You love making jewellery for yourself and for your friends and family. You spend all of your free time creating new pieces and showing them off to others. You might love creating jewellery so much that you start to resent the time you have to spend at work instead. You start thinking about whether you could make money selling your jewellery instead of going into the office. Now that would be a dream job!
Maybe you like making farmhouse tables in your woodshed but you’ve run out of people to give them to. Now you’re thinking of selling them instead. Maybe you like playing the guitar and you’ve been thinking about offering lessons for extra cash. Or maybe, like me, you love writing and you’d like to start earning money from it. There are many ways that you could turn your hobby into a successful business or a full-time job. There are just a few things you’ll need to make it possible.
Self-employment and tax advice
When you start working and earning for yourself, whether it be part-time or full-time, you need to ensure that you are set up correctly from a legal perspective. A dream job doesn’t mean essential paperwork can be ignored! People often find this daunting to think about, but the truth is that it’s much easier than many think. There is a lot of free advice out there on registering as self-employed and you don’t necessarily have to create your own limited company, for example, although doing so can have its benefits.
The one thing you need to be very aware of is the rules relating to VAT and tax. But again, there is plenty of advice available both locally and nationally so don’t be put off. Aside form that should also look into a good health insurance plan for self employed.
Business Loan
Whether or not you’ll need a business loan(s) depends on what kind of hobby you have and what your goals are. For example, if you want to create jewellery to sell in your own shop, you’ll need a loan to get the property, equipment to make your creations on a larger scale, and materials. However, if you just want to sell jewellery in an Etsy shop or on your own website, you may not need any extra money at all. You may be able to use the profits from what you make to get more materials as you go along.
Create a business plan for yourself to define your goals and to understand how much money you will need. Then research lenders to find the best one to give you the money you need at the best terms.
Realistic Goals
Once you make the decision to work for yourself, you can get so excited that you get carried away. You might suddenly have big dreams about what can happen. You might start thinking about opening stores around the country or having a huge income. You might dream about your new company becoming a household name. Unfortunately, none of that is likely. But what is possible if you have enough success to make a full-time income — maybe even more than what you made in your previous job.
When you are planning your new venture, you need to define your goals so that you know how to move forward. But you also need to ensure that those goals are realistic. In the first couple of years, you’ll spend a lot of time getting your name out there and building up a customer base. It may take you some time to turn a substantial profit.
Good Time Management Skills
Turning your hobby into a commercial venture means that you will now be working for yourself. You won’t have a boss standing over you and asking why you haven’t finished a project yet or telling you that you can’t take a break right now. You will love the freedom, but you might also be tempted to sleep in later, to watch TV while you work (which will sidetrack you), or even to make plans with friends in the middle of the day. While it’s understandable how all this can happen, you have to make efforts to do differently or else your new venture will fail fast instead of turning into your dream job.
You need good time management skills if you are going to work for yourself. Not only do you need to be able to keep yourself focused and motivated, but you need to be able to stick to a schedule. Of course, that means you need a schedule to start. Don’t just make your schedule “wake up and work.”Actually create a timeline for your day, as well as a weekly and monthly timeline for meeting specific goals.
The ability to turn your passion into your dream job is what success is made of. Whatever your hobby is, there’s a way to make money from it. You just need to have a good business plan and the capital to get started. Then you need to have the right work ethic and motivation to keep going.
