Selling your handmade items can be exciting and rewarding. If you are passionate about arts and crafts and want to make some money out of them, you are not far from establishing a business of your own. Gone are the days when crafty folks had to go to the local crafts fair or market to sell their arts and crafts. Now you can find buyers for your homemade stuff on the world wide web.
But selling something on the internet is different from setting up a booth at the market, there are many nuances and techniques you need to know. To help you out, here are some simple tips that can help you in setting up your online business:
Change Your Mindset
You can find many tips on the internet regarding how to run an online crafts business, but the most important thing is the mindset that will encourage you to start one. You have to shift your mindset from that of a hobbyist or a “crafter” to that of a business owner.
You need to start seeing your arts and crafts as not just something you do in your free time, but as a full-fledged business. You cannot build a business around something you are doubtful about, you should have full faith in your creative abilities.
Good products are just one of the pre-requisites of having a successful business. You should educate yourself about the technicalities that apply to all businesses. These include how to price your products, how to market them, what kind of discounts to give, how to ensure great customer service, etc. These are the things that will make your customers come back to buy more.
Focus on a Specific Niche
There are many masterful crafters all over the world and most of them have access to the internet, so you have a lot of competition. In order to stand out from the sea of online arts and crafts stores, you need to pick a specific niche and become known for it. It is smarter to sell a limited number of good-quality products belonging to a single category instead of offering all sorts of products.
For example, you can create arts and crafts using glass bottles or jars and name your brand accordingly. Now, anyone who loves glass-related crafts is more likely to check out your shop as opposed to a shop that has all kinds of products. You can find some good quality glass jars here to make crafts with.
Know What People Want to Buy
It is important to do some research about the homemade products that people are willing to buy before investing your money, time, and energy into creating something. You can only sell what people want to buy. One way of finding whether people are interested in a certain product or not is through Instagram.
Let’s say you want to sell a knitted wall hanging; search for hashtags related to your product on Instagram like #WallHanging or #KnittedHanging. The search results will give you an idea of the popularity of this product. If you feel that a lot of people have spent money to buy similar products or are at least talking about them, you have a green light.
Create Product Collections
Creating collections of similar products is a smart idea to leverage sales. When a buyer visits your shop, make sure that he buys as many products as possible. If you are selling similar products like a mug and a plate, the buyer would be tempted to buy both.
Similarly, if you have wallets in your shop, keep things like keychains as well. So that anyone who is looking for something to put his cash in is also drawn to buy something beautiful for his keys.
Take Product Photography Seriously
The presentation of your products is something that lets the users judge your business and the things that you are selling. If you are posting low-quality pictures of the products, it is going to leave a bad impression. Buyers are unlikely to buy something they can’t see clearly. Keep in mind that clarity is not the only thing that you should be working on, you must make the pictures aesthetically pleasing as well.
A practical way of showing what a product looks like is showing it in use. Let’s say you are selling a key chain, put some keys in your key chain, and make someone hold it in her hand and picture that. You can also put the key in a car door so that the key chain is hanging and the design can be seen. It is important to post several pictures of a single product, you can put the product on a table and capture it and also take other pictures that show the same product in use.
Understand How Pricing Works
Before setting a price for your first product, do thorough research on the subject. There are ways to set prices that generate more profit, you need to learn and practice them. A lot of newbies make this grave mistake that they do not charge enough thinking that a low price will attract more customers. Business is done to earn money and you must keep this in mind at every step of the way.
Conclusion
There are a lot of opportunities for crafters wanting to make some money out of their passion but there is also a lot of competition. To establish your brand and make your place in the market, you have to stand out from the crowd. That can be done by making a strategy that is a mix of treading the path of successful crafts shop owners and thinking out of the box.