Starting Your Own Home Sewing Business

- how to make money by offering a sewing or embroidery service

If you're looking for a business opportunity that you can start from home and are an avid sewing enthusiast,

Home Sewing

Whatever your speciality, whether it's creating exquisite wedding dresses or sewing beautiful curtains, you're bound to have a local market for your skills.

Occasionally a curtain or fabric shop may be looking for a seamstress, but they'll almost certainly have an area where you can advertise your services. 

You may see adverts in your local newspaper for people who can work from home sewing - whilst this may help to get you started and give you the confidence to expand - these aren't always the best paid of jobs.  However, the advantages of being able to work your hours (starting and finishing when it suits you) around other commitments may outweight the rate of pay. 

Your local school might be interested in custom embroidery on the shirts of their sports teams, or uniform items for staff or students.

To develop a fully commercial business, you'll need a unique or unusual idea together with the skills to create and market that idea well.  An example of this kind of entrepreneurship is the Buggysnuggles business set up in the UK by Jo Ellis and Sarah Wickins. 

They now supply some of the major chain stores in the UK, yet the business allows them the flexibility to work around the commitment of picking children up from school. (Check it out at www.buggysnuggle.co.uk  ).

Being home based has it's advantages, offering flexibility whilst helping keep a balance between time spent at work and at home, as Sarah says "work to live, not live to work".

Whilst some people wonder just how much money can be made in a home sewing business, starting small

Investing in equipment

It can be tempting to go out and buy the best embroidery machine money can buy together with the management and design software for dozens of patterns.

Yet, it's probably better to restrain the urge and initially start with the equipment that you've already got, at least until you start to see an income coming in. 

You'll probably have to invest in some items - for a sewing or embroidery business, you may wish to purchase extra notions such as threads, pins, etc; for an eBay business, purchasing envelopes and packing materials (try buying small quantities of these from eBay itself!).

Selling supplies on eBay

Whatever your area of expertise, there are opportunities to make use of it on eBay.

One area which is very popular is the sale of unused fabrics, how about offering friends a deal for selling their unwanted fabrics, curtains, machines and sewing supplies via eBay.  It's easier than you think to learn and most people would rather they were sold than were cluttering up the garage or loft.

Alternatively, just looking at the eBay site, people often offer packages of goods that they have prepared, for example, squares of fabric cut ready for patchwork.  Buying bolts of fabric in at trade prices, cutting it to lengths or sizes and selling it on could be a profitable option - check out online prices at eBay.

You could also sell related supplies such as buttons, vintage patterns (scour your local secondhand sales) and unwanted accessories.

Whatever your interest, find some information and see whether a small eBay business could work for you.  I'd recommend you read at least one book,  one I found particularly comprehensive was "The eBay Business Handbook" by Robert Pugh.

Writing Your Own eBook

You may not realise that you've got a wealth of knowledge, but the key to a simple ebook is to answer peoples immediate needs and solve their problems.

Who'd have thought that a Guide to Lawn Care could be a best-seller online - or that a guide to keeping your marble worktops in top condition would have earnt someone a handsome income! 

To look at an example of someone who's already successfully done this, check out Sewing Roman Shades which is a popular site which offers a simple solution to people looking to sew their own shades at home.  The 7 day ebook (see below) offers a proven method of successfully writing, publishing and making a success of your book.

Repairing Machines

If you're mechanically minded, taking a course at your local college to learn to repair machines could be a real money-spinner. 

Most machines need regular servicing, and centres for this are increasingly hard to find.  Offering local repairs provides people with a valuable service, at a reasonable price, with low overheads for you.

It's also possible to teach yourself how to repair sewing machines and then offer your service to friends and neighbours.

Managing your business

It's important to let the appropriate authorities know that you're now self-employed and working from home.

Banks often offer free advice for the self-employed or small businesses, so take advantage of this if it's available at your local branch.

Also, you'll need to keep good records of your income and expenditure to enable you to create your end of year accounts.  One of the easiest ways of doing this is to keep them in a file, together with keeping monthly records on an Excel spreadsheet.  You can also buy books in the stationery stores that will help you maintain accurate records.

Promotion & publicity

With the internet so popular, it can be a great way to publicise your business, particularly if you're not confined to your local area.  Writing articles with useful information and publishing them on EzineArticles.com with links back to your website can help get your site in the search engine results for your area. 

Whilst you'll find that publicity is important when staring a home sewing business, you'll need to continue publicising it regularly, both on and offline.

Useful Resources

Auction Traffic Explosion - priced at just a few dollars, this shows how to get attention for your online eBay auctions

Cheap home business books - the One Dollar bookstore offers some free downloads, some cheap ($1) to help build a successful business

Write & publish your own ebook in 7 days - sell it on eBay or as an information product.  This is a step-by-step guide for novice writers to put together their own successful eBook ready for online success.