Now that you've done an event, take a breather and evaluate your soap-selling ideas. Sometimes you know immediately what you think, but often it takes a while to let the event sink in. Talk to your soapmaking friends and your family and take time to process your thoughts. Here are some questions to ask yourself.

Do You Want to Do It Again?

Did you have a blast? Were you in utter misery the entire time? Was some of it fun and other parts of it nerve-wracking? Most likely your response to your experience will be a combination of things.

It is fun to be busy, telling everyone about your soap, even if you didn't sell much. And if you didn't have many customers, you may have made friends with other vendors. It's possible that you got irritated about not being able to enjoy the event yourself.

Give yourself a few days to process your ideas. If, after you've cleaned up the mess you made of your house getting ready for the event, you think you want to do it again, start making a plan.

How Much Money Did You Actually Make?

After you've added up all the supplies, equipment, fees, and the value of your time, if you made money your first time out, you are ahead of the game. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you didn't make any money, even if you lost money, you still learned something. It is rare to make money right away. Remember to value your time, ideas, and experience.

Are You Prepared to Live Like This?

If you're still thinking positively about selling more soap, you have to make hard choices about your lifestyle. If you get into the farmers' market circuit, you have to go even when you don't want to. Until you get to the point where you can hire someone, you'll have to spend all your spare time cutting, trimming, wrapping, tying, packing, unpacking.