Anyone started a small part time business ?

I did in 2018, it’s still a small, part-time business 🤦‍♂️ and it owes me a load of money I’m unlikely to recoup.  It makes a few grand a year as a ‘hobby’. In future I’m more inclined to focus on sales to shops/businesses as whilst margins are lower, volumes are higher and more steady. Retail at the moment is on the floor.
Trying to grow an online business against the onslaught of Amazon/Google/Meta is the most frustrating - everyone wants their money/fees off the top with often little in return.

I'm thinking about making some greetings cards on the side of my normal job. The money people pay for something personalised with a couple of buttons glued to it is eye watering. It's all about getting the time though.

Time is an issue until I quit my day job.

Set up a vape shop when it was still relatively new - missed the initial craze, but still had a good bite at it

Was importing from China at 100-200% markup. Turning over £1k/week at it's peak.

Ultimately my main job took priority, people started buying more and more online, profits dipped. Ended up selling all the stock at cost to the girl who worked for me and she ended up closing a few months later as she didn't have the funds to effectively re-stock.

Was a nice little sideline while it lasted though. Enjoyed working there on a Saturday and having the craic/a pint with my neighbouring business owners

I’m thinking about making some greetings cards on the side of my normal job. The money people pay for something personalised with a couple of buttons glued to it is eye watering. It’s all about getting the time though.

This is true, but where would you sell them? A stall at a craft market will cost £££s, sell them to established shops at much smaller margins?

An old friend of mine carved a lovely niche out by doing illustrations of open water swimming. She now sells direct by promoting them on social media and selling via her website (so she pays a social media promoter and had to pay for a website build). But she has a great range of cards, hats, soft furnishings, calendars etc. But she has a very defined market and a very unique business model.

My wife started a small art business during the first lockdown. Her USP is 'Shropshire wildlife' and she has a slightly quirky style people seem to like. She sells mounted and framed prints, originals and greetings cards. All printing is done by a small local printer and she uses compostable/recyclable packaging which people like.

She sells some stuff to retail outlets but is moving away from that as their margins are too high and they are a PITA to 'service'. She'll only do that now if it's a business that will enhance her profile.

Face to face sales are her bread and butter, people love the personal connection of chatting to the artist before buying. She sells at a regular local farmers market, country shows, a couple of festivals, craft fairs etc. She sells some stuff on line, but that hasn't been hugely successful. 

She absolutely loves it, although it is knackering. She's looking at around £20k profit this year, still part time - ish, but veering towards FT.  Her profit has doubled every year for the three years since she started and there is room to grow a bit more. It's never going to make us rich, but the achievement of growing a small successful business she really enjoys has been priceless.

This is true, but where would you sell them? A stall at a craft market will cost £££s

I’m thinking about making some greetings cards on the side of my normal job. The money people pay for something personalised with a couple of buttons glued to it is eye watering. It’s all about getting the time though.

My sister does this while on maternity leave and has calculated that she gets about 50p an hour. She sells on etsy, ebay and has her own site and gets orders of 2's and 3's, just enough to keep her back and forward to the post office. Craft markets and stalls are expensive so she rarely makes enough to justify standing there all day, it's not uncommon to actually lose money and have damaged stock on a wet day. You also need the space to make and store everything.

Those thinking about selling cards, don't underestimate the mind numbing tedium of folding and packing them. I have done many thousands.  Perhaps that's why her business is doing ok - free labour. Anyone know the modern slavery helpline number? 

nope! The local craft fair charges £32/day and the local “artisan market” (monthly up the high street) is £30. Both get a lot of footfall. So there’s very good side-money to be made (but not enough to do full time as you couldn’t do it every day). It’s something I’ve thought about doing for years. Just can’t be arsed, too knackered from the day job

so if you are selling handmade cards - what gross margin can you make? A fiver a card?  You need to sell 6 cards per day to break even.  Whilst people will pay silly money for special cards for special occasions it’s not something you do every week, for selling at these places you either want something so “essential” or “low cost” that most of the footfall buy something or so high margin that if you only sell a few it covers the cost.

how much profit would you need to sell to justify spending your Saturday standing on a stall on a rainy or freezing day at least once a month - because to get traction you really need to be there regularly so the market regulars think “I need a card, oh I’ll get one from the market”.  I think those things only work if either it’s truely your passion or by giving up your Saturdays you make enough money you can chose to give up a 9-5 job and gain other flexibility in life…

I’m thinking about making some greetings cards on the side of my normal job.

