Our Craft and Home Business Idea

This is our craft and home business idea to make money to cover the costs of maintaining our small alpaca herd. What is this craft? Needle felting.

To understand this craft and home business idea, you must know what it takes to maintain a herd. Listed below is the annual cost of maintaining our herd:

• $60.00 - Hay (we must feed all year round as we have no grazing pastures)

• $25.00 - Shearing by a hired shearer

• $16.00 - Quarterly worming done by us

• $ 1.50 - Vaccination done by us

• $13.00 - Pellets (not fed year round and not all alpacas)

• $115.50= Total per alpaca per year

Cost = $920.00 per year for herd of 8 alpacas.

You must, also, know how much fiber an Alpaca produces for this craft and home business idea. An Alpaca will produce between 5-10 pounds of luxurious fiber for non-breeding animals. Breeding animals produce between 3-5 pounds.

Lets use 5 pounds of alpaca fiber production as an example: 5 pounds = 80 ounces

• 20 ounces will not be usable

• 20 ounces will be coarse and usable for felting or rugs only

• 40 ounces will be good quality (spinning quality)

We use felting and spinning quality for our craft and home business idea.

That's 60 ounces of fleece per animal. Several of my animals produce more than 5 pounds.

We sell needle felted items locally and on ebay. Here is an example of one of the small items that sold on ebay:

• $17.00 - final sale price

• $ 1.35 - ebay listing fee

• $ .89 - ebay final value fee

• $ .49 - paypal fee

• $14.27 profit

Now at this price, we would have to sell 8 or so needle felted items to pay for one alpaca. But, that was one of the lower prices we got. On average we made $35.00 per needle felted item and sold some for $50.00.

Selling several locally saved the fees for ebay and paypal. We actually prefer to sell locally but ebay fills in and helps boost our sales. Find a local craft show in your area where people will appreciate your handmade product.

Our goal is not to make an hourly wage from this craft and home business idea. We just want to make enough to pay for our herd. The needle felting is an enjoyable hobby that helps us keep our alpaca herd.

Needle felted items seem to start selling just before halloween and drop off after Christmas. So we spend the time inbetween building up our needle felted characters inventory.

The items take anywhere from 1/2 an ounce for small items to 2 ounces for larger items. That means with 60 ounces of alpaca fleece, you can make 30-120 items from one alpaca.

Not all will sell. Study what is selling. Come up with something unique and make a quality product and this craft and home business idea might maintain your alpaca herd. But don't take it up if you don't enjoy crafts because it is time consuming and be prepared to poke yourself a few times (ouch...the needles do hurt and you should probably get your tetanus up to date).

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