Craft Marketer
Newsletter
Craft Business Ideas
Issue Number 13, January
29, 2001
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IN THIS ISSUE
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1. How to manage your cash flow
2. Resources for designing your arts and crafts web site
3. Subscription Management
4. Contact Information
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1. How to Manage Your Cash Flow
by James Dillehay
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How do arts and crafts artists handle ups and downs
between
shows to avoid going broke just before the next string of
shows? One of the toughest parts of being in business is
predicting your income. No matter how great your artwork,
you still have to have sales and profits to survive. And
you have to know when and how the money is going to arrive
and how and where it's going out.
Budgeting can help. The most useful budget will be based
on expenses and revenues gathered from your last year's
financial records. If you don't already track your
business
finances from month to month in detail, make a resolution
to do so starting now because good recordkeeping will help
you manage the money you have on hand for the coming
season.
To put together a budget, you will need to record and
project cash flow and prepare a profit/loss statement.
This article with Examples of a Cash Flow chart and a
Profit/Loss Statement can be viewed at:
http://www.craftmarketer.com/budget.htm
By creating such a spreadsheet for your previous year's
income and expenses, you can safely project cash flow for
the coming months. After I began implementing this cash
flow method of tracking revenue and costs, I never ran
short of cash again. I can project the numbers forward
for any number of months and learn how much money I have
to spend on materials, travel, new projects and other
expenses. I know where my money is coming from or not and
decide if I can afford to do more shows.
If you find that your cash on hand is now or projected
to go below zero for several months, you need to take a
serious look at your business. Where can you cut costs?
How can you increase sales? If you borrow money, will
sales from craft shows bring in enough income to repay
the loan and get you back into the above zero range?
These are tough questions. But you must ask and answer
them to stay afloat financially.
Portions of this article are excerpted with permission
from "The Basic Guide to Pricing Your Craftwork," by James
Dillehay.
See http://www.craftmarketer.com/pricing-crafts.htm
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2. Resources for Designing Your Web Site
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Building a web site from which to sell your crafts can be
easier when you use the right tools. A program I use
and highly recommend is Site Sell. It makes the whole
process a step by step breeze.
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3. Subscription Management
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