Great as a hobby - but a shite way to make money.

As a printer I see loads of people through my door who are going to make a killing on greetings cards. After a short while they realise they make sod-all when you factor time into the costings.

@poly where your theoretical argument breaks down is that the craft fairs/markets [i]are[/i] always packed (with stalls & punters) so you’re obviously missing something 🤷‍♂️ (although not saying necessarily cards are the way to go; don’t recall seeing many of those stalls tbh)

Mrs Bloke shifts thousands of cards. She keeps our printer pretty busy.  Over time she has learned which designs sell best and tweaked her display.  A couple of key things which help.

The cards have to be distinctly different from others and stand out in some way, or people will just buy them from WH Smiths or wherever. This is probably the hard part.

Sell themed packs at a small discount from individual cards. Encourages people to buy more.

Leave them blank inside, so people can use them for anything and you don't have to stock loads of variants. Pre printed words in cards are invariably cheesy AF and vomit inducing anyway. Blank is classier.

Handmade is a lot of work for small margins. A card based on unique original art but then printed en masse, has an exclusive feel, but without the labour. Currently cards cost us* around 34p to produce and she sells (lots) at £2.50. 

She makes much more from framed prints and original paintings, but cards are a good steady side stream.

*not including my time to fold and pack them, but I've got that down to seconds a card whilst watching telly!

A word on craft fairs, farmers markets etc. If you are so inclined, you can easily do 4 or 5 of these a week, although that becomes very tiring - it's ok for brief spells.

Entry varies between about £18 to £50. My wife thinks a bad day is £150, an average day £250 and a good day £400+ She has had one or two £1000 days at Summer events.

I always look at those markets and think - £50 a stall, 8 hours of minimum wage, plus petrol and parking - that's at least 100 cards just to make minimum wage, if you don't include the time to design, print and fold the cards.

I know two people who ventured into this area. MrsDoris, who realised that she didn't like selling, or people, or standing out in the cold, and that it was just taking time away from the real hobby of making art. And my colleague, who loves people, has boundless energy, and ended up with a warehouse, employees and an international agent, before having a breakdown due to the stress! But I presume there could be a happy medium in between the two ...

I think something online with little face to face interaction would be preferable.

Reading with interest.  I haven't tried anything myself, but currently thinking about 3d printing - primarily aimed at the minature market.  Seems quite saturated tbh so I imagine difficult to make any decent money, but hopefully it would pay for itself within a year

Real money is probably in designing and selling the STLs but it seems there are big problems with people just buying or pirating the designs and then reselling them on etsy and the like.

So to do it well you probably need to be pushing social media / creating a unique proposition and continually churning stuff / keeping ahead of the pirates.  That bit doesn't sound like fun, probably too much stress

I know someone who was doing posters and t shirts based on things like game of thrones.  Ended up doing so well she outsourced all the actual making and packing and just focused on the designs, which was her background.  She left work a few years back to go FT, and as far as I know is going well from it.  She also said the same about needing to move fast, pick up on trends and be onto the next trend before all the copycats had time to take your market

I think something online with little face to face interaction would be preferable.

However, the barrier to entry re. setting up an Etsy shop etc is incredibly low, so no reason not to give it a crack really!

Real money is probably in designing and selling the STLs but it seems there are big problems with people just buying or pirating the designs and then reselling them on etsy and the like.

MrsNBT tried it a few years ago making unique handbags from scraps of interesting material. We did a few fairs in popular places like Bakewell. On some days we covered cost of entry. At Bakewell in particular, we sold nothing, all day, but Mrs NBT did buy something from another stallholder so we came out at a net loss.

After sitting on a rack for some time, we eventually gave the bulk of the handbags to a local charity shop

I used to run a part time business, mostly online sales of niche relatively niche products.  I had a 5 figure turnover but after costs the profit was, by design, negligible.  It allowed me to pursue my hobby at near zero cost and offer a little support to others.

