What do I need to start a home party business in Massachusetts?

Congrats on your interest in starting your own home party business! I admire anyone that ventures into the world of the self employed!

I would suggest the following things be in order before you start.

1. You most likely will need a sales tax license/certificate from Massachusetts. Also maybe a business license. Check with your state for details

2. I would recommend that you purchase wholesale jewelry that is difficult or hard for the average person to find online. You wouldn't want your customers to find what they bought at a party later on at a greatly reduced price. Would make for difficult future parties.

3. Make sure you have a plan for benefits for the hostess, shipping costs and sales tax on your invoices. You should have invoices professionally printed with your company name and details. I would recommend charging a flat rate of 10% for each order for shipping. This should cover your costs on the jewelry you purchase and have shipped in from the wholesalers.

4. You will need to keep a log of all of your sales and expenses. I also would certainly open a seperate checking account with a debit card so you can deposit all sales proceeds there and use the debit card for wholesale orders. This way everything is nice and neat at the end of the month for record keeping purposes.

5. I would recommend that you go and see an accountant before you start to get some tips and tools for tracking all of this. If you utilize ANY space in your home for your business, that portion of all of your household bills such as utilities, property taxes, etc. will be deductible. You will also want to keep track of all the mileage you drive to parties, stores for supplies etc.

6. HAVE FUN!! You obviously have a passion for jewelry. This is the best way for you to become successful in your own business. I would do some research with some of the manufacturers of jewelry and see how you may be able to have custom pieces developed for your busienss only. You could have one custom piece per month as your monthly special to encourage monthly orders from customers. This would also be a great way to develop a "Jewelry of the Month" club for your customers and most certainly online. Without something custom that only you have, I would not venture much online as what you sell can be found from many other places and profits would be minimal at best.

Hope this helps!

Wes

Norsew Investments, LLC

Rochester, MN

Self Employed Business Coach for 20 years

http://www.replacemypay.com/

Try one of those places like LoveBites and Bruises: http://www.lovebitesandbruises.com/ ... they're quite popular and "in" at the moment.

If you want help with designing, selling, ordering jewelry, or just stating your own business, their forums are *full* of jewelry designers (and some magazine editors and journalists are on there too - so you can get a bit of media attention) - a lot of jewelry bands made it big on there. There are a lot of desingers in their community that are happy to help people, and they offer free advertising and samples a lot of the time.

Good luck! :)

As far as I'm concerned there isn't anything else out there than can touch SBI so follow this link http://ownit.workathomewithsbi.com/ you'd be hard pressed to find anything negative about them... furthermore to credentialize this program it's ranked 753 out of over 56 million sites online. It doesn't get much better this and I challenge you to find a more comprehensive and successful program.