Lifes Like That

In less than two weeks my kids will be back in school. This is going to leave me with a lot of free time on my hands (sort of). So I have decided to resurrect my home crafting business. With them home I’m really not able to get a whole lot accomplished, but when it’s just me here I think I really can make a go out of this. After their in school I plan on re-doing my crafting room, make a ton of crafts and set up a brand new website to show case and sell them. Honestly I can’t wait! I’m hoping to be able to get a small start on it before they go back to school, but if not, two weeks really isn’t a long time to wait.

Well I think some of my patience has finally paid off. As you all know, I have been actively searching for ways to earn a little extra income off the Internet. I have discussed (in a previous post) that I have been looking about getting into transcription. And yes, I am still looking at this option, but I have found something else as well.

Yesterday I e-mailed a guy who was looking for an article writer. Well, since I’ve had experience in this field, I decided that if the money was right then maybe I could do this while I’m getting myself set up in the transcription field. Well, I’m happy to report that I got the job and have already gotten my first assignment. As in anything on the Internet, I’ll have to see how it goes. But right now it looks pretty promising.

I’ll be sure to let you all know how I make out with this little venture.

So you have probably noticed that I don’t post in here as much as I used to. Well, there is a reason for this. It’s because I’ve been doing other things lately. I have decided that I want to take my Internet life in a different direction. I have decided that I’m going to try my hand at general transcription. To do this job properly, I have to have two pieces of equipment. One is headphones (which I now have) and the other piece of equipment would be a foot pedal. Well these things cost money so I have been doing a little work over at mechanical turk to try to earn the money for this foot pedal. Although the typing that I have been doing doesn’t add up to much, I figure every cent helps to go toward my purchase of this piece of equipment.

So, if you don’t see me around much over the next couple of months, now you know why. I am working on something else to be able to work at my dream job.

For a little over a month now I have been doing a lot of research on what it would take to get involved with an online transcription career. Let me tell you that I am amazed at all the work, research and practice that goes into this type of career. I thought it would be just as easy as just typing what people are saying, but that definitely isn’t the case. Transcription is more than just typing and listening. I have been doing this research slowly and carefully because I would really like to determine if this is something I can do or will want to do in the future. There are so many things that a transcriptionist needs to take into account. You need to be aware of any conversion rate optimization areas, typing speed, different styles of grammar and spelling as well as what type of equipment you would need to get the job done professionally as well as quickly.

After doing a lot of research in this area, I have decided that this is probably something that I’m going to do. This type of career is right up my alley and to get paid for it as well is just icing on the cake.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you are well aware of the fact that one of my favorite hobbies is making crafts. In fact, I make so many that I have decided to create a small home crafting business to try to earn a little income off my creations. They don’t look like Oscar de la Renta products mind ya, but I try to do my best work and have been told that my work is quite nice. But for some reason I haven’t been able to sell a whole lot.

Yes, I have tried the Etsy store and I have even set up a blog which was designed just to try to sell my products. Since these efforts haven’t really paid off, I have decided that I need to go in a different direction. So in the very near future you will see a change in my “homemade crafts” link. Instead of having the address to my Etsy site listed or even the blog url listed, I have decided to take some fresh new pictures and upload them onto that link. I will eventually list the prices and the contact information as well. Hopefully this change will enable me to attract more buyers and maybe the year 2009 will be the year I get my home crafting business up and running.

Well I guess it’s official. My little home business of trying to sell crafts really hasn’t worked out all that well. I guess that’s why people call what we do a hobby and not a job. But don’t worry, I’m not really upset about it. I’ll still continue to do what I love and if I sell any then that’s just great. But if I don’t, that’s OK too. It just takes some of the stress off from continuously trying to sell things. Now I can go back to just making crafts for the pure pleasure of it. I would have loved to make a go out of it, but…it’s not the end of the world if I don’t. So I think I’m going to put off trying to get a home business up and running and just enjoy the time I have to create crafts. You never know what the future may hold so maybe I’ll try it again sometime in the future.

Well it seems to me like the more you make, the more you spend. For the past year and a half I have gone without a regular paycheck and it didn’t seem to hurt the family’s finances all that much. Now that I’m back to work and earning a regular paycheck it seems like my paycheck is always pretty much gone before I have gotten it. Tomorrow I get another paycheck and yes by the time I’m done it’s all going to be all gone. I have to go out and purchase my son a cap to finish up his Halloween costume, I have to pay both the kids student fees and I need to pay my daughter’s violin fee as well. Oh well. That’s why I went back to work. To help out with the household expenses.

So I’ve mentioned before that I am going to try something new to try to advertise my small home crafting business. So last week I ordered some customized magnets to be able to give out to family and friends. The order will take anywhere from four to six weeks to come in but they should be here just in time for the holiday craft season. Up until now I haven’t spent a dollar on advertising, but my sales aren’t as high as I would like them to be so I have decided that it may be worth it to spend a few dollars in advertising to get my message out there. Hopefully this works. If it does, then I will have no problem spending any other money on different advertising methods. I have to do something, I have to start selling more than I have been.

Now that I’ve started making a few sales from my home crafted jewelry, I have been thinking about what I want to buy with this extra money. Yeah, I know I should probably save it or use it to buy stuff for the kids, but what I really want is some new office furniture. I know it will take me quite a while to save up enough money for some good pieces, but I’m willing to wait until I get all the money I need even before thinking about making any purchases. I look at any income that comes from the sale of jewelry as extra money so I wouldn’t be taking any “regular income” out of our pockets to make these purchases. Oh well, now I need money so I need to get off this computer and get creating.

If you scroll down on the right sidebar of this blog, you will see a paypal widget displaying some of my handcrafted jewelry that I have for sale. I have tried several methods of selling my jewelry, but so far I haven’t been having too much success. So instead of giving up, I have decided to try something different. Hopefully I will see a few sales through this method. But since it doesn’t cost anything for me to display this widget, it certainly won’t hurt anything if it doesn’t work out.

But having said this, I am optimistic that this just may work. So scroll on down and see what I have to offer and if anything peeks your interest, just let me know and I’m pretty sure that we can do business together.