It was fun when I had spare time, but the return was very limited.  I found it tricky to find the sweet spot between between worth doing but not all consuming while having a day job.  However, no matter which way I looked at it I couldn't see a way to scale up to be the sole income (needed to go from 3-5 orders a week to 6-8 a day!).

I had a room in the house packed with stock, packaging materials, printer for packing labels and notes, had to do orders and invoices so the admin and regular lunch time post office trips which took quite a bit of time and effort.  And stress if I had overnight orders in my boot that had to go in the post on my lunch break.

So if you have the time and find something you enjoy doing it can be a great way to test the water to see if you can build a saleable business but my experience is the middle ground is tricky - keep it small for fun then at some point you need to take a risk if you want it to go large.  Sitting in the middle while working full time is hard.

I quit and prefer to use my spare time to ride.

I have a very small sideline selling custom designed PCBs. I designed them as I needed them for a project. Once I had the design it's was easy to get more made in china. I buy 100 or so at a time then sell them on eBay. Very little time and effort. Print out an envelope then drop it in the post when I walk the dog. Doesn't make much money but takes very little effort. Don't hold much stock and I don't need to deal with the public face to face. I think it also helps out fellow hobbyists

I have a very small sideline selling custom designed PCBs.

I always feel sorry for some of the stall-holders at these markets. There are always some busy stalls, but then you see a lonely and cold person stood there with an empty stall, cold and miserable. From my experience, the busy stalls are cards and prints, scarves, coffee, fudge, flavoured vodka, artisan gin and stuff for dogs.

There was someone on here a few years ago that wrote up their basic business plan as someone was asking how they could earn money in their spare time. Essentially selling jewellery online.

In summary; Build a website, advertise at double what you want to sell it for. Run Groupon campaigns offering 50% off at key times of the year such as Valentines day, Mothers Day, Christmas etc. The point of the website is to make your pieces seem like a bargain at 50% off and any that are sold via the website are just the icing on the cake. I seem to remember a 5 figure sum, but I can't remember if that was Nett or Gross

My dentist (and that's not a poorly paid job) has a sideline buying, customising and selling Seiko watches. He says it brings in loads.
Quite why a wealthy dentist who spends his day hunched over wielding small tools would want to spend his evenings hunched over wielding small tools escapes me.

I always feel sorry for some of the stall-holders at these markets. There are always some busy stalls, but then you see a lonely and cold person stood there with an empty stall, cold and miserable.

I've not done it, but if I was I'd find something to sell to businesses.

They will understand how much time is worth, so will know what the thing or service you offer is worth to them, compared to selling birthday cards to the general public who expect you to work for a few pence an hour.

Yeah there's definitely a lot of psychology with selling and the way you present your stall and engage with people.  Mrs Bloke is really good at it, but is often alongside other traders with really good stuff who don't sell anything.

Some people just look grumpy and unhappy to be there which is a real turn off. You do see people at craft fairs selling really good hand made stuff that is priced too expensively for casual buyers, but too cheaply for them to make much of a profit even if it did sell considering the work involved.

People don't appreciate the effort and hours that go into hand made craft/art. That's why my OH's plan of original designs but then semi mass produced works for her. That and selling a steady stream of original paintings for a few hundred quid a time.

I have the skills to create and print 3D models but most peiple dont understand the time it takes to model something properly.

My main idea at the moment is photo/image editing. Even then, some peoples expectations are unrealistic.

Quite like the idea of tshirt designs and outsourcing the production and shipping.

I have the skills to create and print 3D models but most peiple dont understand the time it takes to model something properly.

so bit my hand off for a 3d printed one at £50!!

How long did it take you to model it?

Selling at craft fairs is soul destroying. Also with the price of the stall one has to factor in the cost of public liability insurance.
My handbags were well made, lined and made from good quality fabrics eg linen, cotton, wool and some silk. Some stalls at the same markets were selling utter tat. It took approx an hour to make each bag, then factoring in the cost of fabrics, it wasn't viable.

One chocolatier I know ended up giving away so much stock in 'free tasters'. Some people just go to some of these craft markets and food stalls and spend the day eating all the free samples and never actually buying anything.

