flutterbye

Wow, thats a big one. I agree with asheebeans. Start small and work up to the bigger shows. Get your name out there more first. I did shows all holiday season last year and made my most money, over a grand, at a two day show that I only paid $90 for the booth. At a show that I paid $275 for the booth, didn't even make enough to cover the booth fee. You just never know how a show will to, so it's up to you (and your checkbook) to take that chance.

Congratulations!!!! Last year was my first year and I lost. But I guess thats about normal... Here's to a new year of profits for everyone!

Make sure when you are adding up your cost of supplies, seperate them into different categories like: equipment, materials & supplies, advertising expenses, repairs & maitnance, commissions, office supplies, etc...

Lysa, there shouldn't be any problem getting product liability insurance as this covers what happens in the customer's home, not yours. A possible problem though, is that your landlord may not be happy with you manufacturing candles for sale in the home you're renting. But then maybe this is something you've already cleared with the landlord and it's okay.

I rent and was able to get coverage through HBN. I also have renters insurance but I dont know if it that covers anything with my business or not. At my last apartment, It was even in the lease that candles/oil lamps are not even allowed to be burned. I still ran my business scared to death that I was going to get caught. I kept everything hidden at all times. I finally was so paranoid all the time that we moved to a place that didn't mind it. I'm still paranoid though and only make my scented candles late at night while everyone else in the complex is asleep so that nobody would ever complain about the smells.

I'm SOOO Jealous!!! I just moved from a place where I had an entire extra large bedroom to myself to work in and now I'm back to using the kitchen in our new place. It stinks! Have Fun!

I make my Ivory 3x9" unity sets with 4045H wax, 3 tbs stearic, 1 ounce FO per pound and 1 peaks ivory dye chip to two pounds of wax. Turns out a perfect light ivory. Maybe try using less of the dye chip. With mine, in the pot it doesn't seem like it colored the wax much, but when the pillar is cooled & finished you get a nice Ivory shade.

Jimbo2, I am in Missouri as well. I chose to go with the Indie Beauty Network for insurance because I couldn't find anyone to offer me the same type of coverage for that price. Some companies quoted me as high as $8500 a year!

You need to register your business as well. If you are caught or ever audited, you may be in some trouble. It's really simple in MO. Just register as sole proprieter for a sales tax # (for what you make, the bond should only be $25) and register you business name from the secretary of states website, if you have one, (it's only $7). Here is a link to the MO DOR http://dor.mo.gov/tax/business/register/ you will find alot of useful info here. You should be collecting & remitting sales tax on anything you sell. You'll find your sales tax rate through the DOR website link. It seems like it's gonna be a big pain at first to do all this, but it's really pretty easy to take care of. HTH!

SO beautiful! I love the purple, blue and white ones!

I really like your setup! The christmas decorations around your table are very nice too. I bet a lot of people commented on how nice your display was. The wood risers are beautiful! I sure wish my man was crafty enough to build something like that for me..

Wow, your dispalay is beautiful! I can't believe your palm pillars didn't sell! I love the square shape.

two things that really helped me: If you know anyone who has some sort of office where alot of people come by, ask them to just sit one of your candles on their desk. My friends dad is a chiropractor, he set one of my hurricanes on the front desk with a bunch of brochures in it. Got alot of business that way.

And yes, have a website, even if it's just information & pictures. I had a small decal with my website address on it put on the window of my car. That helped some.

I do think that doing craft fairs help the most though. Got most of my business that way.

One thing that I feel is the most important, to set you apart from the others is to have the best presentation. Try and make brochures, business cards, displays, etc. as beautiful and unique as possible. Something to grab their attention and make them remember. Otherwise they may forget about your products when they walk into say, a pier one and see their candles. You really have to find that something that will make people ooh & ahh over your products. just my:2cents: . Good luck on getting your business going!

Using Mals' isn't too complex - you just have to learn how to put a button on your webpage that sends the info to mals. It can be as simple as a button, or, if you need drop down options for scents or colors, you need to add a form to your webpage.

