Woodworking or Making Money

My woodworking business is off to a rocky start so far. I had a wildly unproductive time last week. Both Monday and Friday were a complete wash. I had to ask myself what I was spending my time on. Was I just fooling around in the shop? Was I even going down in the shop? I spent Thursday doing measured drawings and ordering materials for Shaker style boxes. I intend on selling those. Hopefully. I haven’t broken into that market yet. We’ll see.

I have other ways to make money with my woodworking. I can podcast. I can just putter around in the shop and have fun doing whatever tickles my fancy. The money is laughable, though. Putting out a new podcast doesn’t even get me through the toll booth on the highway (there are tolls in New England). Hopefully it will someday. I’m banking on slow growth for the podcast. So far, so good.

I have commissions to make. That’s obviously the smartest move. I’ve made two 6-foot rulers for households other than my own. One is a write off. It’s a house full of foster kids. The other one is for my cousin. He agreed to pay real American dollars. Enough to be worth my time. I blew any profit on that job by carving an error, but lucky for me, I was able to salvage it. Now all I have to do is deliver it. I guess that settles it, I’ll make more 6-foot rulers. I’m secretly hoping my cousins will be able to generate a little word of mouth marketing for me, once they get their rulers. I can only imagine banging out a ruler at full retail. What a glorious day that will be.