I have got a proper business (self employed soft furnisher) that is now more or less part time, except for the busy periods of Easter and Christmas. There is never much money in being self employed and you have to love what you do and not always expect to earn the minimum living wage.

Thing that appeals with 3d printing is the print on demand aspect, you can set it up, and monitor whilst doing your 'proper' job.  Still need to do the post office runs / deal with customers / social media side of things

How long did it take you to model it?

Thing that appeals with 3d printing is the print on demand aspect, you can set it up, and monitor whilst doing your ‘proper’ job.

Thats not enough profit to make it worth while for me.

Im trying to find something to relace my day job.

My wife started a food blog a few years back as a hobby.

Just before lockdown she monetized it, it now pays mortgage with a few quid left over.

MrsRNP had one that grew.

We have a family property in Perpignan - local artisan jeweller was hand making unique pieces. MrsRNP would always buy some for herself and get comments when home.

She started 'Tupawear' style by having house party's and taking her small amount of stock to people's houses (she did Bodyshop at home during her degree so knew the mechanics of it).

We also searched out decent trade suppliers in Manchester's rag trade quarter.

A rented shop soon followed along with quitting her job.
We bought a LWB van and toured Europe for our summer holidays looking for unique supplier's.
We rented a 7.5t van and did summer camper van festivals as we figured they have disposable incomes and the women want a new handbag whilst husband buys VW parts.

Did charity events in schools/churches etc. We were good at having stock and display items that were quick to pack away/transport.

Made our own barcode/label printing /database back of house system so no ongoing fees.

We had some great product lines, met lots of interesting people and earned some good money. We had the shop for 8years then sold the stock/contact/suppliers list.

Thats not enough profit to make it worth while for me.

Im trying to find something to relace my day job.

sure, but the way I look at it (as a side-hustle) it's almost a hobby in itself. If you're concerned about paying the bills from it, of course you need to push it more. Get it out there, hit up classic car forums, maybe you could sell 10 or 20 of them, suddenly becomes a lot more viable.

interesting! got a link?

I just sell on eBay. I did try a couple of other options but eBay was by far the most successful.

This one for Arduino prototyping
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164227105108

And one for a chip that is great for driving higher power devices
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164352914556

I have made a few others but this is all I have active at the moment.

Does eggs at the end of our track count?

Quite like the idea of tshirt designs and outsourcing the production and shipping.

There are quite a few on-demand t-shirt printers where you can test designs before you commit to printing in bulk. The problem is there’s lots of knock-off merchants buying cheap shirts for a quid, ripping off big brand’s designs and selling them at markets, festivals and car boots for a tenner. Have been to a few festivals selling stuff, by the time you factor in petrol, entry fees and food you’d sometimes be lucky to break even - all the punters expect you to sell cheap even though it costs hundreds to be there.

Does eggs at the end of our track count?

Quite a few places round here sell eggs but probably not enough to pay bills.

I definately dont want to be setting up market stalls and travelling around.
I hates working in retail purely because im terrible at talking to strangers. Social skills are not exactly a strength.

Reading with interest. I haven’t tried anything myself, but currently thinking about 3d printing – primarily aimed at the minature market. Seems quite saturated tbh so I imagine difficult to make any decent money, but hopefully it would pay for itself within a year

but the real money is probably in designing and selling the STLs but it seems there are big problems with people just buying or pirating the designs and then reselling them on etsy and the like.

I've mulled the idea of designing and printing my own parts as a sideline, but then It's always interesting to look at the various 3D printed items up on eBay, and then going and searching for them on thingiverse. There's plenty of people deriving a healthy profit by taking someone else's freely shared 'IP' using up a few pence of PLA and leccy and then adding a fiver.

I wouldn't want to design bespoke models for people, that's basically my day job, and marking up prints of other people's work is shabby at best.

I would much rather keep tinkering as my hobby and my work as a 9-5 job...

All these posts make me feel smug about our small consultancy. It was genuinely small and part-time but brought in useful beer money, perhaps 6 figures in all (two people and that’s over a few years, we weren’t swimming in money).

Basically killed by brexit, but hey, **** business and all that. It’s not like the country needs taxpayers.

It's very hard doing two jobs I found.

You try and do both to your best ability. The new one tends to make you work unsociable hours to get it done and becomes a chore.

