on earnings etc. Various tax laws obviously differ from country to country. Make yourself aware of what expected of you by asking at your local Inland Revenue, IRS or whatever group of folks deal with that sort of thing. It’s best to do it now rather than get yourself into trouble later down the line! Of course if you’re a bit of an ostrich (like me) you can ask your accountant or accountant friend to sort this out for you.
3. Identify who will do your accounts - and start doing them from the beginning. For my business I have enlisted the services of a friendly accountant because I’m a mathematics MORON.
4. Keep every single one of your receipts for everything that you spend on your craft business - even if that receipt is just for a £0.50 D ring. It all adds up and it all counts because it will save you money in the long run. Keep your receipts in a box or file for your accounts.
5. Packaging & stationary - spend a little time in thinking about how you are going package and present your craft products. Do you want to add in little treats like pins or sweets etc. Are you going to use coloured tissue paper, ribbon, bubble wrap, padded envelopes, what size boxes might you need, what size envelope or boxes might you need for larger or small orders? You’ll also need stationary like packing tape, envelopes, stamps, paper etc.
6. What are you going to call your company? - When you have settled upon a name you might want to consider seeing if the internet domain names are available to purchase (indeed your choice of company name may well be determined by this). Domain names are so much cheaper if they haven’t yet been bought by someone else. If you want to buy a domain name that already exists the owner has be willing to sell that name to you and sometimes they charge crazy amounts of money for the name! If you purchase the domain name now you then have the freedom to set up your own website at a later stage. For my business I knew from the beginning that I was going to trade from my own website so my choice of business name was greatly influenced by what domain names were available. As soon as I came up with the U-Handbag name I purchased both .com and .co.uk domains.
7. Get yourself a digital camera to take shots of your products - you may also want photo editing software (like photoshop) to enhance your shots as well, but if you take clear, well lit shots with your camera I wouldn’t worry too much about photo editing at the very beginning of your business.
8. Branding - are you going to have business cards, labels, headed paper, compliments slips?
9. Separate email - consider getting yourself a separate email address for everything concerned with your craft business - it’s easy enough to get yourself a free email account and having a separate email account will make life easier.
10. Regular access to a computer and printer - I know this may sound really obvious, but last year my printer died and that really messed things up for me because I couldn’t print my order sheets and address labels so I had to hand write everything which was such a pain in the bum (I now have a back-up printer just in case). Also in the past I have had a rubbish internet connection and that gave me sleepness nights, going to an internet cafe to run my business was a nightmare, I have since changed providers.

This is about as good as my math gets.

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