I recently had a loved one tell me that my business was nothing more than an aggrandized hobby. Not his exact words but he was looking at it from a purely financial perspective.
At first I balked at this appraisal. I was shocked, and frankly offended that he would say that to me, especially about something I loved so much...but after staying up late into the night last night and doing a bunch of reading courtesy Etsy's Blog I realize it was in fact true. Much to my chagrin.
I'm a reasonably intelligent individual, so why am I having such trouble. A look at my old pricing model and the new one I'm developing as well as an analysis of the effort (and where it's been going) I have put into my business tells me why. For one I was severely underpricing myself, not charging labor, and cutting deals where I (from a financial perspective alone) shouldn't have. Two I was cheapening my work by doing this, making the expectations of customers low. And I spend hours upon hours in the creative process and virtually no time on the actual business aspect of it. So I'm doing a double disservice, to myself and to my customers. While my work and effort are both of good quality there are many kinks and hiccups that could be otherwise avoided were I to "put my money where my mouth is" and buckle down across the board rather than focusing and bottlenecking my efforts. Surely if I spent several hours on my business aspect I would be making a good deal more and at the very least would have that part "taken care of" rather than the apparent shambles it's in now.
So I've opted to spend a week going through Etsy's "Seller's Handbook" tackling each applicable major topic, reading through their offerings, doing my own research and correcting (at least beginning to correct) the problems.
Here's to financial abundance and overall success!
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