I’ll tell you my story/journey, and hopefully some of it might be of some use to you:
I work full-time and run my cake business part-time. At least it’s supposed to be part-time – I find most weeks I have 2 full-time jobs. I used my holiday time over 3 years to go to college to study cake decorating and sugar flowers 1 day a week. It was really hard not taking holiday over that time, and I also was spending any spare cash on building up my supply of equipment. I still take short courses, as I’m determined to keep up my skill level, as well as the fact that not only do I find courses re-energising, but you get to meet other cake decorators. Whilst I was studying, I was making cakes for free for friends and family. I wanted to build up my confidence as well as have some photographs to put on my website. However, although my website brings in a little business, I’ve actually found my Facebook page to be useful too. The most useful though has been word of mouth. I started making wedding cakes this year – the first one was incredibly nerve-wracking. I will be going to wedding fairs after the summer, to try to drum up more wedding cake orders. I’m a member of a Facebook page for local cake decorators – we share out orders (e.g. holiday time, when others can’t fit them in, etc), as well as share knowledge and advice with each other. As I work in the UK, I don’t need to worry about health insurance.
I think the hardest thing has been having faith that over time, that word-of-mouth would actually start working. I used to fret about not having enough cake orders. However, what I should have been doing more of, was practising techniques on dummy cakes. My best advice to you would be to look out for affordable courses (Craftsy and Cake Masters are online, and have superb courses), and if you can, try to build up a portfolio of work (either through freebie cakes for family and friends, or on cake dummies). That way you have photos to show your future customers :)
Good luck!
Helenna at http://ClearlyCake.com
