When people see the product we make, they are amazed that it is made at home. It is as though they cannot imagine that a product CAN be manufactured at home unless it is made of yarn or wood.

We make an airlock lid for canning jars. Our work involves drilling holes in plastic lids, trimming the rough edges off the holes, and inserting a one-way valve into the hole. There is no source for the one-way valve. THIS is the part that makes our product unique. We invented the valve, and invented the process to manufacture it at home.

If you want to make a product at home, you need to not only know how to make the product, you also have to be able to obtain, or make, the tools to make the product.

In our case, that meant I had to create a mold for a product that had never before been seen. Before I could create the tool to create the part, I had to find a way to make the part without the tool!

In this instance, I went hunting through a hardware store, just looking for things that could be used to make something like what I wanted. And I found them! We took them home, created a prototype, tested it, and then made a mold from it.

Making the mold was a little more complicated than just making a cast of the item, since it required a multi-part mold, and a way to pour in the silicone without the need of injection equipment. That took some creativity, and some experimentation.

This process was the beginning for us, of really helping us realize the potential for home manufacturing as a form of home business. And to help us realize the many benefits it provides.

The regulatory burden on our business is very light, keeping our costs down. Our tax burden is similarly light, which further reduces costs. We distribute direct to the customer, so we do not have to take a reduction in earnings to sell wholesale so they can be mass distributed. In fact, our profit margins are at a point that most companies would consider to be impossible to achieve.

Our business is "green", because we not only eliminate a great deal of unnecessary transportation (by selling direct from the point of manufacture), but we also use equipment and a setup that is environmentally friendly. Just a corner of the livingroom, and a few common shop tools.

What we did is actually NOT that extraordinary! The kinds of things that can be made at home are far more than anyone realizes, and many of the specialty tools for doing some really cool stuff, are less costly than we think. It is possible to build a pretty amazing business on a fairly low budget, and bootstrap your way up - purchasing better equipment and making the processes more efficient as you go.

Our first molds were pretty rough. We periodically think of ways to improve them, and ways to improve the methods we use for making the other products we make alongside the lids. Each product we have chosen to make has followed that same procedure - first figuring out if we CAN make it, then devising a way to make it fast enough to actually earn good money from doing it, then gradually improving on that as sales increase.

We have done this with every business we have owned, and have found that there is almost ALWAYS a way to do something, and there are usually ways to improve from there, so that the longer you are at it, the more you can earn.

You really can't quite grasp what I'm talking about if you have not either attempted this process, or seen someone else go through it. It is a series of miracles and innovations, leading to something deceptively simple. And it is possible to achieve it for virtually any product, though some would be too impractical to adapt.

Products do not have to be developed in a research lab, and they do not have to be manufactured in a factory.

If you've got an idea for a product, and you know you can never afford to have someone make it for you, then consider how you might go about making it yourself, with tools on hand. Find other crafty or mechanical people to brainstorm with and see what you come up with. The results may surprise you, and you may just be on your way to a whole new way of earning from home.