I did a tutorial a while back - maybe this will help:

http://watersgulch.com/howtomals.shtml

When you set up Mals to take CC, then Mals does all the work in providing a secure place to put a CC

Thank You So Much! Wow, that explains it, I understand now. I made some drop down buttons with it and they work! That was my whole problem, understanding the html. With freewebs and paypal I never needed to use any of that. Plus I didnt have my cart set to take credit cards, so the payment screen was just blank with a submit button. I'm looking forward to getting my site back up. It will be a long night ahead of me, but I think It will work out.

Ok, Paypal has screwed me the last time. I've just cancelled my account after finding a bunch of unauthorized transactions in my checking account through them. So my problem now is I need a shopping cart for my website fast! I am without as of now.

I use Propay to manually enter cards from shows and I signed up for A Mals Cart But cant for the life of me figure out how to get them to work on my website. So I was thinking of on my website, creating an order form page where customers fill all their info (address/shipping address/credit card number,etc) and then submit it to me at my email. I will them manually enter this information into propay. Does anyone else do this? I'm not sure if this is very secure though, but I dont know what else to do. I cant figure out the html stuff for shopping carts, thats why i used paypal before.

Are there people you can hire for this? Can somebody help me find a shopping cart for dummies?

Anyone?? I need to order an imprinter asap but cant find any info on what personal information is required to put on the plate

I am getting ready to order an imprinter for my upcoming shows and was wondering on the plate, what info besides your business name do you need to put?

Also, I have paypal for my website now and am wanting to do the thing where you go home from shows and manually enter the cc yourself. They want $30/mo where propay is $34/year, So I'm thinking of just opening a propay acct for just this purpose. I tried to set up a mals cart for my site and then was wanting to use propay with it, but I cant seem to figure out how to set that up. Anyone else do this? Have any input or suggestions??

Oh my...I seriously think that there should be much more of a public awareness on candle/fire safety. Maybe if they did a few news special reports on the horrible things that can and have happened from burning a candle improperly. Maybe if people actually hear stories about others houses being burned down due to their neglect, they would be more cautious. Its all common sense to me, but some people just dont understand that flame next to curtains = fire.

Hey thanks guys! I think I will try to set up a mals shopping cart with propay this week and see how it goes. I just hope it works with a freewebs hosted website.

Has anyone else here that uses paypal with their website noticed that their add to cart buttons have automatically changed to a bright gold 3D looking button? Mine have and now my site looks mismatched and awful and there are no longer any options to choose different buttons. Plus the $30/mo fee for virtual terminal..I've about had it with pay pal ! Propay has good prices but thats not a shopping cart, right?

Does anyone else use freewebs and have a third party shopping cart? If so, can someone please guide me in the right direction on maybe who to go with or how to set this up since freewebs says credit cards cannot be processed on their site since they dont offer SSL so I'd have to link to that shopping cart. I'm not familiar with how all this works, so any input would be well appreciated.

Iv'e seen this kind of glass everywhere..Michaels, Garden Ridge, Hobby Lobby. They're usually in the candle holder sections and are pretty inexpensive. They look pretty with sand or small rocks at the base around the pillar. HTH!

Congratulations! I lived in Germany as a teen and had a heck of a time finding candles in any of the stores. Or at least pretty ones that smelled good, dont think I ever saw a rustic there.... Yours will do great I'm sure, Good Luck!

I would be so incredibly happy if someone would ask me how to properly burn a candle. Instead, I end up telling them without them asking and they just look at me with a blank stare like they couldn't care any less. I was telling my friend once how its so important to trim you wick and she said she has never heard of that. :rolleyes2 It's kinda common sense...

I never meant to imply that they were actually stolen. They probably are a reseller of pourettes products or have permission or something. Was just making a little comment since I'm a little ticked from my photos being stolen and used on anothers ebay website.

OMG! I was in the middle of upgrading my paypal account to the virtual terminal a few days ago and it was $20/month. Today I went back to finish setting up and its $30! Does anyone know if you can sign up for maybe just 2 months, cancel and sign up again at another time? Like if you just want to use the virtual terminal around the holidays only...I will be looking into propay as well, they only have an annual fee.

hmmm...I remember looking at this site a long time ago for hurricane molds and noticed they had all the same photos as pourette and figured they may have stolen the photos to use them on their site, so I didn't order from them. But that just my usual suspicious thinking, maybe they didn't...

Thanks, thats what I was looking for, I think I'll try out tubing, I've only used bags before, hope this works better.