Start a Scrapbooking Business - Perfect for Stay-at-home Moms

Scrapbooking is a multi-billion dollar industry and continues to grow. Now is the perfect time to take advatnage of this long lasting trend and start your own online scrapbook store. With hundreds of manufacturers and every imaginable product from paper to totes, where do you start?

1) The first step is to come up with a plan. You can't dive head first into this or any business. It requires a strategy to differ yourself from the competition already out there. How will you attract customers? What are you offering that is better or different? How will you retain customers?

2) After you have your plan on paper, share it with others that have experience starting or running a business. Conduct informal surveys of friends to gauge their opinions. However, take your friend's opinions with a grain of salt, because most friends will be optimistic. Seek outside opinions and conduct formal surveys of people you don't know. Gather all the market data, criticism and feedback you can get.

3) Money, money, money! You need a plan and you need to stick to it. How much are you investing? What are you spending money on? How much will you spend on advertising and marketing?

4) Where will you get your products? Will you buy wholesale directly from manufacturers? This is a huge capital investment and will require at least $10,000 to have an assortment of products. Or will you dropship to save the cost of buying your own inventory. There don't appear to be many reputable dropship companies shipping scrapbook supplies out there. The only one I can reccomend is Modzy.com . You can learn more about their dropship program by emailing dropship@modzy.com . They offer complete blind shipping or brand labeling on hundreds of products including albums, organization, embellishments, and more.

5) How will you build your website and store? How will you collect payments? How will you handle customer service and shipping? the next step is to determine the operational logistics of your business.

6) Away you go! The scrapbook industry has a lot of competition. Make sure you stick to your plan, don't panic, and constantly re-evaluate your plan if it is not working as well as you would like. Things may be slow at first, but if you plan beforehand, you will be much more likely to achieve success.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/start-a-scrapbooking-business-perfect-for-stayathome-moms-409252.html

About the Author:
Joshua Saunders is an experienced entrepreneur, and business development professional. Joshua has started and run several businesses and assists others in creating business plans, feasibility studies, market research, business strategy and growth plans.

Joshua is also a co-owner of Modzy.com , an online scrapbook store and free online digital design tool.

Joshua provides assistance and consulting to new and existing business owners. He can be contacted at josh@modzy.com .

For more business advice and tips, visit Joshua's blog at: www.JoshuaSaunders.com

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