1.Your goals
2.Minimum Knowledge
3.Investition
4.Brand name
5.Marketing strategy
6.Pricing
7.Where to sell
8.Legal and safety
9.Tips

1.Your goals

Who you want to be, what are you offering, and where you want to go.
If you want to be creative just as a hobby and maybe for some extra-cash, you don’t have to spend a lot from the begin, but keep in your mind you may failled,because no matter how little you want to achieve all depends
about how much time ,ambition and effort you are investing.
This are useful when you are making business decision.
If your business evolves, its direction might well change later.
Starting a new business is both scary and exciting.
If you want to aim a financial success then you have to stick on the plan and never gave up even when you are confronted with difficult situation.

2.Minimum knowledge !

See crochet abbreviation (here is list of abbrev).Learn how to read a pattern.
Before starting your biz do some practice, and see how good is your skills, how quickly you can learn and how fast you can crochet/knit. You also can find in our website tutorials for beginners (see here). If you want to make slippers, gloves, hats you need to follow the measure (foot & head size chart)

3.Investition

How much do i need to invest at the begin? Approximate £300-£500 just to start with (including your own website if need it).This investment it doesn’t mean necessary will bring you a quick profit. If you want to start a biz you will need:
1.Material for making goods.(if you are living in Uk most of material and yarn you can buy cheap from pounder shop)
2.Tools
3.Time for research
4.A space where to install your workshop
5.Brand name (free)
6.Money if you need to affiliate on different platforms that are requiring subscription
7.Blogs, pages/accounts on facebook, google, instagram, pinterest  (mostly are free)
8.Postage-package-envelopes-tags
10.Camera photo for  pictures.
11.Some skills to use internet, Photoshop, and to create good and clear description if you are selling online.

4.Brand name & logo

Establishing your brand, is like creating your identity.
Firming up what you want to get out of your creative biz,and how you want people to see you.
Creating an identity for your brand is vital as that’s makes it recognisable, and there are two sides to it-your brand personality and your brand visuals.

5.Marketing Strategy

What age group is your products aimed at?
What would be the best way to reach out to your potential customers?
Do you think they are more likely by browsing on Instagram or Facebook?
What is your line of production ?
Vintage, Bohemian, Modern, Original,Combination..etc.?
Always see what is in trend and adapt to your style if is necessary.
If is about handcraft home decoration more likely is to sell a modern style, more simplistic and practically. Vintage is still a lovely style, but is for a small category of people.
If you do gifts for certain time of a year always start with months before the event.

6.Pricing

What to take in consideration when calculating pricing?
Correct pricing can strike the difference between a successful biz and a struggle one.
Fundamentally pricing is made up of your costs and profit .
1.How much material you are spending for one item and how long takes to make it.
2.Pachage costs-wrap paper,boxes, envelopes.
3.Postage costs (if you are selling online)
4.Website costs
5.Fees when you are selling in different platforms.
6.Other costs production such as printed material,cards,small gifts,stickers,tags,paper.

7.Where  to sell

What you need to understand about selling online, and where is more likely to sell your items.There is three categories of:

1.Free Market
You can publish your items, by sharing with your friends and people that you are interacting with on different social sites, and if you lucky you may sell few items occasionally. You dont pay subscription  fees or commission and you dont need high skills of internet knowledge. You have to invest time for keep sharing your items by making your self-publicity. But you cant do a business from.           
1.Google My Business 
Requires your website to connect with for link payment. No fees to pay.
2.My local market 
Requires your website to connect with.No fees to pay.
3.Facebook-free
4.Instagram-free.

 2.Your Own Website
The best solution for selling your goods is to have your website if you can bring customers. By running your  website you are cutting out the middleman, dealing with all products sales from beginning to the end. No more commission to pay for anyone.
But there is the investmentment to start with, and if you don’t have knowledge about building or maintain websites then the costs grow up. You will also have to bring the traffic yourself and bring customers.
You may also need to pay ads on google, youtube, facebook…etc. Or you can promote your website manually by sharing your link anywhere.

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We can help you to set your website (if you wish) for minimum possible costs and we can give you some tips how to promote your website
Website-is an e-commerce with shopping functionality that`s all yours, soon as is set up you will have to pay the host (monthly or yearly)for your domain name and money for maintenance with your web designer.

“Host” is the provider who allocates space on a web server for a website to store its files, they are storing your website. Any website is hosted on a server. Your website has a domain which space is kept by host. The host prices varies, some are giving promotion for £1.00 in the first all year, then they charge per/month start from £5.00.The cost for designing the shop starting from £200.00 one time to pay and then is about website maintenance. If you have skills in web design then you can cut out the cost for setting up your shop…. [/expand]

3.Afilliate on different platforms.
This is the easy away more likely to sell but more costs.
Affiliate to a market it means someone else do all the jobs for you like designing your shop front, brings customers traffic, site maintenance, highlight your items or store, keeping records of your activity, customer service support and many other…all you need to do is to publish your products and post your items.
Here is an idea about fees that you need to pay and market where is more likely to sell:
1.Ebay is top expensive one in fees,for shop subscription a basic one is £50 up to £300 advanced one monthly+ 14% commission from your sale.,but is the best chance to sell your goods constantly. and you can make a business from.
2.Esty ( www.etsy.com)  fees charge 10% commission of sale +other taxes.
3.Folksy- (  www.folksy.com  ) 6% commission of sale
4.Raverly – ( www.raverly.com ) 3.5% commission + other taxes
5.Iokky –  (www.iokky.com)  6 months free

8.The legal side

Your brand name does not need to be register,as long
you are self-employed registered with HMRC (for U.K)..all is good
Selling safety
Before putting your goods for selling is very important that they meet legal requirement. Not only do you want to protect yourself from any possible comeback, return, its also important that your customers have confidence with  the item they are buying is safe.
If you are selling handmade toys,candles,or others you will need to comply with safety regulations.
Example:Toys for children-do not use buttons, wire..etc.
You may need to use a label with Caution 
“Not suitable for children”
“This is not a toy”
“Machine washable 30C”
“Not for food use”
“Not washable”
“Do not pull”
“This item is decorative only”.

9.Tips

Customer need a level of trust to make purchases,and a product or a service with a low price is likely
to be perceived as low value and low quality, less desirable. The prices you set also contribute to the industry standard,so if prices are repeatedly set too low for handmade items,it becomes expected ,making difficult for others to charge fair prices for their goods.
Overpricing it could mean excluding your target market and losing out to competitors.
Small gift,a card, beside the goods that you sold,makes customers more attracted to comeback in your shop.