Episode 37: Side hustles within your cake business

Welcome to the Adventures in K-Clang Podcast. I'm your host Yvonne and this is the podcast where we talk about the ups and downs of K-Life, running a business, exploring the latest cake trends, and hearing authentic stories from other cake business owners. I really hope you enjoy today's episode. Hello, hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the Adventures in K-Clang Podcast and let me wish you a happy new year. So how are you and how is business and how is your Christmas? I love the Christmas break and I will say that every January, but I really do. I think everybody's in a similar mindset and I like to spend time, a lot of time with my family. We spread it out over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, sometimes New Year's Day as well. So it's a really nice chill day at time but nice to just connect with the family, I love it. So anyway, this is another solo episode and I promise you I will be getting some guests on before I take my break in the summer. But before that, the topic of today's show, I thought instead of talking about new goals for the year, etc, because normally at the beginning of January, I get out my plan out and I'm pulling away what I want to do for the rest of the year. But this year, I'm easily into January slowly and embracing this particular month just to keep things slow because I don't really know what I want to do for the year regarding the business. I'm taking this time to just kind of figure things out and where I want to be. So I thought it would be fun to just do an episode talking about ways in which we can generate additional income into our business rather than just making and just share some of the things that I've tried and if they've worked and some of the things maybe that I look at in the future, or maybe you want to consider in the future because we need to work smarter, not harder this year. So as usual, what we're going to do, we're going to reflect on the month of December, what I've been up to in the Beases and also talk about what's been trending in December/January. So firstly, what was I up to in December? So normally December is a busy season for me and it is for a lot of cake makers isn't it? So I usually do something called Christmas cake again and I decided that I was going to do a treat box. I think I spoke about this in the December episode and I sold some boxes but not as many as I thought I would and it's interesting because when I'm creating these boxes, especially things around Christmas, I do want to sort of gauge interest in them and see what customers would like and so I did a series of polls on Instagram and you get a feeling you think oh yeah this is going to be really popular and then when it comes to it I did it sell as many boxes as I thought which is okay a little bit disappointed but that's the life of businesses in it but it reminds me of something somebody said I can't record who makes a lot of courses and they always advise people to sell the course first and then make the product after and it's doing Christmas cake again and sometimes it's given that energy but I'm glad I didn't go all I had to do loads and loads and loads of different products because that would have been really disappointing if I didn't sell what I wanted but that's business isn't it it's very much up and down peaks and troughs with things but again I wasn't mad at it because I didn't want Christmas to be chaotic and also in December I created well I had some orders for celebration cakes birth to cakes and engagement cake and primarily the heart shaped cake is still extremely popular but I have to say for 2026 I want to leave the heart cake in 2025 because I think I'm truly over it I love to see them and you know they've been so so popular and a really strong trend but I am a bit tired of them now and I need them to be put to bed it's giving drip cake and I think I'm over it so I'm happy for that particular little trend this day in 2025 but also Christmas time I did quite a few little drip cake boxes and I did a three flavour box and in that we had the citrus I call it the citrus snowball and it's lemon and white chocolate so it's a lemon cake, a lemon buttercream and then I've got these little white chocolate what do you call them? Blossoms that's it and it's a Calabare product that's really really nice and then I also did a raspberry and lemon cupcake and then a chocolate and hazelnut cupcake and those are really nice and what I did this year as well I used some of the boxes that I've actually brought from cake international so they're not my normal boxes the coloured blue and pink boxes these are plain white with like you know like the see through plastic lid and I'm not big fan of plastic but they did look so pretty in these boxes and it made me think oh maybe I might kiss you to give them these salad boxes ago and you're going to look at the price point for them obviously and as long as the plastic is fully recyclable I'm happy to go with that but yeah they look really pretty and Maze went down a storm and then also I also bake for my family and I bake for my neighbours so for Christmas day over the Christmas period I like to make well I make dessert now sometimes I'm lazy and I'll go and buy them from Marx and Spencer's but I was really disappointed with the selection that Marx and Spencer's had this end this year and the price point was quite high in my opinion and I didn't really look at any other supermarket so I thought I'm going to make my own so what I made was I made a lemon