Make Money Making Things

A sketch.

The chair at left is currently for sale; the other two will be soon.

I’ve been selling my furniture since 1999 – that’s when I sold a Shop of the Crafters Morris chair that I’d built on eBay. A young couple from Texas bought it and were so eager to get it that they drove up to Cincinnati to fetch the thing. (I probably underpriced it.)

Until 2011, selling furniture was a side gig to my job at Popular Woodworking Magazine. But that entire time I was preparing my shop and paying off our house so that I could survive as an independent furniture maker/writer/teacher/publisher/human Roomba.

Since 2011, most of my income has come from making furniture. In fact, for the last two years, nearly all my income has come from making furniture and teaching a few classes. Wait, you might be thinking, doesn’t he run a publishing company that pays him a salary? Yes, I do. But here’s a dirty secret (the first one is free – all the others are behind the paywall): I pay more in estimated federal and state t…