How To Sell Your Crafts Online

Whatever craft it is that you love to do; you can make money off of it. You won't get rich, but you can get your money back that you put into supplies plus a little extra. Depending on your craft and how hard you work you could make a nice living. It's easier today than ever; by using the internet you have no start-up costs and nothing to lose.

As easy as it is to get started, you still need to put your best efforts and hard work into your online business if you want to succeed. The hardest part to succeeding online is perseverance. This is where a lot of people fail, they simply don't stick around long enough to see the results they want to achieve and so they give up, before they even gave it a chance.

It doesn't happen overnight with a brick and mortar business and it won't happen overnight in an online business either. As a matter of fact it takes about 3-5 years for any business to see some positive returns. You need to build reliable and trustworthy relationships with people in order to succeed, and no matter where you are, or what business you're in; this takes time.

Some crafts or items will sell faster than others, but there is a market for just about anything you can think of. My advice is to start off with something that you enjoy, whatever it may be, and make a few items. Just make sure that your items are original and not a cheap copy of someone else's work.

Next you will need to learn to take good quality pictures of your items; if your pictures are sloppy or blurry, people won't want to buy from you because a 'picture speaks a thousand words.'

Write an accurate description of your product. The more details you offer the greater your chances will be of making a sale. This description, along with your pictures is basically your sales letter, and all, aside from your online credibility, that your potential customers will have to help them decide whether they should buy your products or not.

So take your pictures, write your description, re-take and re-write as many times as needed to make your sales letter stand out and entice people to buy from you. However, as important it is to write an enticing sales letter, it's just as important to keep it honest, and don't make your product to be something that it's not. Remember, a repeat sale to returning customers is what all businesses must rely on, so if you disappoint your customers, they will not return and thus your business will not succeed.

Keep in mind though; due to various circumstances, you won't be able to please everyone, no matter how hard you try. But, don't let this stop you from moving forward, give yourself time, and you will build your list of returning customers.

Now that you have your craft items, your pictures and description; you are now ready to sell your item. There are many online marketplaces where you can sell your items, and may seem overwhelming to decide which marketplace to sign up with. But really there is no right or wrong. You can register with one, or register with them all for maximum exposure! Stick with the ones which generate sales, and lose the rest. It's that simple.

eCrater

eCrater is a good place to start because it's 100% free! That means there's no listing fees, no set-up fees and no fees after you sell your product. The only fees you pay are Pay Pal or Google checkout fees.

When you register with eCrater, you get to create you very own online stores-as many as you like, with unlimited items, and up to 10 photos for each listing.

Your store listings will also appear in the eCrater online marketplace for everyone to find. For optional, additional exposure you can buy advertising in the main marketplace.

eCrater provides you with free tools to promote your stores, along with forums for help and ideas on how to promote your stores.

It's fast, it's easy and you have absolutely nothing to lose!

Lov.li

Another free site is Lov.li. The only fee they will charge you is a 3.5% commission fee once your item sells, and then of course you'll have to pay your pay pal fees. This site only allows you to sell handmade items made by you.

Etsy

Etsy is all about handmade items as well. The only exceptions are vintage and supplies, but everything else is handmade by you or a group that you belong to.

Etsy however, charges a small listing fee; every item you list will cost you $0.20 for 4 months. They also charge a 3.5% commission fee when an item sells, and again your pay pal fees.

Etsy, has many great feature like the Alchemy; where people can list items which they would like someone to make for them according to their specifications. It provides you with a great community with many groups which you can join. The forums are a great place to chat and ask questions, plus much, much more.

With Etsy you have your own shop, plus all your items will get listed in the main directories. For extra exposure you can purchase a spot in the showcase.

eBay

eBay is probably the best place to sell because of all the traffic going through and people are there to buy. The only downfall of eBay is their fees. Before listing your first item, you should familiarize yourself with the fees. If you're not careful you could end up paying more than what you're making.

There are two ways to list on eBay; in the auction format, or you can open an eBay Store for a monthly fee.

The auctions last for 3-7 days; 10 for an extra fee. This fee may not seem like much at first, but if your items don't sell within these days you have to re-list and this is where you could end up loosing money.

If you open a store, you can list your items much cheaper and the listings will remain active for a month or until cancelled-whatever you decide. But in the store listing format, your items will not be listed in the main eBay directories which could result in few or no sales if you don't have repeat customers or don't know how to drive traffic to your store. My advice is to stick with the auction format until you have received some positive feedback, repeat customers and developed more products to make it worthwhile.

There are many ways to go about selling your crafts online apart from the major marketplaces. One of the benefits of this is that you can save yourself a lot of listing and commission fees.

You can set up a blog with blogger or wordpress. You also have the option to set up a free website with synthasite or weebly under your own registered domain name, or you can choose a free sub-domain which they provide you with. You can register a domain name with a company like GoDaddy
or BlueHost, for under $10.00 for 1 year.

Whatever method you choose you can use pay pal as your payment method. The only fees which you would accrue are your pay pal fees. The rest of your money goes straight into your pocket and stays there-until you decide to spend it. To set this up simply register with pay pal and they will provide you with the coding which you can integrate into your website or blog.

Now the biggest challenge is to generate traffic to your site in order to make sales. There are a number of ways in which you can do this; some are free, some are not so free and others you definitely have to pay for if you want to take advantage of them.

One way to generate free traffic is called social marketing with sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook, Another way is to ping your site to the search engines using pingomatic.

The not so free way to generate traffic is to list some of your items on high traffic marketplaces like eBay or etsy. Then when you make a sale, you simply send your business card with your website on it, along with your order. When your customer receives his/her order and is happy with it, he/she will visit your website for more products and make future purchases.

Last but not least, you can use google adwords and those of course you have to pay for, but with the right keywords they can drive a lot of traffic to your site.

So remember whatever method you choose, it will take time to establish your online store. People do want to be able to trust who they are buying from and therefore you will need to build an online credibility before your business will boom. So work hard, be honest and patient and success will follow. Cheers.