Wednesday, February 3, 2010

How Do You Make Ends Meet When What You Have is a Jumbled Mess?

As rewarding as doing housework is (cue laughter from the audience) it doesn't generate a paycheck! That part really sucks!!!!

Things I need to do today:

Clean both the 29 gallon fish tank and the 10 gallon fish tank
Clean all three toilets (whoever installed 3 toilets in a 2 level house didn't explore all the ramifications...)
Make something for dinner (possibly pizza tonight...I got nothin')
Fold 4 loads of laundry
Sweep and Mop the Kitchen floor
Empty dishwasher and fill it up again

That's going to take me like all day and its 12:30, the kids come home at 3:45, I need to go get my afternoon adult conversation fix at my friends house at 2, and ballet lessons for Fluffy #4 are at 5:00pm until 6.

LUCKILY I clean best under pressure!!! I just need to figure out how to put this baby down...




I am also trying to get my Etsy store up and running so I can try to generate a way to pay for some of my smaller monthly bills. I make jewelry (or, used to when I had time and less kids) and I also am an avid photographer. Since photography is a little easier for me to do and I have a ton of great photos stored on my various flash and hard drives I decided to concentrate on that.

I decided to charge $12 for each 8x10 print, and $5 for shipping/processing. Originally I said that each one will come matted in your choice of black or white. Yeah well little did I know that a mat costs on average $3.50!!!! The print itself costs about $3, and the packaging costs $3. Postage costs around $3 also. Lets do the math: Charging $17, costing $12.50. So I make only $4.50 and that does not count the driving time to pick up the photos or the postage for having them printed and sent to my house!!! I have sold a total of 6, but only charged for 2 mats out of those because I didn't think properly. Thinking properly is one of those things they don't teach you in school.




So this lesson in "Thinking for Dimwits" is: find out how much things cost such as materials, postage, packaging, etc. BEFORE you price any item that you may list. I know this sounds like common sense stuff, but this blog is for people like me who learn from their mistakes, or from reading crap on the internet!!! :) I usually learn things the hard way also.

Etsy.com is a great way to get your handmade items out there but its a game to play just like anything else, and it is HARD work for sure. It doesn't just happen. There are a lot of really talented people out there who are just like you and me, trying to make a living with what we have.

Another great place to make some money is Seed.com I heard about it on one of the national morning news shows (I know I know they are like gossip rags now) and I checked it out. If you are a writer or a photographer you can definitely make some money. Take a look!

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