If you have any crafting skills, or if you can make food of some kind that’s fairly portable and doesn’t need refrigeration, and you have access to someplace where you can park with your wares and bother passerby, that might work. I once made about $30 sitting in a hallway at school for an afternoon selling muffins for a buck fifty each (I was on a muffin-baking spree, and my freezer was getting full), and my town has a fair number of street vendors in nice weather (I have bought things from them before). If the only problem with cashiering was that you weren’t supposed to read, this doesn’t seem like it would present any problems for you, since, who’s going to stop you?
Some places might require you to have a permit; I’m pretty sure the street vendors have to get one every morning from town hall. Nobody bothered me when I sold muffins and I didn’t have any kind of permission, though.
Well, an afternoon, plus baking time for six basic muffins and variations, plus cooking time for the applesauce that went into one batch of muffins, plus the cost of all the ingredients, plus the time it took to write up little flavor labels for each muffin and individually wrap them in saran wrap… And transit time by bus to and from school… I baked the muffins for fun, though, and only decided to sell them when I did not have room to store them and wasn’t eating them fast enough.
I mean, I’m not knocking it as a way to spend time, or I wouldn’t have suggested it, but I’m not still doing it. I got thirty bucks, spent it on a used camera and a necklace, and called it good. And I had my laptop open the entire time and did exciting things like read Less Wrong, which is more or less what I would have been doing if I’d stayed home to goof off instead of selling muffins.
It doesn’t seem like she has a good grasp on what people are doing with Etsy and what it’s about. If you want to make a ‘profitable’ business, you’re already looking in the wrong place on Etsy. But if your time isn’t worth much and you want to sell some crafts, it seems to work fine.
If you have any crafting skills, or if you can make food of some kind that’s fairly portable and doesn’t need refrigeration, and you have access to someplace where you can park with your wares and bother passerby, that might work. I once made about $30 sitting in a hallway at school for an afternoon selling muffins for a buck fifty each (I was on a muffin-baking spree, and my freezer was getting full), and my town has a fair number of street vendors in nice weather (I have bought things from them before). If the only problem with cashiering was that you weren’t supposed to read, this doesn’t seem like it would present any problems for you, since, who’s going to stop you?
Some places might require you to have a permit; I’m pretty sure the street vendors have to get one every morning from town hall. Nobody bothered me when I sold muffins and I didn’t have any kind of permission, though.
Wow! $30? For only an afternoon plus baking time?
quits day job
ETA: Okay, that was too snarky, even for me. Crono only wants to make $8000/year, and that’s good enough for that goal. So, good suggestion.
Well, an afternoon, plus baking time for six basic muffins and variations, plus cooking time for the applesauce that went into one batch of muffins, plus the cost of all the ingredients, plus the time it took to write up little flavor labels for each muffin and individually wrap them in saran wrap… And transit time by bus to and from school… I baked the muffins for fun, though, and only decided to sell them when I did not have room to store them and wasn’t eating them fast enough.
I mean, I’m not knocking it as a way to spend time, or I wouldn’t have suggested it, but I’m not still doing it. I got thirty bucks, spent it on a used camera and a necklace, and called it good. And I had my laptop open the entire time and did exciting things like read Less Wrong, which is more or less what I would have been doing if I’d stayed home to goof off instead of selling muffins.
Along the same vein, Etsy is a place to do that online (not so much with the food though)
What are your thoughts on the recent “Etsy considered harmful” article?
It doesn’t seem like she has a good grasp on what people are doing with Etsy and what it’s about. If you want to make a ‘profitable’ business, you’re already looking in the wrong place on Etsy. But if your time isn’t worth much and you want to sell some crafts, it seems to work fine.