If you are talented enough to be able to create your own crafts, it is a great way to earn some income for stay at home moms or anyone who has the time to create something that others will find value with.
I am going to show you how to sell crafts online and where the best place to sell crafts online is. This will include what your costs are for selling your crafts online.
The First Steps To Selling Your Crafts Online
Besides getting an inventory created that you can sell, there are a few steps that you are going to want to do before you start selling your crafts online.
- Create A Brand – This will help you to be more recognized as your business starts to grow.
- Create A Logo – This is similar to your brand. You want to have something that shows who you are. There are several places you can use that will allow you to create a free logo. Here are my recommendations for creating a free logo for your business. FlamingText.com, CoolText.com, Squarespace, Designhill or Logoster. You should be able to create something with one of these that expresses who your business is.
- Develop A Website – More information on the website below.
- Choose A Theme For Your Website
- Write A Great About Me Section – This will help your customers have a better understanding of you. You may be surprised how many customers will want to know more about the artist. A website is a great place for you to give your customers more information about you.
Why You Should Have A Website To Sell Your Crafts
There are many places that you can sell your crafts online, but selling through your own website is the best place to sell handmade items online. You won’t have to pay any marketplace fees and you will learn to know your customers, since you will be dealing with them directly.
When your customers visit your website, you won’t be competing against other crafts. Your visitors can learn more about your products, yourself and how you make your crafts.
You can create a blog to your online craft store, and it can help draw in more traffic. Write a blog on topics that are closely related to your crafts. It will help more potential customers find you and your products.
When you consistently blog, your site can move up in Google search results, helping more people find what you are selling. The more readers that find your website, the easier it will be to sell your craft items online.
Your website can help show off your skills, letting your customers know what makes your craft projects special. You can highlight your work and increase the value of your products.
Here are some ideas that you could share on your website to help you get started.
- How you come up with your creative ideas.
- What special products you use to create your crafts.
- Keep them up to date about upcoming products you might be developing.
There are free plugins available for your website that will allow your customers to browse all of your awesome crafts, learn why they are unique and place an order all in one place. The website plugin I would recommend using is WooCommerce. It is free to use and can handle all of your purchases.
How To Build A Website To Sell Your Crafts
If you have never built a website, you might think that it is hard to do and expensive. That isn’t the case. It is possible to create a free website for a blog.
When I first decided to create my first website, I went in search of somewhere that could teach me how to create a website, and I came across Wealthy Affiliate. Joining Wealthy Affiliate was the best decision I could have made to help me get started with building a website.
They provided me with the training on how to set up a website, what I needed to do to get ranked in Google, provided me with hosting for my website and have 2 free website domains. They provided me with everything that I needed, and all I needed to do was provide my email address.
You can sign up for Wealthy Affiliate for free, and let’s be honest, when we are looking to be making money we generally don’t have extra money that we want to spend. When I first started out, I had a new website created within a few days of training and I never spent a penny.
Take a look at what Wealthy Affiliate provides for free. They will have everything you need to get your new crafts website up and running in no time at all. It might be the best decision you make for your business.
Where Else To Sell Your Crafts Online
There are marketplaces where you can sell your crafts online as well, but there will be some costs involved, more competition, or you might only be selling to customers in your area.
If you decide to use these marketplaces, I would still develop you own website and sell directly from there as well. It will increase your potential customers, and the prices that you can charge can be higher.
Etsy – This site is dedicated to items that are handcrafted, unique and custom-made. Etsy is considered one of the best places to sell handmade items online.
Pros: Easy to use and large customer base.
Cons: Lots of competition, which can drive prices down.
Fees: Etsy takes a 5% transaction fee when you make a sale. There is also a $.20 listing fee for every item you put up for sale. I also would recommend using Etsy Plus so you can customize your page with banners. This comes with a price of $20 per month.
Shop Handmade – They cover all types of handmade items.
Pros: It is free to use.
Cons: Since it is free, there is really a lot of competition.
FaceBook Marketplace – You can use FaceBook Marketplace to sell all types of items. They have several different categories, and handmade items is one of the categories they offer.
Pros: Easy to create listings even from your phone. There are no shipping costs involved.
Cons: You are only selling to people in your area. This will greatly reduce the number of potential customers you could find.
Other Tips For Selling Your Crafts Online
You will need to display photos of your creations. Make sure they are great photos. Shoot the photo of your item on a plain white background. You don’t want anything to draw attention away from the item you are trying to sell.
Choose your product listing carefully. You want to make sure you use a description that others could be searching for. If your description is to vague, your customers might have a hard time ever finding what you are selling.
Use social media. I have found that Pinterest is one of the best for quickly getting a following and getting your pins to spread to many other Pinterest users. FaceBook also has a business page that you can set up, where you would be able to display your crafts.
You can use whichever social media platform you are the most comfortable using, but remember to include hashtags in your descriptions. This will help you reach even more people.
Summary
There are many different avenues you can take to sell your crafts online. I do feel that creating your own website will be the best way to gain the most traffic to your products. A website will allow you to sell directly, have less competition and help you get the highest price for your crafts.
Good luck to you with your sales and I hope this article helped you learn how to sell crafts online.
Please share other ideas you may have below or ask questions and I will get back with you. You can follow momsmakingmoneyathome.com on Pinterest, FaceBook, Twitter or Linkedin for all the latest updates. Please use the share icons to share with family or friends if you found this information of value.
~Marla
Some of the links within this post are affiliate links of which I might receive a small compensation from sales of certain items.
