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Shameless Commerce Division
I've been working with chainmail for a couple years now, but the sheer volume of response to my latest project (scalemail pants) has inspired/encouraged me to go ahead and try to make a little money off it. Thanks to the magic of Tubes 2.0, the obvious way would appear to be to start an Etsy shop. So naturally I've pored through a bunch of their getting-started sellers' resources and am closing in on feeling ready to actually do this. But I'm hitting a few roadblocks.
Shop name (the truly important stuff). I keep drifting back to "Madhouse Metals" then balking, not wanting to limit myself from making the occasional Ridiculous Scarf or phone case. Chainmail jewelry will still be my focus, but my internal thesaurus is crashing when I try to look up synonyms for "shiny things" that start with M. Any suggestions? Winner gets a gold star (or a star of any other color(s)). This is a deceptively big deal because it'll have to go on tax paperwork and other crap that's a pain in the butt to change.
Banking. I heart my bank to death, but they don't have anything aimed toward small business, let alone micro-business. Etsy stroungly suggests keeping shop finances separate from personal finances. How seriously should I take this? Would I regret getting a free checking account aimed at personal use and then running a business out of it? Has anyone had good experiences with any banks I should look into?
Inventory. Most of my projects have been... rather large in scale. I may not be a market analyst, but I highly doubt anyone would be willing to pay me enough to want to do another pair of those pants that I won't get to keep for myself. So I have to learn to make small things. Not only that, I have to learn what counts as originality and creativity in small things. Especially when there are instructions and tutorials for hundreds of different weaves, it feels like making "just another pair of full-persian earrings" isn't actually going to be standing out in any way.
This feels like an oddly complicated and rigorous process for something where I expect to see maybe a couple hundred dollars of sales in a year. But my programmer instincts write maintainable code if I'm writing anything at all carry over to here. I may not expect a $2000 armor commission, but if one lands in front of me I want to not have to ignore it.
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Shop name (the truly important stuff). I keep drifting back to "Madhouse Metals" then balking, not wanting to limit myself from making the occasional Ridiculous Scarf or phone case. Chainmail jewelry will still be my focus, but my internal thesaurus is crashing when I try to look up synonyms for "shiny things" that start with M. Any suggestions? Winner gets a gold star (or a star of any other color(s)). This is a deceptively big deal because it'll have to go on tax paperwork and other crap that's a pain in the butt to change.
Banking. I heart my bank to death, but they don't have anything aimed toward small business, let alone micro-business. Etsy stroungly suggests keeping shop finances separate from personal finances. How seriously should I take this? Would I regret getting a free checking account aimed at personal use and then running a business out of it? Has anyone had good experiences with any banks I should look into?
Inventory. Most of my projects have been... rather large in scale. I may not be a market analyst, but I highly doubt anyone would be willing to pay me enough to want to do another pair of those pants that I won't get to keep for myself. So I have to learn to make small things. Not only that, I have to learn what counts as originality and creativity in small things. Especially when there are instructions and tutorials for hundreds of different weaves, it feels like making "just another pair of full-persian earrings" isn't actually going to be standing out in any way.
This feels like an oddly complicated and rigorous process for something where I expect to see maybe a couple hundred dollars of sales in a year. But my programmer instincts write maintainable code if I'm writing anything at all carry over to here. I may not expect a $2000 armor commission, but if one lands in front of me I want to not have to ignore it.
click