Starting My Small Business
Because of our cross country move working from home got put on hold though it was always in the back of my mind. In the meantime I spent my “me” time doing my favorite new hobby–digital scrapbooking. I discovered digi scrapping through a series of seemingly random events and had spent my time learning and enjoying this new hobby.
In looking back I can see how God works everything together and guided each and every step that seemed coincidental at the time. I’m reminded of Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [His] purpose.
When we moved away from my family I wanted to show my mom the new pages I’d been working on so I decided to upload them to Facebook. I was overwhelmed with the response. I got positive feedback right and left and several people jokingly asked me how much I charged to make pages. A few people told me that I really should start making pages for other people for money. I brushed the idea off at first. I thought everyone was just being nice and didn’t think I was really that good.
After people continued to compliment my work, however, I started to consider the idea more seriously. Would it really be possible to start my own business? I decided once again to start praying and researching. I found other scrap-for-hire business and looked at their prices, examples, what I liked and didn’t like about how they ran their businesses and websites. I was amazed at how much they all charged and that they all seemed to have thriving businesses–maybe this would be possible after all! I then looked into what it would take to start up a scrap-for-hire business. I discovered that although you can get many digital kits for free or very reasonably priced, a kit that cost $4 for personal use would cost around $30 for commercial use. Since I didn’t have a bunch of money to put into starting a business I knew that I would just be putting all the money I made back into getting commercial licenses to use. It was then time to come up with a name and find some customers! After Googling name after name (everything good was already taken by professional photography studios) I found the perfect one–Artistic Albums By Nicole. I put up my latest personal pages and included a note that I was starting to make pages for others. One of my friend’s moms became my first client and I was thrilled! She even gave me the money for her pages up front so that I could buy one of my favorite designers all inclusive commercial license.
My hubby helped me put together a professional looking website, I started up a business blog, and things starting out great! Now I just needed to focus on making a profit!
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