How to Make Money Making Candles

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"Now it may be true that, because I sell so cheap I have to work harder than the higher-priced dealers to make as much money as they do. But I'll tell you . . . constantly having sales sure beats sitting around half the time while potential customers look skeptically at your product. I make a lot of candles and I sell them cheap . . . and because of that, I sell a lot."

Indeed he does sell a lot of candles. Denny has just moved into a new home with a big basement in which he figures he'll have no difficulty making a thousand candles a week, by himself. The candles come in varying shapes, sixteen different decorator color combinations and a multitude of scents . . . but they're all twelve inches tall. It costs Dennis 27¢ in materials to make a candle and he both wholesales and "retails" each one for an extremely reasonable $1.50. At that price he has no difficulty selling a thousand candles a day. And, even when offering those candles to the general public at wholesale prices while paying three or four friends twenty to thirty dollars a day each, Dennis cleans a minimum of $600 for the week . . . which ain't bad.

Actually, Denny doesn't need all the help he hires for one of these days but, as he puts it, "When you're trying to live your life the way you want to, it can sometimes get difficult financially. This way I help my friends as they help me and they don't have to feel obligated."

It sure does help those friends, Denny. Ask me and I'll tell you! Besides, putting in a day selling candles for Dennis is more fun than work. It's hard to explain but Denny says it this way, "It's really strange and kind of fun selling so cheap. If you have a wide variety of shapes and colors on display and the price is right, there's almost sure to be a candle that any given person will like. Often, people may just be walking by when they catch a scent—candles have to be scented to sell—or see a color they like . . . then they notice the price and you can almost read their thoughts. It's as if they're saying, 'My God, I just have to have a candle!' It sometimes seems that they're driven to buy a candle. It's almost a guaranteed sale to anyone who's ever had the slightest inkling to buy one."

Selling his candles may be fun and games for Denny but, at least occasionally, preparing for those big sale days is not. A lot of hard work goes into that preparation. "While I'm making the candles," says Dennis, "life sometimes gets pretty lonely. I'm working eight to ten hours a day, I'm anxious to finish, tired and I miss seeing my friends. Still, it's a good life and I've got no complaints."

If you'd like to map out your own version of the good life Denny has found, he says that he feels certain—given reasonable intelligence and ability—that you can do it. He started without knowing a single thing about making candles and he learned everything he knows about the craft from a book and through experiments as he went along.

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