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Could I make a living from puzzles?

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    Could I make a living from puzzles?

    It had become clear that secondary schools and I had had enough of each other, so I've called time on teaching - with nothing else lined up and the small matter of a family of seven to support.

    My wife is changing jobs at the moment, from childminding to First Aid training, and neither of us is sorry to be moving on from jobs that were swamping us. We have no savings yet do have a peace about our situation; the reasons behind that probably belong on a separate thread.

    My Plan A was to look for a role within education that's not on the frontline. So far my applications have met with 'you don't fit the profile'; after more than 20 years in the classroom I'm aware of my deficit of experience elsewhere. There seems to be exceptionally keen competition for roles that offer anything close to what I was on before.

    So, Plan B is to do something I love and I'm good at, that won't require an interview. The bulk of my posts on OTF are in the crossword thread, and last Christmas my gift to the family was a set of customised puzzles - crossword, double acrostic, word search and others - that were well received. I'm wondering whether there's a market for this kind of bespoke gift, hence I'm seeking your unimpeachable wisdom.

    The main issue is whether/what people might be prepared to pay for a personalised crossword. For comparison, it costs £25-£35 for a newspaper from a certain date, and the only other customised puzzle site I've found does crosswords only and charges £100. Generally crosswords and double acrostics take me 3-4 hours to produce, and the other puzzles take 1-1 1/2 hours; I hope it doesn't sound sniffy that I reckon I'm at least as good as the £100 setters.

    Plan C is to take the offer of some short-term, minimum-wage temp work and see whether the puzzles idea gains some traction.

    For a flavour of my work the embryonic PickaPuzzle Facebook page is here.

    #2
    Could I make a living from puzzles?

    I would probably try to migrate to B. I am hugely risk averse so would probably go via A or C to get there. The challenge I see is capturing the market for the personalized puzzles. I can see there being a market but the challenge seems to be more along the lines of finding it or guiding it to you to generate business.

    Given that your wife is changing jobs I wouldn't welcome the uncertainty and pressure of income being based on a start-up business.

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      #3
      Could I make a living from puzzles?

      As a fellow belt and braces type, dglh speaks for me.

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        #4
        Could I make a living from puzzles?

        I'm not a puzzle person at all, but pretty much any internet based financial endeavour I'm aware of involves many more hours in the marketing than it does in the producing. For example writing, designing and producing an on-line book is relatively easy, provided you possess the basic skills. Selling enough copies of it to provide you and your family with an income is a whole other thing.

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          #5
          Could I make a living from puzzles?

          What they all said. The market's surely there but finding it will take some time. I'd be thinking about option C, perhaps with part-time if you can afford it rather than full-time, to get some cash coming in but still give you time to develop things.

          Very best of luck with it, of course!

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            #6
            Could I make a living from puzzles?

            I once made quite a handsome living (well, £50 a day, but this was in 1991) writing pub quiz questions for Bass Charrington. The trick was not only coming up with the questions, but referencing them to a reputable source (so that any arguments could be directed to there). So you had to sit and think of ten geography questions, for example, if that was the "round", and find the page in the Times Atlas of the World (edition and ISBN no) that confirmed that yes, Rabat was the capital of Morocco.

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              #7
              Could I make a living from puzzles?

              Irony towers, a huge percentage of start-up businesses fail but the good news is that you'll learn tons of skills attempting to make it work which will mean you either have a successful way of supporting your family or gain a lot of desirable experience in a short period of time. Investigate whether there are local supports for setting up your business. In Ireland, Local Enterprise Boards or Enterprise Ireland give micro-funding grants if they are impressed by your business case. A friend of mine is getting €15k (tax-free) over the next months which helps in the space between quitting her job and getting her business off the ground.

              If there is an easy way of maintaining your ability to revert to teaching in the future I would investigate it no matter how horrible that thought is to you at the moment. In my field, if I consider a career change, I just need to demonstrate that I've attended a small amount of courses and kept myself up to date to revert to my profession in the future. Having that option for yourself may give additional piece of mind.

              Best of luck, you've bigger cojones than me!

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                #8
                Could I make a living from puzzles?

                Good luck IT. I tend to agree with Amor above.

                Do you know any of the newspaper setters, if so might be worth contacting- ask for tips, offer content (many run their own sites), that sort of thing.

                Echoing EWN,

                Some beans were the solution (6)

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                  #9
                  Could I make a living from puzzles?

                  I certainly think the quality of your work is beyond doubt, IT, but like others it is my experience that online marketing is an incredible amount of work with no guarantees at the end of it. I think there'd be a market for it, but turning that potential market into an actual one is a real trick.

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                    #10
                    Could I make a living from puzzles?

