Are you looking for a home-based business opportunity?

One that could be both fun and profitable?

A business opportunity you could operate from the comfort of home and start for less than $500.00?

If you answered "YES" to any of these questions, then making buttons (also known as badges) could be the answer for you.

In this article, I am going to share my own button-making experiences and show you how you can earn as much as $123.00 an hour making buttons.

Sound too good to be true?

It's not... and if you will give me just a few minutes of your time, I'll show you how.

The first time I made buttons as a business venture was back in 1991. It was while I was attending a week-long convention of the National Association of Letter Carriers in New Orleans.

I had previously been a Letter Carrier and I took my button machine along to the convention with the hopes of making and selling buttons to offset some of my expenses.

I set up a folding table on the sidewalk outside the convention center and sold my buttons to the conventioneers as they made their way into the convention each morning, and again as they left the convention each afternoon.

To replace the buttons I was able to sell, I simply made more each night in my hotel room.

The buttons I made had sayings that were popular with Letter Carriers; sayings like "Union Letter Carrier... and Proud of It!", "My Supervisor is Dumber than Your Supervisor" and one that simpoly said "National Association of Letter Carriers Convention - New Orleans, Louisiana- 1991" that could serve as an inexpensive souvenier for anyone who attended the convention.

To make a long story short, I was able to sell $1800 worth of buttons ($1.50 each, or 4 for $5.00) during the five days I was there. That's me on the left, in the photo above. Notice, if you will, the smile on my face and the large wad of cash in my left hand.

Driving home after the convention it struck me that I might be onto something!!

A moment ago I told you I would show you how to earn $123.00 an hour making buttons and if you are in the least bit skeptical (as I hope you are) you might be saying, "Yeah, right!"

But if you will give me a few more minutes of your time, I will take you through the process of making buttons and share some of the most profitable button-making concepts I've come up with. Ideas you are free to use yourself, if you so desire.

Sports Booster Buttons
One of the more profitable button-making ideas I've come up with is what I call "Sports Booster Buttons". They will be my first example to show you how easy... and how profitable button-making can be.

Not long after the convention in New Orleans, I was approached by a woman whose son attended a high school in our area. She asked me if I could make buttons for their booster club; buttons they could later re-sell at the games for a profit.

I told her I could and the result was the concept of "Sports Booster Buttons", samples of which you can see below.

The thing makes this type of button valuable is that they are personalized and each button carries the name or jersey number of the player. They also have the school name and team name on the button. Family members love this type of button, as they are far more meaningful to them than a button that simply says "Football Mom" or "Basketball Dad".

To make this type of button, you simply create a template that includes the school name and team name. After that, just add a graphic to represent the particular sport you are working with.

After you have created a template that includes those things, you simply type in each player's name and/or jersey number on the template.

When I did these buttons back in 1997, I sold them to the woman for $1.50 each. Their booster club then turned around and sold them to the player's parents, grandparents, and girlfriends for $3.00 - $4.00 each.

I was happy, the families were happy, and the booster club was happy!

Truly a win-win-win proposition!

One of the things I liked about this arrangement was that I didn't have to sell the buttons myself ­ the booster club did it! (However, if you are going to the games anyway, you might be able to sell the buttons yourself and significantly increase the amount of profit you earn)

Determining Your Costs and Your Profit
When you do buttons in this manner, here's how to determine your costs and the amount of profit you would earn.

Let's say you received an order for 100 personalized Sports Booster Buttons and you sold them for $2.00 each (you are free to charge whatever you wish, but when someone asks us to produce them these days, that's what we charge).

100 x $2.00 equals $200.00 in total sales.

(With football teams, where you may have 50 or more players per team, an order of 100 buttons is totally realistic. And don't forget... most high schools have Freshman, Junior Varsity and Varsity teams).

The next step is to determine the cost of the supplies necessary to make 100 buttons.

You can purchase 1000 2-1/4" pin-back button sets from my company, Dr. Don's Buttons, Badges and More, for $129.95. That pirce includes FREE UPS Ground shipping, as well as a copy of any Sports Design CD we offer. These CDs make creating sports button designs a snap).

Purchased in a quantity of 1000, the cost per button would work out to be 13¢ each.
(13¢ x 100 = $13.00)

Next, we need to factor in the cost of printing the designs.

If you're using an inkjet printer, that would be the cost of your ink and paper. Let's say that averages out to be 5¢ per design. (5¢ x 100 = $5.00)

So the cost of materials to make 100 buttons would be about $18.00.

$200.00 - $18.00 = $182.00

In this example, your net profit would be $182.00.