and a raspberry roulade which I fancied myself and this is one of the fact that sponges so it's a gen was sponge that I made for that I also made a chocolate frudge cake because that was a special request for one of my siblings she really likes the chocolate cake that I do so I made one of those and also I made a black cherry almond a frangipang tart as well so there was a bit of a selection on Christmas time and then I also got orders for my Jamaican rum cake now this isn't something that I actively advertise because my fruit is constantly soaking and and it's you know it's this is a 2024 vintage that I've got going on but I have a couple of customers that always want the carrot the Jamaican rum cake so I make when they pay for orders I make them for them but I don't advertise them but the Jamaican rum cake is a flavour I'm my cake menu and I pair it with chocolate and it's really popular really nice so I don't always want to use the poor the fruit that I have there and it's going to need topping up but yeah so Christmas was okay just gentle not too horrific not too busy but yeah that's that so now that I've spoken about my December what have I seen trending over the months of December slash early January so there's three things that I've seen trending so the first thing I want to talk about it's apparently 2026 is the year of analog 2026 is the year that we disconnect from our phones and social media and get back to doing things in real life and this is I think carrying on from what I spoke about other episodes about the stulger and how we're sort of hankering back to a much simpler time and I think generation is it said and millennials and late millennials maybe a hankering back for those days and Jen said obviously it's going to be another two because they would be one of the first generations that are growing up with a fully digitised world whereas everything is digital as opposed to maybe Gen X which is my era where we have had to follow the trends all the way through from mobile phones to the rise of Google going from phone or cassette to CD to streaming we've seen a lot of changes so this has been really interesting so apparently 2022 was the peak of social media and it's been in the decline since that time and I know for me my love of social media has been in its ups and downs sometimes I love it a lot of times I'm hating it and I'm not really feeling it at the moment and I should put a post upon my Instagram to say things that I were going to believe in in 2025 and one of the things is posting less I don't want to post us often on social media I don't want to use social media as much so regarding making contact with customers I'm going to have to use my website more and possibly re-ignite my newsletter and go back to an email list because social media is a struggle and I don't always want to be on there it's it's boring me a little bit and you know I took up this reading book challenge last year and one of the reasons was to get off my phone because when I see when my phone puts up a notification on them and day morning to tell me what my phone usage is I am shocked I am really really shocked so it's something that I definitely wanted to reduce but yes so the year of the year of analog so apparently people want to go back to owning physical media so if you think about it if your Gen X you would have had possibly bought a cassette tape bought some vinyl bought a CD but in the year of streaming we don't really own anything it's an playlist on our phone or laptop and we pay a subscription and if you don't pay that subscription you're going to lose all that music so people want to own the media that they're listening to so I find that really interesting but also things like books and cinema trips and even the rise of booktuck if you're on TikTok and you put in the hashtag booktuck you'll see how huge huge that is at the moment people reconnecting with books and sharing books and you know giving their opinion and I I love it because that's you know something that I really connect with with my challenge for this year and just to add I do have a new phone challenge for 2026 and so last year I said it for 25 books I read 26 this year I'm going to try for 30 I'm not going too high but we'll see what we end up doing so yes so that's the first thing that I've seen trained in and also and one of the things that I've seen people commenting on is that with the rise of AI when we're on social media we don't know what's what's real anymore and I must admit for myself if I'm scrolling through TikTok or Insta or Facebook and I see any content that I think is AI I scroll past it I don't want to know which is really interesting because I'm a huge fan of AI but I like to use AI to help me with productivity to speed things up make life easier I don't use things verbatim I don't really use it for many images I wouldn't want to use it to not deceive people but I don't want to use it in that way but if I see any content that I suspect is AI I do tend to scroll past it so that's really interesting for me to see and also I think with social media we use to see it as a safe space didn't we we use to see it as a place where you connect with friends and family and share what you've been up to today what I've had for breakfast where I'm going for my holiday that kind of thing but it's sometimes people have experienced such hostile negative experiences being on social media that's affecting their mental health people will just want to detach from it they don't want to see it if you scroll through you'll see some horrible content