All my life (more or less) I've been trying to make money with my own business.
I've always wanted to do my own thing, work for myself, but I never knew how to do the hard stuff. The hard stuff is things like trying to find a market, trying to get the word out.
My first business was when I was in my teens. I was knitting and crocheting Barbie doll clothes and I would sell them at a consignment store in a nearby town. I augmented that with lamps made from 7-up cans (the one I made for myself lasted perhaps 30-35 years). I sold more of the lamps.
Fast Forward to my 20s. I was a student at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and after washing out in flat pattern design (2ce) and Draping (only once) I decided to try jewelry design where I learned how to render designs (as in paint them on paper). I also learned how to make my pieces out of silver and gold and added stones (I had a stone setter who helped me with faceted stones). I sold mostly silver, but some gold, to co-workers of mine and my mother's. I didn't exactly make enough to support myself, but I did okay (I still have my account book almost 45 years later).
About 30 or so years ago, I partnered with my sister-in-law for a graphic design business. We had a few customers. When my SIL went her own way, I continued with the graphics business, though I had no idea how to "drum up" business. I did logos and stationery, layout for newsletters, and invitations (those were fun) in addition to working on flyers etc. for two non-profits. I earned a bit of money, but, again, not enough to support myself.
In the 90s, I had a client to made tees and for her, I did a lot of designs that ended up on tee shirts. I did a few "city" designs (I particularly remember a peach for Atlanta and an apple for NYC). At one point, she told me she had an idea to design tees for young Jewish women, so I started designing what I came to call "Strong Jewish Women" (and "Strong Biblical Women") designs (I have them on my CafePress shop, but I can't link directly to them (you have to copy this link text and when you get the CafePress home page linking to this, https://www.cafepress.com/compugraphd2 put the copy in the URL line and paste, then hit return). I don't know why CafePress does this, but it's the only site I have the Strong Jewish Women on.
In any case, over the years, I've been designing graphics for my Zazzle site (https://www.zazzle.com/store/compugraphd ), my Arts Now site (http://www.artsnow.com/compugraphd ) which is less expensive than other sites, however, since the merchandise comes from China, it takes longer, my PrintPop site (http://www.printpop.com/compugraphd ) and, for fabric, Spoonflower (https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/compugraphd ) which I've also used on clothing that I've made.
So I'm hoping this time I'll be successful. (BTW, if any of my MLM FB friends wonder why I'm not a friend of MLMs, I can list for you MLMs I've paid for and either made less money than I paid for the kit or make no money).
I do have a drive to have my own business, but I'm missing a lot of the information necessary to make my business a reality. Right now, thanks to one of the lists I belong to, Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs , I have a mentor (FINALLY! I've been trying for about 30 or more years to find a mentor!) My mentor is helping a LOT and I really like her (she's patient with me and I really need that).
I also really need to make this, or some business, work -- I'm getting to the age where it's very hard to find a job and even if I do find one soon, I will need to find something soon after that that earns me enough to "pay the bills" but I won't have to go someplace out of the house every single work day.