I tried to start a new business and just work two or 3 days a week at the old job.

The two or 3 days became 4 or 5 because you were not working affectively or were persuaded by work colleagues and the new business gets left aside and thus you start to struggle at a time when you need to put the most effort in and leads to lack of morale and bad customer service.

Full commitment is hard ( making the decision ) but the best way to give it a your best shot.

If its deffo a hobby/ part time then you will not worry about it so much.

Maybe take a work  "holiday " to launch the new idea fully committed and get it up and running faster.

Good Luck anyway.

I suppose it depends on the day job, if u can answer emails and the phone etc at the same time ( in the day) or use the odd bit of downtime its not such an issue.

I could not do this.

Regarding 3-D printing - it's definitely about finding a niche/product that solves a problem which is otherwise difficult to do.

I designed an axle adaptor (a packing spacer, essentially) for bike racks for a mate when I saw him fiddling around with his bike rack after a ride. He was well pleased with the resulting part & suggested I should sell it on ebay, which I've been doing for the last few years.
It's weird because some months I'd sell several & then I'd go for several months selling nothing. They don't really cost anything to produce & I have been batch printing them, so the only thing that takes time is putting them in an envelope & sending them out.
I only make a few quid on each one, but I suppose I've sold enough to pay for perhaps 50% of the printer cost, which I bought for my own interest/hobby.

I also sold a screw-on brow shade for the Ravemen PR lights as when out of the saddle over the front of the bike I found the light quite distracting. It was quite hard to make robust, without making it bulky & ugly. I sold a few & then thought about re-designing it to supply with double sided tape so it could just stick on, rather than screw in place. But, never got round to it & am not sure it is worth it.

The thing is, as someone mentioned above is that very few people understand the amount of effort that goes into the design process of this stuff. They just see a small lump of plastic & think that it must only be worth a few pence, as "anyone can get a 3-D printer these days".
People want something for virtually nothing.

I made a tape cutting device for my own use, to allow me to cut down a full roll of Gorilla Tape into a suitable width for my rims. It works really well & I considered sticking that on ebay - not just for tubeless tyre set-up, but I figured there are probably plenty of people out there who would want to take a large tape reel & split it down into thinner strips.
But, when you look a the number of parts & because of the size (mainly thickness) the postage cost would go up quite a bit (small parcel, rather than large letter) it would have made it quite a lot of money to make any profit on. So again, it was something I didn't proceed with.

What you do see is people nicking designs off places like Thingiverse & just flogging them as their own, which is pretty crap.
I am a member of various FB 3-D printing groups & as soon as someone posts up something interesting they have made, everyone piles on asking where they can find the file for free download & when the OP says that it's their own design & they aren't planning on making it available, people get massively pissy about it.

I sort of accidently started a sideline when I started beekeeping.

I say sort of accidently because I didn't realise what was involved with processing honey and wax when I first started, I thought I'd have enough honey to put into a couple of old jam jars and give away to friends and that would be it. Some years I'm dealing with maybe 250 - 300kg, packed into 340g jars with 3 labels on each jar. It's a major operation to get honey from hive to the customer and people balk at the price (£5 a jar, which is cheap!)

This makes the hobby pay for itself and maybe a little bit on top some years, but it's not a business that funds our life.

Fortunately I've built up a base of customers that keep on buying my honey so I don't have to really go out of my way to sell it.

@tafflade interesting! Guessing you're in Wales, do you post out?

@cinnamon_girl

I'm in the forest of Dean. I've been asked quite a few times to post but I don't because of the cost of postage and risk of the jars getting broken.

To my eyes, while it's something that I could do but it's a risk that's potentially more hassle than I've got time for.

Believe it or not, I've had people return jars because the honey has crystallised, I wanted to scream at them 'that's what honey does you fuggin idiot', but the wife took over and just have them their money back.

Social skills are not exactly a strength

As Warren Buffett would say "the best investment you can make is in yourself"

Instead of trying to made a few extra quid on the side, you'll make far more by increasing your skillset, so you can gain a higher paid job.

Not saying it'll be easy, but probably a lot easier than everything already suggested.

@tafflade oh, that's a shame but completely understand. Nothing surprises me about the general public and your wife did well in dealing with it!