and you know things that can affect people's mental health so I'm not surprised that people this year are saying hold up I'm going to disconnect I want to have you know come up social media and get back to doing things in real life so that's one of the things that I've seen heavily trained in across TikTok and Instagram to 2026 a year of analog so the other thing that I've seen trained in and there's a little bit sad really is that sprinkles the cupcake company has closed rather abruptly in early 2026 like 2025 so the first that I heard of it was actually Candice Nelson who was the who created or launched sprinkles in 2005 came on to TikTok to say that she had discovered that the company that she's sold it to is actually decided to close and it seems like it's very unexpected so a lot of the staff were not finding out until they logged into social media and found out that way that they no longer had a job and a lot of people were blaming Candice but she actually sold the business in 2012 to a private equity firm and so she was quite saddened and it shocked is everybody else to be fair because her cupcakes were really really popular and she was the one that pioneered the cupcake ATM which was really really clever but what I liked about cupcakes about sprinkles was its branding and I like to the way that they have those little colored circles you're telling me different flavors on their cakes when I first started doing cake and cupcake cream or the cupcake you decide obviously sprinkles was one of my inspirations there was sprinkles there was Georgetown cupcake there was more cupcakes in the UK there was Lola's and then there was a home in bed bakery those businesses primarily influenced me wanting to do flavor cupcakes as opposed to having highly stylized decorated cakes and it's really sad to see that sprinkles is closing and I was hoping that somebody would intervene and take over but I suppose that's one of the things when you sell to like a private equity firm they're not going to have the same passion or care about it as much as the founder so yeah really disappointed really sad to see that that particular business is now closed and the other thing that I've seen it's not necessarily trending but I thought I'd give it a mention is that a company called 360pac is closing so you might have heard of them they were formerly known as RyPac and I have been using that company for at least gosh it's got to be for at least eight to ten years easily so they sell cupcake boxes cake boxes cakeboards everything you need but they do them in bulk and so when I was doing a lot of the coffee shop contracts I used to order like their cake cards and their boxes because normally we'd have the cake boxes the celebration cake boxes with the box and the lid but they used to do like an all-in-one box that you could just fold up that wasn't too expensive and if you're supplying coffee shops it's all about the margin at the end of the day so you don't want anything that's going to be too expensive so I use them a lot for that you so order a lot of boxes from them and then when I finished doing the coffee shop contracts obviously for celebration cakes you could order things in packs of five and because I haven't got a very big space it was perfect for me because you could order two packs of six-inch boards the boxes and everything and there was super fast delivery they're big 24 whole cupcake boxes were perfect you know they did everything so it was really saddened to see across Facebook and even got an email to say that they'd be closing I don't know the reasons why I don't know if they're going to come back with a different name but I just wonder if it's if the reason why they're closing is because the cake industry has changed so much I don't know the proper reasons but you know that just have an impact on other businesses and you know using companies like that I mean the boxes and the stuff that they sell was quite generic so they weren't highly like stylized like the boxes that are ordered from another company but in the previous podcast I have spoke about how your supply chain can really mess up your business so but luckily for me the boxes and boards that I use from 360 pack are just the generic boxes that you can get from any business and so you know we can use the vanilla valleys the cakes of companies and occasionally I do order a farm as I'm as well if I get a last minute order and maybe I just need one box or one board I can but place the order when I'm ordering other stuff forget it from prime and get it the following day so yeah so I don't know what the reasons were but that's another business that it's sad to see it go and speaking of business closing the beginning of the year as well scrolling through my Instagram there are some cake businesses that I've decided to stop making cakes this year or change their business model or go back to full-time employment and my advice is you have to do you you have to do what's right for you if that means that you're going to do your cake business part time and go back to work or give it up you have to do the right things because the cake business has changed so much and I've had so many conversations with Christina from the art cake coach podcast about it if you want to listen to some of her own episodes but it has changed so much so it's just happened and I can't impact against everybody so get those of the three things that I saw trending across the month of December 2025 and early this year I'm briefly interrupting this episode to bring to your attention three books I