Making a living in lutherie: money and marketing

This book follows on from "Making a living in lutherie: from amateur to professional."

Once again, this is not a woodworking book, but rather an ebook about running your business.

So you’ve already tried a few things to market your work? - Took out a small ad in a magazine? Got a Facebook page? Are you spending a lot of time doing “free” marketing? But is work coming in? Have you a house full of unsold instruments? Would you like to raise your prices? Or would two or three extra sales in a year make all the difference?

This book is for those who like to experiment and refine. Not only in making, but in all aspects of your work life.

Here are the chapter headings so you can see what is inside:

Who this ebook is for.

Avoid harm. Do good. Rinse and repeat.

Reality snapshot - money in, money out.

Your orders.

Audit: Customer sales review.

Inquires/sales past 12 months.

Marketing audit.

How to put a value on time spent on “free” marketing.

List of marketing efforts in the last 12 months.

Facing facts.

Target for the next 12 months.

The “marketing gap.”

How to know if your work is too cheap.

How to know if your work is too expensive

How to work out if you’re marketing enough.

Where are you now?

How to understand your market.

How to identify your customers.

Replace guesswork with experiments.

How to design marketing experiments.

Marketing actions list.

Case study - full time “new” maker doing pretty well.

Case study - Full time maker just getting by.

Case study - Part time maker selling expensive work.

Case study - Part time maker/repairer leveraging lineage, doing fine.

Case study - new maker, leveraging lineage - Tom Sands.

How to use what you’ve read.

Post script: Taking this to the next stage.

This ebook is 62 pages long, but there is a lot in it - the audit section is pretty thorough. If you take the time to work through it, you'll be in a great position to see what work you need to do to have a better future.

The product you are buying is a 62 page PDF. You are NOT buying a physical book and the ebook was not designed to be printed. It was designed primarily to be read on a screen. That said, being only 62 pages I printed out a copy on A4 and it was very readable.

Enjoy.