When I first heard about the popular site Fiverr, I was admittedly skeptical. If you are one of the few who hasn’t heard of it yet, let me spell out the basic premise. Just about anyone can hop on the site for free and throw up something that they would do for $5 USD. As you might expect, these talented people run the gambit, and products are included as well. You can have someone do voice over work for you, edit an image, draw a funny picture of your family, or order a mini Mario hat for your baby (OK so I made that last one up..but still..).
There is a whole lot of crap on the site since anyone can throw up a post, but plenty of legitimately talented people seem to do well on there. If you have the idea of hopping on there yourself, the name of the game is hourly rate. Don’t put up something that is going to take you an hour, as in all likelyhood you’ll get bored with it quickly or not make enough money for it to be worth your time. Me? Well, I decided to run with my Nintendo bead coasters on there, and so far things are looking good. I have sold about 10 coasters so far, compared to my 0 over at the Etsy shop I threw up.
Another idea would be to put together a variety of these talented people into some sort of pseudo team. If you could, say, sell birthday packages to parents with a funny picture, an image of superman giving your kid the thumbs up, and..I don’t know, custom made birthday candles, and sell it for more than $15.00, there is money to be made. Just tossing around ideas, but so far at the very least it has been good for my fledgling craft business.