think will help hearing your business create a by me they are the cake business order form book to record all your cake orders a weekly baking planner to plan out your baking schedule and lastly a food management book to assist you with the food safety in your business these books are tools to assist you with the process of managing the atmosphere side of your business you can find out more by visiting the link in the show notes they're back to the episode and just to add before I come to the main portion of the show that if you are sort of an analog girl who I very much am I don't keep my orders I use my website to collect orders but I don't use an order system like bait diary or anything like that I have an order form book etc etc so if you are an analog person there's some of the books that just been mentioned in this little advert might help you so anyway let's move on to the main portion of the show and let's talk about ways that we can possibly add additional income to our business if you want to supplement it or even walk away from doing cakes as a full time I'm not a full time but like instead of making cakes we might just want to think about generating an income under the way so let's start off with how we can possibly add value to orders so this isn't going to generate you tons and tons of money unless you're doing tons and tons of orders but a few things that I have tried and have thought about are greetings cards so the first thing is greetings cards for cakes I have got some generic happy birthday cards that I created and the reason why I've got the greetings cards is because I recognise that some of the cupcake orders as well cupcake orders that I've had I sometimes get some from outside of the UK and sometimes it on the side of the UK so internationally and internally as well because some people might have children that's family members that live in the UK or children that are going to university and often they're placed in order and they want it delivered to certain address and then sometimes they're like what can you put a message so I was just used to have like a brown craft gift tag that I used to write a message on and attach it to the box but then I thought this is definitely a want by the customer so let's try and think of something a way of doing it a bit more stylised and I created some greetings cards and I sell them on the website I think they're really 250 so make sure that you get your margins right but it's just a little bit of an extra product that you can get your customers to purchase if they want to add a greetings card to their cupcakes or their celebration cake especially if it's been gifted and then you could do things like congratulations get well soon that kind of thing so I think for this year that's one thing that I have been thinking about redesigning some new designs and then pairing it together with some orders because I do have a happy birthday cupcake box which has got a card in it and a gifted candle so just try to elevate what you've already got is probably a good way to add on a little bit of extra money onto your order as well as upgrading orders with greetings cards the other way that you can have it is to add on some additional items like on my quote form for example with celebration cakes when I've quoted at the button I pull oh why not add on cupcakes and they can have matching cupcakes or have like a box of vanilla and chocolate ones and I do put the price so they see possibly what what that could cost so since you're baking you can just do another upsell with cupcakes or even if you don't want to do cupcakes maybe deserve better something a bit quirky to that will match the cake order and again that's just elevating the price price that you're charging with another product but also make sure that you're charging correctly the other thing is and I've been thinking about this for a while and I need really need to find a supplier for the top is because the supplier that I used to use for top is mainly card ones she doesn't do them anymore but I would want to use a critic ones and it's having a counter and a top set but this would work really well with your ready-to-order cake so if you do ready-to-order cakes say like if you do a raspy and pistachio ready-to-order cake somebody wants to order it and it's decorated with some fresh raspberries and chopped pistachios and they just want to gift it but they just want a tupper and a candle you could buy the tupper and candle and sell them separately and then they can add that to their order I mean it's not rocket science to be honest but it's just a way to elevate and as long as you make sure that you're costing appropriately to make sure you're making some profit and these little extra items that you're going to add on to your cake orders so the other way that possibly you could try and generate an income is doing some workshops whether that's online or in real life and I think because we're talking about analog I think in real life would work really well if you could find a venue that would you could host and I remember many many years ago this is going back probably about 2014 2015 myself and a friend were going to do some workshops where we're going to do like a back-to-business basic workshop that's include a little bit of baking and we found the most amazing venue in Birmingham there used to be a website called was it coffee shop torrent or something like that I've randomly found it and what they were doing there were advertising spaces to hire like for chefs or bakers or outside caterers etc and I found this