What the hell have I gotten myself into? It's a gamble...

Alright.  After much prompting, cajoling and general harassment from others, (and from my inside voice) I've decided to finally make a go of it.  It started out slowly.  Making a few things here and there for friends and family.  Then others started saying I should sell stuff.  So I let it be known I was willing to sell things.  The commissions started.  Finally one evening as my wife and I were lamenting the lack of full time teaching contracts in my area (I am a substitute teacher) she said, "If you wanted to start thinking about your crafting crap as a business, it might make me feel better about the waste of time."

I took that as complete consent and drove forward into...what?  I had no idea what I was doing, or where to start, or even anything remotely resembling start-up money.  It really looked like my fledgling project would fail before it started.

Let me go back an unspecified amount of time.  One evening, over beverages of an adult nature, my good friend Rob suggested that, being a single man with a decent income, he could be sort of a silent partner and support my crafting habit.  Being that we're both members of the Society for Creative Anachronism we decided it would be a patronage arrangement.  He provides raw materials, and in return I make him stuff.  This would be, it turns out, how I get my raw materials.

So, I have the drive and a source for start up material.  Now what?  I really didn't know.

I stalled.  Hard.  For about two months I did nothing in pursuit of my plan.  Then as I'm strolling through the local Michael's store trying to keep my rug-monkeys from clearing the shelves I see this book.  This wonderful little square-ish book.  It was called "The Handmade Marketplace: how to sell your crafts locally, globally and online" by Kari Chapin.  Holy Crap.  It's like this lovely lady had lived inside my head.  The book is a fantastic resource and a wellspring of inspiration for the aspiring craftrepreneur.  The only part of the book I didn't find immensely useful was the bit in the third chapter about tax info.  Being that I'm Canadian, very little of it was applicable.  

But it gave me a place to start!  

No longer was I stumbling forward, sideways and back trying to figure out what I was doing.  I now had a gameplan.  A roadmap.  One of the important steps Ms. Chapin laid out was webpresence.  I had none.  I honestly would be content to live in a smokey hut in the woods all the time, so mastering the technological skills required to build myself a home on the Web has been quite intimidating. 

I make it sound as if I have mastered those skills. No, sadly I am far from it.  But that's part of the point of this blog.  I want to document my road to success, or at least my rough track to being able to support an expensive hobby.  Hopefully it will be useful, and inspiring and at least a little entertaining.  I plan to post works in progress, tutorials, and tell my story to anyone interested in hearing.