Okay, so you’ve played enough BINGO and you’ve taught enough seminars about eating gluten-free and how to balance your check book. What’s next? How about teaching embroidery digitizing to make extra money. We’ll walk you through a few steps to help you get set up and tell you what you’re going to need and how easy it will be to make money with your embroidery digitizer.
EQUIPMENT: One of the first things you need to do is buy an embroidery digitizer, the appropriate tools and designs that you will apply to various fabrics. Your fabrics can consist of anything from denim to cotton, baseball caps to pillows. Pick a few different items that you might want to work with, or to keep your students and class consistent working on the same project, give them all the same project but different styles. How about a shopping tote? Order the totes online and maybe look for a nice canvas fabric.
YOUR CLASS: When you decide where you will have your class, consider things like an area that has separate desks like a classroom at a school or a conference room at a hotel or a room that your church might allow free access to. Next, post a sign that you are offering embroidery digitizing classes, give the when, where and for how long and set a price. Maybe because it’s your first class you can say $10 because keep in mind you want to recoup the cost of the bags, or you can charge $5 for the class and $5 for the bags. When you give your information, make sure you let your students know what embroidery designs you will be working on so they can start thinking about their individual projects.
TEACHING: When you set up your embroidery digitizer and your tools, don’t be nervous. You’re going to want to ensure you know exactly how to apply the designs to the bag well before your class, so practice at home several times and think of commonly asked questions your students may have. Bring as many design samples as you can to offer them a variety for their individual projects. For your introduction, tell your students about you, give your background/BIO information and any details that may be helpful, like if you’ve used a digitizer for years, let them know so they will feel comfortable with your expertise. Share the designs they can add to their bags so each student can pick the design sample they will want to work with and demonstrate applying your own to your bag. Let the students stand around you as they watch you and allow them to ask questions.
SALES: When you’ve finished, let them each take their turn on the digitizer applying their designs if they haven’t already bought one. And this is a great selling point: If your students really latch on, you can actually sell the equipment and make a profit and sell your designs to your students right there at the class! And have fun! You’re a digitizing entrepreneur!