little coffee shop in Bairwood in Birmingham that was advertising a kitchen and I thought oh I'm going to have a look at this and view it so I'm just expecting like a pulky little kitchen nothing too massive oh my god when I went to see what this kitchen was this it was amazing it was just like it was like a catering college kitchen it had stations it had mixes it had a dishwasher it had a little tempered classroom area it was amazing so when I was like I was guff smite it wasn't what I was expecting so I said how come the coffee shop has got this and it turns out that the actual coffee shop and the kitchen above were actually owned by a college that I think it was children with disabilities and they owned the space as though in between obviously term times and things like that they would hire it out so if you can find a venue that's similar to that that would be perfect to do these masterclasses because I've noticed a special antique tuck people are doing like sip and decorate classes where people get a little bento cake and they can decorate it and they can have a little glass of something and it seems a really nice little in real life thing to do so um that's masterclasses cupcake decorating obviously ganache courses I've seen quite a few with those online and there's a business perth on that perfect cake company um cakemaker's collective is that what they called they do some lovely looking classes as well as um tabby tabby deluxe I hope you get in the names right they she does some courses one to one workshop so I think if you've got the skills and abilities you know you can sell those and do one to one classes and I'm sure people will be happy to snap them off because one thing that I've noticed is you can't really go to a catering college and do cake decorating classes that's what I did when I was when I was learning I went to a night school and I used to go Saturday to learn to make flowers and there used to be these lots of little places where you could go to learn cake decorating but there isn't as many of those now which is really a shame so I think if we're going back to the year of analog I think people will be crying out for something in real-life classes I mean I would consider it myself if I had the time but I don't know I don't know it's something that I'd have to think about but I have done them in the past I've done um cupcake decorating workshops that I just didn't kitchen um with some friends and then I also did the children's cake decorating party so that's something else that you can think about but my one experience of doing this charge decorating party resulted in me never doing one again it was absolute carnage um it was only supposed to be I think it was one eight to ten children I was it was a favour for a friend of my sister I quoted really competitively and the table looked amazing there was little hats and aprons and sprinkles cupcakes piping bags that kind of thing but when it came to it there was more than ten keys it was absolute carnage the age range was about eight years old you could just imagine and after that I was thought how now I can't do that again but if you were going to do that obviously you have to make sure you undertake safeguarding courses correctly insured but this was a favour I was doing to somebody for somebody this was a long time ago and I haven't touched that since so that's something interesting also business basics in real life as opposed to online courses would be right really interesting if you had a small cohort of people maybe about five people charge them X amount per head do it nine to five nine to four classes provide water biscuits pack you know a little buffet platter kind of thing and go through the basics of running your business I think that'd be really helpful I think that would be something that I would quite like to do as well there wouldn't be much kind of bacon in it but just sitting down you know a PowerPoint presentation I think that would be really interesting so face to face in real life courses I think it's definitely the way you know something to consider for 2026 so the subscription model is always it's a thing that people have done in the past I'm not a huge fan of it myself only because I know that I don't think I could commit to it so I would have to think really cleverly about how I would do a subscription model especially if it's around cakes if it was something like a digital product that might be a bit easier but if I was doing cakes I think I would worry about if there was a month that I couldn't deliver or what would I do when I went on a holiday but it can be a really good income generation scheme and I think it had its peak before the pandemic really around 2019 and probably early pandemic 2020 but I think after that I think these subscription models dropped off a cliff and I've seen a few pieces that did have these models and we're doing fantastically well and then after we got back to normal after the pandemic their subscription models just dropped off a cliff they didn't do as well so that's something to consider but with the subscription models you could do things like monthly drops cake jars you could do a different flavor every month I think if I was going to do something like that it would be a cake jar and also my seat back keep back of us you know times I've thought about turning that into a subscription model because it's something that I do monthly but again it's something like what if I you know something happened and I couldn't deliver I mean obviously you'd have to refund and cancel the subscriptions