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| Here's a twist on the old "sell your crafts" theme.
How about creating and marketing a craft kit for your craft? Instead of selling a
completed project, you sell a materials-included, ready-to-do craft project. It doesn't
necessarily HAVE to be geared toward kids, but those seem to sell well.
For example, since our Cub Scout Den recently built some birdhouses from kits, let's
say you like to build birdhouses. |
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To build one, let's say you need to cut some 1/4" wood into a
variety of shapes, glue some pieces together, and nail some others together.
You would cut the wood into the all of necessary shapes and sand them. Your kit would
consist of the pre-cut wood, all the nails (plus extras), and instructions. All of this
could go into a Zip-Loc baggie and be sold for a few dollars.
Just about any small and relatively easy craft can be sold as a kit "baggie".
Crafts using wooden thread spools seem to be popular lately -- those would be perfect
candidates for kits.
Remember that the more difficult or involved the craft, the better you will have to write
the assembly instructions.
PRICING
Set your price at about four times the cost of materials. However, if you are going to
sell crafts for kids, try to keep the price below $10.
For kids crafts, create "bundle packs" of 6-8 of the same project at a little
bit of a discount. This will make it very attractive to Scout leaders and parents shopping
for birthday party activities.
MARKETING
Write a press release -- or have one written, if you don't know how -- and make sure the
local newspapers (free and paid) and radio stations (especially AM stations) get it. This
is the kind of story they love, and a feature story will get you a lot of exposure.
Create flyers for your local community bulletin boards.
Call you local Scouting (Boy- and Girl-) council office and find out when they have their
leaders' meeting, called a "Roundtable" in Boy Scouts. Arrange to speak for five
minutes at one of these meetings. Bring a kit or two for demonstration and plenty for
sale, since you might make some immediate sales.
Talk to your local craft shop. Many are surprising open to the idea of selling local craft
works -- but most crafters assume they won't be, and never ask!
If you do a craft that can be packaged as a kit, and aren't doing that, you are bypassing
what could be a very lucrative avenue for revenue!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mike Morgan owns Bison Creek Author Services, publisher of the FREE ebook "How to
Beat Shoplifters & Increase Profits!" It's FREE, and free to give away -- a
perfect "bonus" for your website visitors. Get more information now at: http://bisoncreek.com/
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