Thread: Making a buck from your woodwork?

Originally Posted by Lappa

$5 an hour for pottering around in my shed sounds O/K, as long as it’s all profit

FIVE WHOLE DOLLARS! Luxury!

One thing to remember is that whatever you're making, you have to sell it. Think about how you are going to do this.

Are you going to make individual pieces and sell them through a gallery? Once the gallery has accepted them, you're paying them to sell for you. That leaves you free to make, while they sell. The good galleries are very selective, and if they are selling mainly on line, they may want numbers of the same item and an assured supply.

You may elect to deal with customers directly. If so, first, you have to make them find you. Depending on what market you're in, you may need to advertise, create a website and facebook presence, enter exhibitions and competitions, write articles for magazines, etc. etc. Choose the market you want to be in, learn to recognise the tyre-kickers and cultivate the good customers. All this takes time, so you need to factor the cost into your prices - you'll be making less, so you have to charge more per item.

Originally Posted by AlexS

One thing to remember is that whatever you're making, you have to sell it. Think about how you are going to do this.

Are you going to make individual pieces and sell them through a gallery? Once the gallery has accepted them, you're paying them to sell for you. That leaves you free to make, while they sell. The good galleries are very selective....

So true. Marketing and selling are very different skills from designing and making. Very few people have both. And it often takes a lot of time to sell something; that selling time is part of the labour cost package, and should be factored in.

If you take Alex's advice and use a gallery then they provide the marketing and selling skills and charge you for it. Galleries commonly work on a mark up of 50% and this is not excessive; very few galleries are highly profitable - most are struggling.

If you try to do your own marketing and sales then you will probably be less skilled than the galleries, less effective. Hence your marketing/sales cost is probably going to be higher than theirs - essentially you will have to think in terms of adding an oncost of 50% plus to cover your marketing effort. The time you spend talking to customers is not free - it is negative production time.

Remember; time is money!

A good place I found to start is make a bunch of chopping boards, coat racks, etc, whatever you can make well and get stalls are nearby markets, when they run again.

When you first start, be happy with covering the site cost from sales, this will grow as people get to know you. Also, speak to other stall holders and ask where they think your items will sell well and which markets to avoid.

While there, advertise that you're willing to take custom orders and have a business card ready to give to potential customers.

Thanks again for your responses, everyone.

Some interesting observations there. I can totally understand that many woodworkers have no interest in marketing their pieces, and are doing woodwork mostly for the personal satisfaction it brings. I guess that many here either have separate jobs in unrelated areas, or are financially independent, and like to spend their free time doing the woodwork they love, with no concern for monetary gain.

Also there are undoubtedly a lot of woodworkers who put vast amounts of time and hard yards into perfecting their craft, with the aim of achieving a high quality result, so the question of making money doesn't come into it at all.

The comments on people skills are very relevant. I suspect that introversion is pretty common among people who spend lots of time working solo in private workshops, thus there isn't much inclination to spend time interacting with others, in order to establish possible markets (yep, introvert here!

Still, I'm going to do what I can. I'm working on my own designs for furniture and other household utility items, using standard components - easily fabricated wooden parts that I can apply to a range of pieces, and churn out in large numbers, to keep production costs down. Also, there are a number of regular country markets hereabouts, including craft markets, which are well-attended. I'll try out some prototypes there, and see if I get any bites.

On the intro-extro-vert thing, its all types.

People describe me as an extrovert, but I love quietude and solitude deeply. The woodwork gives me the time to literally be by myself.

Many of the dudes I know here in Canberra are all over the, ah.... spectrum! They all have the same goals and I personally find it really welds us together, even after a long time apart.

As a hobby its grand. As a sport its great too... many competitions to enter. I enjoy the comradery. All the chaps and chapettes are excellent people. I've not found too many that have rubbed me the wrong way - this is because all are meaningfully intended and if they come over strongly it's because they do have some professional background worth listening too, even if only for curiosity.