but I think if you are going to go into that kind of business model to really seriously think about how you're going to make it work and take everything into consideration and what you're going to deliver but if you don't want to do a subscription model monthly drops of an item is also a cute way to do to deliver baked goods to your to your customers thing I mean the seat back keep back I'm going to try and start that up for February and maybe do something to deliver on Valentine's and that necessarily Valentine's theme but something a bit more generic than anybody can have but that is something that I personally really enjoy doing but again because it's not a fully subscription model I can deepen it out of that so if there's a month I think I don't want to do it or I'm going away or something happens then I know I can drop away from that quite easily but yeah it's something that maybe you want to think about but also the other alternative is to do some kind of like digital products so you could do a subscription model based around recipes or business advice or just lots of different things really but something just to definitely think about TikTok shop affiliate now this is something that has really taken off over the past two or three years TikTok 2020 2021 was basically just scrolling and just seeing lots of different content now if you go on to TikTok you scroll you will see a lot of TikTok TikTok shop affiliates and people selling products and I have seen Kate maker selling not just Kate decorating things lots of weird and wonderful things and I think the way that that works is that obviously you weren't commissioned per sale so the more you sell the more you make and I think it's between 10 and 50% obviously if you're I don't know how big of a content creator you have to be whether you have to be a certain number I mean I got an invite to be a TikTok sell things on TikTok shop and there was a few Kate decorating things I thought oh I could sell those but I haven't really bought myself to do it I don't think I could necessarily promote something that I wasn't going to buy myself so that's just sitting there in my inbox on TikTok but yeah if you're a content creator you might want to think about and earn a little bit of money that way and also with TikTok as well you can earn money from going live on the platform and if you have long form content and you have a certain amount of followers you can earn money I mean there's some people that have spoke about how much they've made on there I mean it's not it's not a bad amount of money but you have to put in the work but I think with TikTok with TikTok being not being an affiliate but being a content creator I do think that if you are a big creator and you are doing a lot of long form content you have the potential to earn a lot of money I think they I don't know whether this is true or not but I think that they try push your content out to less people because the less people that see it the less they have to pay you so I think initially you probably might lose because you've got lots of people watching you you've got long form content but I think after a while they sort of pull it back a little bit so you don't you know not as many people see it so you don't make as much money and I've heard quite a few content creators across lots of different genres speak about that experience so that's something really interested but I think you know if you're a content creator and you're happy to be in front of the camera a lot then I think that possibly could be a way to generate some additional a fun way to have create some additional content so the other way that you could possibly make some additional income across your Kate business or standalone is creating your own specific niche product or service so on this podcast we have had Amber Marsh who had Kate to you which was a Kate's Concierge service we had Tosin that had the re-created the re-bake app and then we had oh what's the name patience who made the the Chibu London the Kate Carrier and also Dwayne that's got the Kate Carrier and she does stencils and there's lots of different Kate makers that make their own products and they are very successfully and obviously that money comes back to you it's a product that you create if you've got the intellectual property for it and then you can go ahead and make some money I would love to create my own product apart from books obviously which I'm going to come into in a minute but I would love to create my own product I think that would be so exciting and so inspiring to create something that lots of Kate makers possibly use I think it's a fantastic idea so yeah if you've if you've got something in your head that you think oh I wonder if there's a market for this or I think Kate makers would like this then creating your own product is an absolutely fantastic public classly but probably you probably rip through the wards once your product goes to market fingers crossed but yeah I think that would be a great thing to do as well so digital planners or digital products were so popular I don't know maybe again during the pandemic 2020 and a bit before people selling products on Etsy and bespoke products personalized products calendars planners that kind of thing digital projects is definitely something that will always be here to stay just finding the right thing is what you've got to decide really so they can range from things like planners journals and what else pricing calculators recipes recipes pages ebooks I myself have done I did I tried to do a digital product I said