Now, to determine how much you would earn per hour, divide the time you would spend making the buttons into the amount of profit you would earn.

You know it will take a certain amount of time to design your buttons. In the beginning, it will take you more time to create your designs. But once you have your designs setup, it's easy to save them to your computer as a template so the next time you wish to make buttons, you simply re-type the name of the school and team name for each school you wish to work with.

When your template is ready, all you have to do is type in the player's name (and if applicable, their jersey number) with your graphics program and print out the necessary number of designs for each player.

This might take 60-90 minutes. Let's be conservative and say it would take you 90 minutes.

After you are finished printing them, you need to cut the designs and make your buttons.

(Inexpensive button machines, like those produced by Badge-A-Minit, will only produce about one button or badge a minute, (60 buttons per hour). They also have a tendency to produce poor-quality buttons (where edges of the paper or plastic my be sticking out the sides of the button or where the button is likely to fall apart after being made because the edges weren't crimped tightly). On the other hand, our Model 225 button machine can produce 4 or 5 buttons per minute and buttons made with the Model 225 don't suffer poor the poor quality issues describe above.)

As you can imagine, faster and better... is better when making buttons!)

With a good button machine, like our Model 225, it might take you 20 minutes or so to make 100 professional-quality buttons.

The next step in the process is to verify each button and make certain that you spelled each name correctly, that the right jersey number appears on each design and that you produced the correct number of buttons for those who ordered them.

Let's add another 15 minutes to do that.

Using this example, the amount of time you would likely spend creating 100 personalized sports buttons would be 2 hours.

Now let's divide the $182 profit you earned, by the 2 hours you would likely spend doing the buttons. As you can see, the amount you earn would be $91.00 per hour.

For most people, making $91.00 an hour is simpoly unimaginable.

But what if I could show you an easy way to make $123.00 an hour by making political campaign buttons?

Political Campaign Buttons
If your mind operates anything like mine, you are probably thinking "If making political campaign buttons is so easy... and so profitable, how come everybody isn't making them?"

The answer is simple.

What keeps more people from making political campaign buttons is that they lack the ability to create the specialized backgrounds politicians want on their buttons. Things like flags, banners... you know, political-looking stuff.

That used to be a problem if you lacked graphic design experience and I know, because when I started making buttons back in 1990, that's what kept me from making them.

I desperately wanted to make political buttons, because I recognized that there was good money to be made doing them. But I was unable to create the backgrounds myself and I couldn't afford to pay a graphic artist $25-$50 an hour to do them for me.

Because of that challenge, I didn't start to make political campaign buttons until 1999, some 9 years after I started making buttons. And I only did so then because I hired our first full-time graphic artist to be on staff.

That experience led me to come up with the idea to putting backgrounds for all sorts of buttons on a CD. In doing so, now anyone who wanted to make buttons could do so simply by adding text to those backgrounds, using their own graphics program.

What's possible for you now, that was not possible for me back then, is that you have access to our line of "Political Button Template CDs".

With these CDs, you don't need graphic design experience to create professional-quality campaign buttons. That's because our CDs contain a variety of political button templates that are well-suited for all types of political campaigns.

Using our CDs, you no longer need graphic design experience to create professional-quality campaign buttons. That's because our CDs are chock-full of ready-made political campaign button backgrounds that you can use to make buttons for political candidates.

You Won't Believe How Easy it is to Create Campaign Buttons, Using Our CDs
To create campaign button designs, using any of our Political Button Template CDs, simply open a template you wish to work with using your own graphics program. You then add the candidate's name and office they are seeking using your graphics program's text tool. When you have the text positioned the way you want, send your design to print.

How much easier could it be?

Below are examples to illustrate just how easy it is to make great looking political buttons using any of the templates found on any of our Political Button Templates CDs.
(The template shown here can be found on our Political Button Templates- Series 2 CD)


The images in the left column (above) are the templates in their raw state, as they are found on our CDs. The images in the right column are what your finished buttons might look like after you have added text.

Knowing what I know now, I would gladly have paid $500 or more for a product like our Political Button Templates CDs. That's because I now understand how quickly I could have recouped the purchase price and started making incredible profits once I started making political campaign buttons.

The good news for you is that our Political Button Templates CDs don't cost $500!

They're available to you for only $79.95 each!!

We currently have four different Political Button Templates CDs available- Series 1, Series 2, Series 3 and Series 4.

If you don't already own a button machine and are ready to make the investment, you can receive a copy of any one CD, FREE OF CHARGE!