One can have the goal to make some money. Personally I find that aspect super easy. The "doing" is my bugbear!

On selling, Etsy, retailers, targeted introductions and selling yourself to decision makers is the way I go. Its easy. So easy its rude.

Just start making and sell on Etsy. Thats the easiest.

Just happened to come across this article and thought of this thread.

Worth a read.... How to Defend Your Price as a Maker

surely making a quick buck is easy, buy a laser cutter and a CNC router.

LIVE LAUGH LOVE signs at markets.

the problem with most of the ideas i come up with for wood working i think i could only use a side gig.

Originally Posted by havabeer69

surely making a quick buck is easy, buy a laser cutter and a CNC router.

LIVE LAUGH LOVE signs at markets.

Αnd there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, perfectly decent way of making a buck.
The problem is all those people around me who think that because I love woodworking I'd also love making LIVE LAUGH LOVE signs for the markets, which for me sounds about as pleasant as sticking my head in the microwave. Same thing happened with everything I've tried as a hobby, eg photography
-Oh you take great photos, why don't you become a wedding photographer?
-Because why would I want to take photos of people who are 100% sure they could take them themselves with their phones, except they're too busy eating at the moment?

-Oh you make nice leather wallets, why don't you...
-No. Go away LOL

Etc

we have a 100w laser cutter, when the cruise ships were the thing there was always markets on the foreshore, so we make ugly things on the laser but mentioned PT Lincoln and beet the tourists off, fair go money for jam.
Although markets were limited before Christmas we still had some and made flat pack chrissie decorations.

find a common denominator and a theme,

We were doing so well that putting the damn tent gazebo up and down was the pits, so bought a single horse float plan to strip it down and rebuild as a mobile tourist shop. perish the bloody thought doing that.
I love the people and hate...detest working on my own, so wife does the work, and I am front of house. always have a few jokes to tell, and if people send more that certain amount get a free (useless gift

For what it's worth here's my 2c...

Some 5 years ago SWMBO began stained glass as a "hobby". She has always had an artistic bent and soon was producing what we term Art Pieces, some with some timber input from me.
~5 years ago I suggested that we should sell some to defray the cost of the Hobby and her feedback was that her stuff was not good enough, no-one will like it and it won't sell. Without telling I took a stall at the annual fair, and two weeks out told her we were selling some stuff. She freaked out.
5 years on we do a particular market a month, and another one perhaps 4 per year. It took a while to find the right ones. The stall cost is $70.00, (soon to be $80.00) and we never do less than 12 times that on the day. Often we do better than 20 times that. December was 37 times. It has taken me a while to get her to truly appreciate the prices that she SHOULD be asking, so now she defers to me for costings. Her argument was that if it's too pricey it won't sell. My response is that we'll just sell less items and make the same turnover for less input. So far I have been proven correct, luckily. In 5 years we've perhaps had 2-3 attempts to haggle, all met with a polite but firm no.
What others have said about other market stall holders is correct, provided you are not competing with them they will be generous with advice and assistance. One piece of advice we got early was to grade markets by a turnover/cost valuation.
Good markets do not GENERALLY have more than one stall for each "product". If they do than there is a shortage of potential stall holders which is a flag about it's suitability for you perhaps. The Kalamunda market manager rebranded about 4 years ago to an Artisan Market, where she is quite careful, if not picky, about who comes in. There are 4(?) legacy woodworkers at the market but they all have the same stuff, chopping boards, pens, bowls, clocks, cheese boards with cutlery and so on...yawn...All really nice, but nothing different. Not wishing to offend anyone here but why do they all seem to use the cheapest hardware they can find? And it's all the same stuff. Talking to them I get the feeling if they triple their stall fee they have done ok.

