keeping your business up part-time

[StudioMarlowe]

Since my craft business is not my primary job, I often struggle with finding the time to really work on growing and developing beyond "hobby" status. I've been working on developing some strategies that will hopefully start and keep momentum going. I know I'm not the only person who's business is a part-time operation, so I'm sure other people are dealing with this too. If you have any tips or strategies, let's share them here!

A couple of things I have been doing:

1. Keeping a list of specific items I need to accomplish. I try to have them broken down into tasks that I can achieve in an evening or less. So rather than "redesign website" as one whole task, I might put down "update X page in store", and other smaller tasks like that.

2. I have a goal of doing at least one "strictly business" task per week. These tasks are the non-creative side of the work...I can make myself knit sample pieces no problem, but doing things to increase my business visibility takes more of a concerted effort. Lately I've been working on increasing my search engine traffic, so my weekly tasks have been things like "research uses of SEO keywords".

3. Set aside a specific time each week that is for the "business" side of things. Again, this is NOT creative time, but time to do things like update the books, work on promotion, research options for upping the reach of my patterns, etc.

4. Set some longer term (6 months/1 year/2 year goals), then make a list of things I need to be doing each month to make those goals happen. Review at the beginning of each month to see what I accomplished and what I am falling behind on.

What do you do to keep your business going on not too much time?
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Studio Marlowe knitting patterns: 15% off with code "yellowboards"

[mk.carroll]

Hiring contractors instead of trying to get it all done myself. For example, I meant to learn how to use WordPress better, but it was a better investment of my time to pay someone else to set up a shop plugin and tinker with it to get it working.
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ravelry: mkcarroll
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[The Sewphist]

For me, planning out what markets I'm going to do helps me actually get making!

I did set myself a goal of having a product of the week and doing a weekly blog showcasing other local makers. Except I've fallen over a little on that recently, so I need to get back doing that...

I also have a whole list of new products I want to develop, but I never seem to get time to do so. I need to rearrange my pin board with a big to do list in the middle of it.
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Ooh look! It's an etsy.

I felt like something a bit more local.

[midnightsky1686]

1. Set up autoresponders to respond to emails if you won't be able to respond in a day.

2. Make sure your FAQ page is really good and answers questions like how often you can ship (esp if you don't ship same day).

3. Decide on the direction you want to go- do you want to sell occasional or one of a kind items, or do you want to produce many of the same or similar items?

4. Set up ads to autorun so you always (hopefully) get some income from people buying!
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Midnightsky Fibers- great knitting patterns!
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