PDF Creation

Recently a great many people I know have been working on creating things to sell in the form of tutorials and e-books in digital format. Quite a few have used Word and are trying to use just a .doc format for selling this idea of theirs…. I’ve e-mailed several and walked several through converting things to PDF format. Adobe Acrobat is NOT the only way to create PDF files. There are services that will convert just about any file you can think of. There are also programs that do this as well. Some are paid others are freeware.

For Word or other MS Office products (yes you can convert Power Point and Excel to PDF!) I use PDF995. This is freeware with no spyware and no ads attached or added to your files. The free version does pop up an ad for upgrading to the paid version but it’s not all that big of a deal nothing attaches itself to your file that you create. How it works is you go to www.pdf995.com and download the files they provide. Follow their installation instructions and the next time you’re in Word and need a PDF you go to file and print and switch to a postscript printer driver (the program knows which one you need and comes with it). It’ll print to file and you save the PDF. You can put anything you want in the document…. photos, links, text, colors, fonts etc. And WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)! The nice thing about this little add on is that it works with Word 98 or greater…. Even up to 2003 (according to the site…. I run 2000 so do not have first hand knowledge of this).

Other programs I’ve run into with PDF converters are Corel Draw 11 and Open Office (open source version of MS Office). I use Corel to convert all my patterns, books, lines & kits for sale and it works just fine.

Poke around online you’d be surprised at how many free programs there are available for converting various file formats to PDF.

Sue Darby~Owner
www.suestinycostumes.com

New Lessons

My latest lessons have more to do with balancing a family and a business than anything. I have 2 small children and in just a couple days one of the two will be out of school for the summer. What to do with her? Well there's a backyard full of bugs and 'flowers' to pick along with her bicycle but she gets bored with that quickly. So I bring her up into my loft and turn her loose with paper towels and scotch tape and a doll. What does she do? She emulates mom and starts designing patterns for her dolls.

I think by the end of the summer I'll have to open up a new section of my site for her designs. I'll still have to do a lot of the finishing work on the patterns along with the sewing but I have a feeling that we'll have a lot of fun this summer. I also have a feeling that with my daughter learning to read and spell she'll pick up on web design and web languages fairly quick... after not too long she'll be maintaing that new section not me!

After her brother is out of school in less than a month this activity will be limited to during his nap time but should still be fun. When he's out of school as well it'll be off to the park most days... it's the reason we all have bikes!

Lesson learned... include children in your business and teach them about what you make or do... it's amazing how quick they'll pick up on things.

Lessons Learned in My Business

This is the first of my lessons learned articles. I’ll talk about what I do and how I plan on changing how I work in hopes that it’ll help someone else.

I draft doll clothes, maintain my own websites and am the CEO and well… chief, cook and bottle washer for the business.

What does this mean? It means that I do all my own marketing, product development on top of dealing with customers and financials.

My purpose is to give you some insight on how to deal with one issue at a time. For starters:

Starting the business: start by talking to a local Small Business Development Center to get a business plan for your business going. If the SBDC doesn’t have someone who can help you with a hobby based – not a hobby business but based on the hobby industry type business seek help online with various groups and forums for your interest. In my case it started out with miniatures. I was a college student with a major in Fashion Design. When you think of Fashion you usually thing of people clothes for me I had an interest in dressing dolls. My mother has a business that is based on dressing dolls and I was interested in helping expand my knowledge in the field. I was at the time taking a Small Business class and was assigned to write up a business plan for a business for myself. That was where Sue’s Tiny Costumes was originally born. At the time I was working on developing a website for my mother and instead got sidetracked into developing one for my designs. I was learning HTML on my own so the going was slow but my results were good for a beginner. I look back on that original site design and laugh now but for the time and my skill I was very happy with what I had.

I later moved out after graduating college and ended up married to my loving and supportive (not to mention smart hubby). When our daughter was born I decided to stay home and after a couple months was bored so I started looking around online for a miniatures group or forum. I found Small Stuff Digest in 2000 and joined up. This group is a very supportive group who encouraged me to “go for my dreams” which was starting up Sue’s Tiny Costumes and turning it into a full time business. I still haven’t achieved the full time to this day but it’s working on at least a part time job status for now.

I researched and tested and played dolls for several months and then wrote my first self-published book “Pattern Drafting for Miniatures” ©2002 From there I wrote “Pattern Making for Dolls” in between caring for 2 children and developing patterns for dozens of dolls.

I learned the value of a good business plan when I applied to have state funding for a business license. I wrote the plan and revised it daily for a month solid until I knew it inside out and backwards. I GOT THE FUNDING! Sue’s Tiny Costumes became reality.

In future installments I’ll go into detail on business plans, marketing and how to deal with various things including time management with children and a dozen appointments a week while on various state programs that don’t let you concentrate on a fledgling business!