I am not professionally trained, but have always enjoyed cake and cookie decorating and have made many over the years, recently including my own wedding cake and cookie favors. I wanted to share that I just became employed as an entry-level Cake Decorator at my local bakery and I start next week. I'm very excited but also nervous! Please wish me luck and any advice for my first day would be VERY appreciated! :D

Good luck and have fun!  Don't be nervous, you don't want your hands to shake.  That's exciting!

Congratulations and good luck. Just take your time and put your best work out there. 

Well, it's been almost a year of cake decorating now and my friends and family are pushing for me to go forth.  I think I'm ready to start "advertising" per se but only to a select group. Still a little nervous, ya know. BUT...I'm ready to start a business. Since I can't do this full time I'll need to be very strategic about targeting customers and the kinds of orders I'll accept.  I'll be scouring the forums for advice.  Any pearls? Shoot me a line.  

AFirst advice is to find out what you need to do to make sure you're doing it legally.

Second advice is to charge in line with your local market from the start, if you try to be the 'cheap cake lady' in the beginning because you're new, you'll only get cheap clients who expect something for nothing. If your cakes are good enough to be sold, they should be sold at full price. As you'll read often on here, it's better to do one cake for $150 than three cakes for $50 each.

Third advice is to have fun and remember why you wanted to do this in the first place!