Last market we did was a $200 stall fee, and we did just under 8 times that. We won't be continuing those into this year.
Apart from one wildcard last year our best day at the $200 market was not as good as our worst day at the $70. Not forgetting markets have been severely curtailed in 2020. Opposite us there was a woodworker/turner with lovely stuff. Really, really nice pieces with a mix of resin and timber and the quality was definitely there, but he made no sales on the day. But everything was high priced, ie: nothing priced at an impulse buy price.
With the funds raised we have now converted an old 3 car garage into a studio in our front "yard" and she now does classes for 4 persons on the third Sat of every month. Now booked out until April.

We found online is not really for us, as every piece she does is unique, and so the time taken to upload and list etc, is kinda wasted. FB and Instagram have been good, especially boosted posts on FB where she generally gets a commission from somewhere in AU every time she posts a new piece and boosts it for $20. If you are interested look at Possums Run Glass Art on FB and Insta to see what we are creating.

Originally Posted by david.elliott

For what it's worth here's my 2c...

Some 5 years ago SWMBO began stained glass as a "hobby". She has always had an artistic bent and soon was producing what we term Art Pieces, some with some timber input from me.
~5 years ago I suggested that we should sell some to defray the cost of the Hobby and her feedback was that her stuff was not good enough, no-one will like it and it won't sell. Without telling I took a stall at the annual fair, and two weeks out told her we were selling some stuff. She freaked out.
5 years on we do a particular market a month, and another one perhaps 4 per year. It took a while to find the right ones. The stall cost is $70.00, (soon to be $80.00) and we never do less than 12 times that on the day. Often we do better than 20 times that. December was 37 times. It has taken me a while to get her to truly appreciate the prices that she SHOULD be asking, so now she defers to me for costings. Her argument was that if it's too pricey it won't sell. My response is that we'll just sell less items and make the same turnover for less input. So far I have been proven correct, luckily. In 5 years we've perhaps had 2-3 attempts to haggle, all met with a polite but firm no.
What others have said about other market stall holders is correct, provided you are not competing with them they will be generous with advice and assistance. One piece of advice we got early was to grade markets by a turnover/cost valuation.
Good markets do not GENERALLY have more than one stall for each "product". If they do than there is a shortage of potential stall holders which is a flag about it's suitability for you perhaps. The Kalamunda market manager rebranded about 4 years ago to an Artisan Market, where she is quite careful, if not picky, about who comes in. There are 4(?) legacy woodworkers at the market but they all have the same stuff, chopping boards, pens, bowls, clocks, cheese boards with cutlery and so on...yawn...All really nice, but nothing different. Not wishing to offend anyone here but why do they all seem to use the cheapest hardware they can find? And it's all the same stuff. Talking to them I get the feeling if they triple their stall fee they have done ok.

Last market we did was a $200 stall fee, and we did just under 8 times that. We won't be continuing those into this year.
Apart from one wildcard last year our best day at the $200 market was not as good as our worst day at the $70. Not forgetting markets have been severely curtailed in 2020. Opposite us there was a woodworker/turner with lovely stuff. Really, really nice pieces with a mix of resin and timber and the quality was definitely there, but he made no sales on the day. But everything was high priced, ie: nothing priced at an impulse buy price.
With the funds raised we have now converted an old 3 car garage into a studio in our front "yard" and she now does classes for 4 persons on the third Sat of every month. Now booked out until April.

We found online is not really for us, as every piece she does is unique, and so the time taken to upload and list etc, is kinda wasted. FB and Instagram have been good, especially boosted posts on FB where she generally gets a commission from somewhere in AU every time she posts a new piece and boosts it for $20. If you are interested look at Possums Run Glass Art on FB and Insta to see what we are creating.

very interesting read, thanks for posting it.

Thanks David, an inspiring post. The glass art looks great, and your woodwork offsets some of the pieces nicely.

This is what you want to do if you can get away with it ,
gift wrap firewood and call it a cake stand with a ridiculous price on it.($280.00) There was another one a little bit bigger that was $310.00