on Etsy and you really need to know what you're doing on that website that platform because it's really competitive there's lots and lots of content creators project creators on there so you really have to know what you're doing I didn't sell anything via that platform so I took off the list in a long time ago now but yeah it sees one and then obviously you've got things like stand store I can't speak today stand store where you can also sell digital products things like recipe and guys etc like that put ebooks and I did create an ebook in the Christmas of 2023 I think it was and what it was it was an ebook designed to take people through the process of launching a Christmas promotion because I'd done my Christmas cake again for so many years I felt like I really perfected it and so I wanted to create an ebook and I did and I did sell some and I literally create the product pop it on your website and people can buy that while you're sleeping it's a real passive passive income product I wanted to do one again for the Christmas of 2024 I started it but I never finished it so maybe this Christmas I might do something or maybe do something a bit more generic if people want to do launches in general but I think the cake business the cake market may not be in that same place so it might not sell as well but it's certainly something to think about but if it's not that kind of thing an ebook talking about anything would possibly sound you just have to pick the right platform to go and sell your products I'm and lastly I want to talk about Amazon KDP and publishing books so this is experience that I have so obviously I've done the subscription model not the subscription model we've done sit back keep back we've done I've done cake decorating courses all classes I've done the greetings cards up selling of products cupcakes and etc and this podcast is not monetised I don't make no money from this podcast I'm doing it for the love I'm doing it because it's something that I wanted to learn how to do and I'm doing it because I'm enjoying it I could possibly think about get some sponsorship but at the moment I'm just doing it like this so it's not monetised whatsoever booked it is a platform that I can use to try and promote the things that I've made to try and make things easier for other cake makers so one of those things that I do is the selection of books so if you follow me on Instagram or even the advert that you've just heard you'll know that I correct books for cake decorators but that's not the only thing I do with Amazon KDP I also have a pen name so a pen name is a name that I've given to myself that I can sell other products but not related to cake makers so with the cake products that I have I have cake order books weekly planner food safety book undated weekly planner I have a cake themed word search I have a cake themed coloring book and those are all sold and cake and cupcake group publishing on Amazon I couldn't think of another name so I just had my business numbers just to publish it at the end and this is where I create all the books geared towards cake makers the first book I've created was 2021 it was the food safety book I curated it because I was just using printed out forms I'd ordered a book I found this on I just thought I could just do a better job if I created one myself that's what I did and I've done that and so what when I did that I just I'd hug it I just you know did a bit of YouTube research and just figured out to do it myself set myself up on Amazon you have to be a registered business etc and with HMRC so you can't just go on there and that's what I did but not long after I did that I joined a membership from a lady that I brought some products from in the past she was doing a membership plan how to do Amazon KDP I thought this is going to be absolutely perfect for me and I've been in that membership ever since and what she does she teaches you how to create the books so these the books that I created low content books they're not like cookery books or novels or anything like that they're low content and I wouldn't personally want to sell anything on Amazon where I own the intellectual property so for example if I was going to do a baking book or a recipe book I don't want Jeff base us owning the rights to that book and when you do Amazon KDP there are aspects of that that you're buying into so I'm happy to do low content journals planners that kind of thing but anything that there was intellectual property I'd want to self publish that myself fire another root and be solely responsible for the sell it and the profit that comes from that I mean I do aspire to write kinds some kind of baking book recipe book piece news book one day I will do it but the day that I do it I will publish that myself it won't be going to Amazon but anyway back to KDP so I sell these books under Amazon and if you go onto YouTube you'll see people say you can make thousands from selling KDP you probably can if you get your niche right your genre right if there is so much that goes into successfully selling on Amazon KDP it's not just a fact to put in a book up there and it being the number one ranking book on there there is so many things to take into account there's lots of different apps to do the research you're looking for the ranking of products and the more you have on the platform the more you were sour so don't just don't have one book I think today I think I must have about six now how many projects do I love to have a look and come back to you and say how many products that I've got in there but