A Good Article

Here is a good article I came across about starting your own craft business. I hope you will find it useful!

http://artsandcrafts.about.com/od/startingyourbusiness/tp/startcraftsbusiness.htm

Adventures of an On-Line Seller

Continued: Legal Stuff

See my previous post on the same topic here.

Back to 2004...

Inspired by my first sale (and pushed in the same direction by my husband), I decided to start my own small business.

By then, I had some experience selling my own hand-made goods, although it was in a totally different country (back in Russia, 10 years earlier). As a student, I used to make custom wedding dresses (which was very romantic and creative, but not profitable enough due to the time involved and the amount of customer service needed), I then switched to making backpacks for fellow white-water canoeists (which was way more successful and less time-consuming). Anyway, I had a rough idea of what's involved – business registration, taxes, etc., and I was not looking forward to that. I think, legal stuff sounds scary to many creative minds in any part of the world.

Turned out, the entire process here in the US is quite straight-forward, and so my business was created and given an official status in a record time.

I was about to look for my list of useful links on this topic when I came across this post:

Small_Businesses_and_Taxes

I think it answers all the basic questions related to the legal part of turning your craft into business very well.

To be continued - next Thursday...