Read this issue of the Inspiri Craft Business Magazine online.

Each month Inspiri Craft Business Magazine brings you current and in-depth information and resources to help you build and grow your own home craft business. If you have a friend who would enjoy this newsletter, please feel free to forward it to them.

If someone has forwarded this newsletter to you, please subscribe here so you won't miss any of the tips in each issue.

New at Inspiri

Two Ways to Share Your Craft Business Tips

1. Share a Craft Business Article

If you have a great craft business article (400 words or more) that you'd like to share, I've made it very easy for you to submit an article to Inspiri.

If you sell crafts online either on your own site, on a blog or on Etsy, simply include your site's URL and a description of your business with your article, and you'll receive a valuable backlink to your site when your article is published.

You can find out more about how to share a craft business article here.

2. Share a Quick Tip

If you have a quick tip you want to share but don't have a full article, you can add your tips on one of these topics:
Share a craft booth display tip here
Share a tip about selling at craft shows or home parties
Review your favorite craft book or magazine
Share tips on running a specific type of craft business
Share easy craft ideas and tips

Please keep in mind, backlinks are not included on the quick tip forms, so if you'd like to receive a backlink to promote your craft business site, you'll need to use the full article submission option here.

Newest Articles at Inspiri

Best Selling Crafts If you are proficient with several different types of craft media and trying to determine which types of crafts are the best selling crafts and, therefore, the smartest medium to focus on for your craft business, consider these statistics.

Easy Craft Ideas This is a brand new feature at Inspiri. Here you'll find easy craft ideas to help you to get started experimenting with different types of crafts.

Felting Wool If you've never tried felting wool, you'll be amazed at what you can make with just a few low-tech and inexpensive tools and supplies. Here's a summary of basic wool felting techniques.

Business Goal Setting Effective business goal setting is a smart way to ensure you accomplish exactly what you want from your craft business.

Discount Craft Supplies Finding sources of discount craft supplies is important when you are building your craft business. These tips will help you find discount craft supplies and craft wholesalers

Business Name Registration Before I went through the business name registration process, I was convinced it would be a long, drawn-out, expensive and difficult process. It ended being incredibly easy and inexpensive.

Craft Show Directory Find an art and craft show directory for your area.

Craft Show Dates It's quite simple to find craft show dates for art and craft shows in your area. Use these tips to find craft show listings in your region.

Your Contributions

Some Display Booth Tips Here are some quick tips based on my experiences helping my wife with her craft show displays.

Clothespin Dolls - The Lost Art Debbie Ritter creates unique clothespin dolls inspired by literary and historical figures. She shares her insights about what she has learned about selling her clothespin dolls at Etsy.

Knitting for Dummies - Book Review A reader reviews the book Knitting for Dummies.

Paper Crafts Magazine Reader, Stephanie Reynolds, shares her review of Paper Crafts Magazine.

Feature Article

Outsourcing Craft Business Tasks

For the most part, before you decide to outsource, you'll need to have reached a certain level of income so that you are able to pay for someone else to take on specific tasks. However, if there are tasks that are important to the operation of your business that are beyond your area of expertise (bookkeeping, depending on your skill in this area, may be one example) you may be better off outsourcing those tasks right from the start.

Outsourcing can free up your time to focus on tasks that will help you to grow your business to levels that you may not be able to achieve on your own. In fact, The CODA Survey: The Impact of Crafts on the National Economy, (while dated 2001, it's still a helpful source of information) indicates that 36% of craft professionals surveyed have some type of assistance with their business. It goes on to say that craft professionals who have employees generally have higher incomes than professional craft artists with no employees.

Those respondents who indicated they had paid assistance reported an average net income of $58,417 from their craft business, and 45% of craft artists with employees were able to depend on their craft business as their sole source of household income. Respondents without paid assistance reported an average annual craft business income of $32,624.

If you decide to add some form of paid assistance to your craft business, you must be ready for changes in your business. First, it will be important to determine whether you actually want to grow your business to the larger scale that is possible with outsourcing and if that business direction is a good fit with your goals for yourself and your craft business.

Consider carefully the tasks you will hand over to someone else. What can you comfortably relinquish control over? Identify tasks that are key to the success of your company, and be extremely careful about outsourcing any of those tasks. Look for tasks that are not your favorite tasks or are not your strongest skills that would be better done by someone else, those tasks are often good targets for outsourcing.

While outsourcing may mean working with a production assistant if your business has grown to that level, it may also simply mean outsourcing administrative tasks like bookkeeping or creative tasks such as the design of your promotional materials. Outsourcing can also be more indirect. That is, you may not outsource business related tasks, but instead, you may outsource personal tasks to free up more time for you to work on your business. For example, paying someone to clean your home on a regular basis frees you from those chores and provides you with more time to work on your business. If you feel that the time you spend working on your business would generate more income than the cost to have your home cleaned (and if you also hate housework), it can be a smart trade-off.

Outsourcing is not the right option for everyone, and while it will free up your time from certain tasks, it will also create new issues for you to address. You'll need to invest time in selecting appropriate people for the job at hand, manage and/or develop a working relationship with those individuals, and in some cases train the people who will be working with you on your craft business.

Outsourcing, when carefully considered and implemented, can help you to take your business to the next level, if that's where you dream of going.

Online Craft Business Resource

Have a look at their list of benefits of buying handmade; it may give you good inspiration for promoting your own handmade products to customers.

Thanks for reading the Inspiri Craft Business Magazine.
I welcome your comments and questions.