yeah you really have to try to promote them and like I said you can't just have one book and expect it to sell really well but at the same time I do have a pen name I'm not going to say what the pen name is but under this pen name I have sold um word search like an auto winter right word search I have sold um what is it menopause trackers I have created a hair journal and also Christmas planner so on Amazon KDP at the moment I think I have about 30 products altogether that I'm selling it might be more than that because what somebody said was if you sell an Amazon KDP the more products you sell the more likely you are to sell so you're sort of spreading your bets basically trying different things but yeah my pen name I sell lots of other projects so when I come up with ideas for things I'm thinking that I make a great book but I publish under a different name and I've got to say one of my most successful books used to be my food safety planner but it's actually as of 2026 the beginning because I've still sold a couple of copies is a Christmas planner the most generic thing you can think about I made I created it and I popped it on Amazon KDP the end of August so because I thought if anybody's like me they're going to start planning for Christmas from September and I've got to say ever since I put that book on publisher in August I sold a copy nearly every single day up until up until last week I'd sell one copy two copies three copies four copies and it wasn't price very expensive so when you do sell books on Amazon KDP you create the book you put it on to sell you decide the price point Amazon doesn't decide the price point you decide how much you want to sell it for there is a price difference between paperback kindle and hardback and then once you decide on your price Amazon will tell you how much you'll make per book so for example if you put a book on for seven ninety nine you're possibly going to make four pound fifty for every book that you sell so and then what you do Amazon will pay you I think it's after 60 days or something like that I can't even remember what it is but yeah but it's such a fun activity to do now I'm not saying that I'm rich from that no shape or four but I just love creating the books and having them on there and to sell and like I said the Christmas planner was one of my most popular books I was gubsmacked and basically all it is is like like a notebook size that has got different sections to help you plan for Christmas if it's got diary pages it's got Christmas lists list it's got pages to put recipes it's got pages to write down yet out on the shelf ideas it's got some ideas how to carry down to Christmas and do different activities correct your own Christmas playlist it's got lots of random things in there and then yeah I put them on Amazon and it was I was gubsmacked it was number one seller so even though it's not calculated I've taken that skill to create something cow so that is quite an interesting thing and the the membership that I mean as well I think I'm the only cake lady in there the other people they create wellness trackers and coloring books and activity books because these are all low content books but yeah it's one of the best things that I've learned how to do and I'd like to do more books and sometimes if there's a book that I want it myself I think I know I'll just create an Amazon KDP and then just sell it and get the books you can order author copies which are much cheaper than what they sell them for you can order loads of author copies and go and sell them up so yeah there's lots of different things you can try there but that's one of the things that I do to have it's a truly passive income generation activity which is proper evergreen you know the books are there and you can sell them year after year after year obviously the plan is dated 2026 I had a 2025 one so but no I that's one thing that I really enjoy doing it's so much fun so I really hope you enjoy that episode and it gave you food for thought about things maybe that you want to have a girl like generation especially if cake sales alone you can tap into a different market I mean when you're doing this thing maybe it would be wise to have a separate Instagram account because obviously your customer's going to be different when you've got your Kate business account you're selling to your right or customer your business owner but if you're going to have things that you want to sell to other Kate makers they may be have a different platform for that just to keep them separate because the the audience is very different and with my Instagram page if I'm selling Kate making books that's where it's going I don't put them on my main business page so anything business if I'd go is on my Instagram for the podcast but yeah I hope you enjoy that and if you do take up any of the ideas I'd love to hear from you and and see how you get on and some of these I'm going to maybe think about implementing in 2026 once I sit down and figure out all my goals and things that I want to do for 2026 but anyway that was another solo episode now moving forwards I'm hoping to have some guests on the podcast I've got to be a bit more proactive this is the longest run of solo episodes I've done in a long time so I hope you're moving forward from family on but if you're really always we will have some guests to share some ideas and hear some Kate making founder stories and things like that but all that's left for me to say is have a lovely day have a happy baking week if you're back into the baking and see you next time bye you