Making Money out of your Hobby

Visit any country town in Australia and somewhere you'll find a few items from the local woodturner for sale - usually priced under $20 and gathering dust. As often as not, the craftmanship is excellent and the finish is flawless. Yet these items seem to sell like used VHS tapes - that is, not well.

Knitted tea cosies and baby booties always seem to find their market, but for sake of argument lets assume you don't plan to trade your lathe or table saw for knitting needles just yet. A few ideas some of my associates have kicked around recently:

1. Make BIG things
One correspondent reports his breakthrough came when he started making large items which psychologically people thought must cost more. They were happy to pay hundreds of dollars for a big item of common furniture. In contrast, would the average customer in a gift store have any idea about the number of hours you have invested in an intricate item.

2. Do custom jobs
If your work is of a high standard, most people wouldn't know if it was mass produced or not. On the other hand, if they are involved in the design process, and the finished item is customised to their exact requirements (including things like engraving a name on a gift item) they will naturally expect to pay a lot more.

3. Tell your story
Even if its not a custom job, you can distance yourself from cheap imports by telling your story. By providing some information about the item, who made it, materials used etc, you make the item more interesting and you increase the likelihood of connecting with the shopper. Unless you tell your story, your produce will be just one of many similar items.

4. Put your prices up
One of the anomalies of economics, some things sell more when prices rise because people assume they must be worth it. This also leaves room for a smart shopkeeper to do some negotiation and have the buyer thinking they are getting the bargain of the century.

5. Keep Experimenting
Whatever your market is, you will eventually find it if you keep adapting your offering. If nobody wants to buy turned wooden pens, its a compelling reason to stop making them and try something else.

One of the benefits of not trying to make money out of your hobby is that you can make whatever you like and not care a damn about what the market is willing to pay for. If you do decide to use your hobby to raise a bit of cash, suddenly you are in the business of making other people happy and you inherit everything that comes with that.