                    I had a friend who liked online t-shirt sites and reckoned he could do one with crowd-sourced designs and so on. He really enjoyed building the site and setting it up and getting designers involved.

                    What he didn't factor in was that to get noticed he needed to be 'out there' on the internet basically spamming people and networking for several hours a day.

                    Can you identify ten places where you can promote yourself (social networks don't really count)?

                    For a starter:
                    [ul]
                    [li]Do you have local trade pop up markets where you could have a stall with some general puzzles on display (e.g. as puzzle books that people might want to purchase) and lots of info about your personalised versions? [/li]
                    [li]How many magazines could you get profiled in? Most women's lifestyle magazines have regular 'gift guides' - could you do a personalised puzzle for the editor and send it to them?[/li]
                    [li]Are there specialist puzzle forums / societies you could join and promote yourself. (Bearing in mind what happens on here when first time posters plug their wares.)[/li]
                    [/ul]

                    Basically how do you get out there and get seen?

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                      #11
                      Could I make a living from puzzles?

                      And most importantly who else is doing it and what do they charge. Or, who else has tried and why did it fail - that's gold in this situation.

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                        #12
                        Could I make a living from puzzles?

                        I have no useful advice to offer you but can I just congratulate you for getting out of the classroom?

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                          #13
                          Could I make a living from puzzles?

                          You could go on Dragons' Den, and have personalised clues for each of the dragons. It would be fun watching them get arsey as they couldn't solve the clues, and then rubbishing it. Peter Jones would probably sponsor you to prove that he didn't feel threatened, and is a bit different.

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                            #14
                            Could I make a living from puzzles?

                            Many thanks for your encouragements and valuable advice, and apologies for the delay in acknowledging as I was on holiday last week.

                            As I'm completely new to Twitter and blogging, my first forays on a borrowed laptop while on holiday were far from smooth, but I'm gathering some ideas on how to make best use of these media and find potential markets, albeit from a standing start.

                            In the meantime I've started to blog (one of the posts is about OTF - SPOILER ALERT: contains the answer to the current clue on the crossword thread) and opened an Etsy shop, perhaps stretching the definition of 'handmade products'.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Could I make a living from puzzles?

                              I would highly recommend linking your Twitter account from the blog, it, and if you haven't done already, tweeting a link to the Victoria Coren-Mitchell crossword to the woman herself. Worse case scenario, she ignores it; best case scenario she loves it, retweets it and you get some great publicity going out to her followers, a large number of whom are probably precisely the audience you need to target.

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                                #16
                                Could I make a living from puzzles?

                                Good advice from Sam.

                                To get other people promoting you identify some massive narcissist celebs on Twitter and do ones for them and ask them to retweet.

                                Also if you need a tagline you could use
                                Personalised Crosswords - where every clue is you!

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                                  #17
                                  Could I make a living from puzzles?

                                  Are you on facebook?

                                  It sounds like you need to hire Patrick Thistle as a consultant. Give him shares.

                                  And the Dragons Den idea isn't terrible. I hate shows like that because the people judging are always complete twats, but it would provide exposure. Worth a shot.

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                                    #18
                                    Could I make a living from puzzles?

                                    I wonder if it might be worth sending a Countdown themed one to Hewer, Riley and Dent? Or perhaps a Pointless one to Armstrong and Osman? They might have followers who would like this sort of thing too.

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                                      #19
                                      Could I make a living from puzzles?

                                      Following on from Kev's suggestion, maybe get one to 8 out of 10 cats does Countdown, too, as there are a few regulars on there (Jon Richardson springs to mind as he takes it seriously), and you never know.

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                                        #20
                                        Could I make a living from puzzles?

                                        In fact, maybe you should go on Countdown (or Only Connect etc) and give yourself a plug.

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                                          #21
                                          Could I make a living from puzzles?

                                          What a great team of consultants! 15%s all round (current profits = £0, 15% of £0 = nada).

                                          Sending the puzzle to Victoria was my opening gambit on Twitter, though I think I botched the link. However, it has now been picked up by David Bodycombe, the chief question-writer for Only Connect, and he's passed it on to a fellow writer who's keen on crosswords and sounds positive about mine. Also I've had retweets from people with good numbers of followers.

                                          Yes, it may well be worth reaching some more celebs now I have a bit more social media nous and presence.

                                          In practical terms, "About half of the clues are you" would be more realistic though somewhat less ringing than PT's excellent tagline.

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                                            #22
                                            Could I make a living from puzzles?

                                            Kevchenko wrote: I wonder if it might be worth sending ... a Pointless one to Armstrong and Osman? They might have followers who would like this sort of thing too.
                                            OK, I've done as I was told...

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