The Ups and Downs of Self Employment

When 2023 ended, so did the temporary contract I had been lucky to find following my unexpected termination from my last full-time position. With the new year starting I wanted to give some of my own business ideas a try before I jumped back into the workforce. I’ve had many different creative projects on the go, some even from long before I was facing unemployment, and I was excited to see where some of them might lead if I had more time and energy to put into them.

Being a Content Creator?

One of the projects I’ve worked on to varying degrees since 2019 has been content creation.

I’ve used YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and a few other platforms to create casual content as I’ve always enjoyed the process of making different forms of visual media. In a video that I posted on YouTube in January I boldly claimed I’d try to adhere to a schedule for the year where I’d experiment with many different types of content, from gaming to journalism to DIY.

While I was fully prepared to deliver on this promise I made to myself and all 2 of my regular viewers at the time, I did not stick to this schedule for a few reasons. The biggest reason was that about two months into my attempt, I learned I am not interested in being a full-time content creator. While there are tons of aspects I love about content creation, it was not something that I was enjoying overall. The biggest hurdle for me was the consistency and frequency at which you need to upload new content in order to break into the various algorithms that run all of the major digital media platforms.

I much prefer to work on a video project over time and the intense time crunch I felt in having to try and make something new every week or two just sapped all the fun out of it for me. For the last month or two I’ve tried to let go of the idea of doing it “perfectly” and instead allowed myself the freedom to post infrequently.

Being able to post videos when I am ready to, instead of trying to stick to the “best practices” of YouTube or Twitch has been much more enjoyable, but of course has resulted in less “success” with the content I create.

Custom Cards & Stickers

As I began to realize that content creation was not going to be a viable source of income I turned to the other ongoing hobby I had at the time: making custom cards and stickers with my Cricut machine.

I started making fun stickers and cards just for my own enjoyment after I got my Cricut Maker at the end of 2022. By early 2024 I had experimented with most of the features and was excited to see how I could turn this into a potentially profitable business idea and I launched a store on Etsy and on my website.

So far I’ve had a lot of fun building this up from a handful of designs to the dozens I currently have available for sale. One of the most challenging aspects has been how to effectively advertise and sell custom items online. Having product photos can be difficult because some orders might have someone’s name or other information on it, and the nature of custom orders makes it difficult to show all of the possibilities in the photos.

By now I’ve found a good balance (or at least I hope I have) by showing samples of what I can make, and having a wide variety of designs to choose from. While many of my customers have been family and friends, I’ve started making sales to random people online and it feels very validating for a complete stranger to buy something I’ve made. Two of the most popular items so far have been my Birthday Card designs and the Toronto greeting cards.

While my custom cards have been more successful at selling, I’ve had a ton of fun designing more and more stickers – often based around some of my favourite books and movies. My Star Wars collection has grown large enough to have an entire page dedicated to Star Wars stickers along with many other designs that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed making.

The Future

Looking forward at the next few months I will definitely be adding more card and sticker designs to my inventory, as well as taking custom orders for both. In addition to these orders however, I’ve really enjoyed making fully custom projects for customers and I want to expand more into this area. The most successful kind of projects I’ve been working on are custom designs that can be put on mirrors or picture frames as an easy and affordable way to elevate the look of an art piece. These projects are also hard to advertise since each one is entirely custom made, but over the last few weeks I’ve put together a page showing some of the designs I’ve sold so far that hopefully gives customers some inspiration for their own orders.

Overall, the experience of self-employment has been very enjoyable for me and I look forward to what comes next. Being able to channel my passions into making media and art has been much more than just a way to make some income, it has been extremely healing after so many tumultuous years brought on by the pandemic. If you’ve already been a customer of mine, know that I appreciate you endlessly. And if not, I’ll plug my store one last time for all your custom art needs.

Thanks for reading! Cheers.