What Should My Child Make and Sell? Five Questions That Settle It

Five questions, ten minutes, one answer

Quick answer: Most children can generate twenty ideas and choose none of them. The fix is not more ideas, it is a filter. Apply these five questions to every option and almost all of them fail:

1. Can they make ten of it in an afternoon, without you? Ten adequate ones, not one perfect one.
2. Does one cost under $2 to make? Anything above that needs too many sales to be worth the effort.
3. Will it survive a hot car? It will spend three hours in one. Anything that melts, leaks or wilts is out.
4. Would a stranger buy it, or only a relative? Ask honestly. Most homemade craft fails here.
5. Can your child explain it in one sentence? If they cannot say what it is and who it is for, nobody at a stall will work it out either.

Anything that passes all five is worth making. Two failures and it is out. This takes ten minutes and saves a fortnight.

The five questions applied to eight common ideas

Two things stand out from that table. Bracelets, bookmarks and painted items keep passing, which is why they persist as children's craft despite being unglamorous. And the items that look most exciting, the ones at the top of every American list, keep failing question three before any regulation is considered.

Three categories to think twice about in Australia

This is the part the craft listicles leave out, and it matters more than the crafting does.

Cosmetics. AICIS, the national industrial chemicals regulator, explicitly classifies bath bombs, soap, lip balm, lipstick, moisturiser and perfume as cosmetics. Cosmetics sold in Australia must also meet the ACCC's mandatory ingredient labelling standard, which applies regardless of how small the operation is.

Where the line sits is genuinely helpful. AICIS's own guidance gives the example of someone making handmade soap and selling it to friends for the cost of the materials, without making a profit, and states they do not need to register. Selling at a market for profit is a different activity. If your child wants to make bath bombs for friends at cost, that is one thing. Making them to sell for margin at a school fete is worth a look at the AICIS and ACCC pages first.

Food. Covered in our business ideas guide and the lemonade stand article. The short version: food sold to the public engages food safety law, councils generally need to be notified, and the fundraising exemptions are narrower than people assume. A school fete under the organiser's existing arrangements is the simplest path.

Candles and anything flammable. Consumer product safety obligations apply, and the transport and liability questions are not ones to work through for a child's weekend venture.

None of this is legal advice, and none of it means a child cannot make these things. It means the easy answer is to pick something from the non-regulated column, which is where all four of the strong performers in the table above happen to sit.

Why question four is the one that hurts

Would a stranger buy it, or only a relative?

This is where most ideas actually fail, and it is the question parents find hardest to answer honestly, because the honest answer is often no.

A useful test: imagine the item on a table next to nine other stalls, with a customer who has never met your child. Does it get picked up? A slightly wonky painted rock from a seven-year-old genuinely does, because the charm is the product. A slightly wonky bracelet competing against a $4 machine-made one does not, unless there is something specific about it.

The way through is usually specificity rather than quality. Bookmarks fail as bookmarks and succeed as bookmarks with the names of local streets on them. Painted rocks fail as painted rocks and succeed as garden markers for a herb garden. The narrower it is, the more a stranger can see who it is for.

What to do with whatever survives

Make five, not fifty. Then sell them. If all five go, make twenty. This is the single most useful rule in the whole process, and it is covered in full in the seven steps from idea to first sale.

Test it on one person who is not family. A neighbour, a friend's parent. Ask what they would change and write the answer down without arguing.

Work out the unit cost from a real receipt. Not an estimate. The number your child calculates themselves is the one that changes how they price.

Pick the selling moment before making anything. A date and a place. Without one, the five get made and then sit in a cupboard.

Common mistakes

Choosing three ideas. One. A child running three products at a stall sells nothing well and cannot explain any of them.

Choosing the hardest thing on the list. Ambition at this stage produces an unfinished project. The best first product is slightly boring and completely achievable.

A parent finishing them. If you are gluing at 10pm the night before, the child is no longer running it.

Ignoring question three. More first stalls are ruined by heat than by anything else. Australia is not the country most of this advice was written for.

Confusing what the child likes making with what someone will buy. Both matter, but only one of them is testable in advance, which is what question four is for.

Questions parents ask

What can kids make and sell easily?
Friendship bracelets, bookmarks, painted rocks and plant markers are the four that consistently pass all five questions: cheap, fast, heat-proof and genuinely saleable to strangers. Start there unless your child has a specific skill that suggests otherwise.

What sells best at a school market day?
Anything under $5 that another child can buy with their own money, and anything a parent will buy as a small gift. Price point matters more than category. The stalls that sell out are almost always the cheap ones.

Can kids sell homemade bath bombs or lip balm in Australia?
These are classified as cosmetics, with ingredient labelling requirements that apply at any scale. Selling to friends at cost is treated differently from selling for profit. Check the AICIS and ACCC product safety guidance before a child sells them commercially.

How much should a child charge?
Enough to cover the unit cost several times over. At a school market day, $2 to $5 covers most handmade items. Let the child set the final number and work out afterwards whether it was right.

My child wants to make something too complicated. What do I say?
Ask question one: can you make ten of these by Sunday, on your own? Let the question do the work rather than saying no. Most children answer it accurately.

The short version

Five questions: ten in an afternoon, under $2, survives a hot car, a stranger would buy it, explainable in one sentence. Two failures and the idea is out. Avoid cosmetics, food and candles for a first venture. Then make five, test on one non-relative, and book the selling date before you start.

If your child needs somewhere to keep the rejected ideas for later, My Ideas Log gives each one a page. To take the surviving idea through costing, pricing and the first sale, the Business Plan Workbook has the pages for it.

References

• AICIS, Personal care, skincare, make-up and other cosmetic products, for bath bombs, soap, lip balm and lipstick being classified as cosmetics

• AICIS, Business, hobby or personal use, for the worked example of selling handmade soap to friends at cost without registration

• AICIS, Is my product a cosmetic? decision tool, worth linking directly so readers can check their own product

• ACCC Product Safety, for the Consumer Goods (Cosmetics) Information Standard 2020 ingredient labelling requirements. Confirm the current ACCC URL before publishing and link the standard's own page rather than a summary