Why They're So Profitable!
So how is it that political campaign buttons are more so much more profitable than Sports Booster Buttons?

The reason is simply that they take less time to create.

With Sports Booster Buttons, you must personalize each button and then verify the information on each button.

With political campaign buttons, you typically create one design, duplicate it on your computer, print out the necessary number of designs and then make however many buttons your customer has ordered.

We currently charge $109.95 for 100 2-1/4" political campaign buttons.

Let's say you were going to make 100 campaign buttons for a candidate and you were going to charge them $100 for their buttons.

Creating a campaign button design, using our Political Button Templates CDs, is simply a matter of adding a few words of text (their name and office being sought) and going to print. That might take 15-20 minutes. To be conservative, let's say 20 minutes.

Once you have finished that, you still need to produce the buttons and as before, that would be about twenty minutes to make 100 buttons.

So the total amount of time necessary to design and make 100 campaign buttons would be about 40 minutes.

The cost for the materials to make 100 buttons would be the same as in the previous example, $18.00.

Now, to determine the profit you would earn on this order, let's take the $100.00 (if that's what you are charging your client), subtract $18.00 for the button parts and printing, which leaves you a profit of $82.00

But because you only spent 40 minutes completing this order, what you earn from this job would work out to be $123.00 an hour.

That's more than $2.00 a minute!!


What You Need to Get Started
If you want to get started making buttons, here's what you need.

Realistically, you are going to need a computer (or at least, access to one).

When I first started making buttons, I didn't even own a computer. I designed and printed the artwork for my buttons at a local community college.

To gain access to their computers, I enrolled in a computer class, paid $35.00 tuition for a computer course. I not only learned what I needed to know about computers, I also had access to their computers and printers from 7am until 10 pm.

(If you already your own a computer, so much the better).

Something else you are going to need is software to design your buttons.

If you have a computer or attend a community college, you may already have what you need.

There are literally dozens of graphics programs on the market, some of which inlcude CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Publisher, PrintShop, PrintArtist, to name a few. But just about any graphics program that allows you to work with text and graphics can be used to create artwork for your buttons.

You can find tons of FREE clip art on America Online and on the Internet, but once you're serious about making buttons, you'll want to invest in a good clip art collection.

You will also need a means to print the artwork for your buttons.

If you have a computer, but don't own a color printer, go ahead and invest in a good one. It's one of the most important investments you will make.

These days, inkjet printers are very affordable, and you can get an outstanding color printer for $100-$150.

You will also need a button machine with which to make your buttons.

If you don't listen to another word I've said, trust me here. Not all button machines are created equal. Some are easy to use, others are not.

Some will make professional-quality buttons, others will not!

If you plan to sell the buttons you make, you want a machine that will make professional-quality buttons. Don't waste your money on an inexpensive button machine that maked buttons that are prone to falling apart, or that will leave paper or plastic sticking out the sides of your buttons.

And don't get a button machine that is slow or difficult to operate.

The button machines we offer are well-suited to running a small business. They're made of solid steel, so they're durable and dependable. Most inexpensive machines are made of plastic or a plastic-like compound.

(To see how our Model 225 button machine stacks up against all the 2-1/4" button machines offered by Badge-A-Minit, click here.)

The 2-1/4" button is the most popular button size. And our Model 225 button machine, which makes 2-1/4" buttons, is our most popular machine.

We market the Model 225 as the "Home-based Business Starter Kit".

Our "Home-based Business Starter Kit" includes a Model 225 button press, our AC-1 circle cutter (which you use to cut your button designs), enough button-making supplies to make 250 pin-back buttons, three of our Button Design CDs, a FREE coupon you use to have us create and print a button design for you, as well as FREE shipping by UPS Ground.

We offer all this for only $329.95!

A scanner to scan artwork and photographs is helpful, but you can get by without one if you are short on cash. Color scanners are available for about $100.

So if you already have a computer (or access to one) it truly is possible to start a highly profitable, home-based button-making business for under $500.

Making buttons is lots of fun! And as I've shown, it can also be a very profitable venture.

When you have your own button-making business, you can set your own hours, you can work from the comfort of your own home, and you can be your own boss.

Making buttons can truly be the American dream!

If you have any questions about our equipment or button-making in general, feel free to give us a call. Our friendly customer service representatives will be happy to speak with you and answer all your questions.

Best wishes!

Sincerely,

Don Ratliff
aka Dr. Don

Dr. Don's Buttons
3906 W. Morrow Drive
Glendale, Arizona 85308

(800) 243-8293


For even more button-making ideas, click here.

 

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