Selling Crafts Online

If you’re someone who sells at craft shows, fairs or festivals, do you ever have trouble finding them?

OK, so this post isn’t about selling crafts online, but a lot of people sell offline as well, via galleries, stores and shows, so I think it’s appropriate.

Anyway, it’s a long time since I sold at shows, so I don’t know the current availability, how you find appropriate fairs and festivals, etc… but I do know somebody who does!

Cathy over at Fairs and Festivals.net has all the info on US craft shows and events that you could possibly need. There’s organizer detail, emails, websites where available, all the stuff necessary to make enquiries or bookings.

If you’re into selling at craft shows it’s got to be worth a look. Full details here. There’s a free craft show profits ebook up for grabs as well.

I’ve been seriously thinking about publishing a book or a course about the tremendous power of a craft business blog. I’ve been asked about it and I certainly feel qualified to do so. I have several of my own blogs and I consult with a number of other business helping with theirs…

It’s good money, and I know how quickly a craft blog can become profitable. It takes a bit of work, of course, but the number of potential customers you can reach grows enormously. A craft friend who I help has added three thousand people to her newsletter list in seven months. How would you like another 3,000 people knocking on your door?

But… I bet you guessed there would be a “but”?

I have to be honest, it’s already been done. Not craft specific perhaps, but there’s a book you can download, which is free, and which I couldn’t recommend more highly.

Because it’s the book that got me started blogging three years ago.

That’s when I came across this slightly unusual Australian called Yaro Starak and his ebook, Blog Profits Blueprint. He was in the middle of a trip around the world, paid for solely by his blogging – and he’d only been at it eighteen months at the time!

Now Yaro isn’t a craftsman, he wouldn’t pretend to be. He’s a blogging expert and the advice he gives in his book is appropriate to every blogger – or potential blogger. He’s not full of marketing whatsit either. He tells you it’s going to take time, which it will. He tells you how to structure a blog for long term profitability, not for some sort of nonsense about making a hundred grand tomorrow.

I’m not going to go banging on about this. He’s the guy I learned blogging from. The book is free so why wouldn’t you get a copy?

Well I guess if you’re not interested in blogging – that would be about the only reason. But for me that’s a bit like saying you don’t want your craft business to make any more money than it is now.

Seriously though, I’m no suggesting Yaro’s book will help you become a millionaire next week. But do I think it could it help you build a successful, profitable craft business? Yes I do. Download your free copy here.
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When it comes to craft publishing I’m a big fan of doing it yourself. With current technology anyone can publish their own craft book. It’s very satisfying personally and the profitability can be remarkable. What’s more, once established it’s almost a craft business model that almost runs itself.

The other day I read a story which further convinced me that if you have a craft book in you then going the traditional publishing route can be fraught with difficulty and disappointment.

This is someone who is quite well known online and an experienced crafts person. To be honest I’m a little surprised they hadn’t gone the self-publishing route in the first place. However, our friend had been approached by a large publishing house and asked if they would be interested in writing a craft book on a particular subject which they are known to be expert at.

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I’ve mentioned how writing articles is great free marketing for your crafts – enough times now so that some of you might be getting fed up with it – so I’ll keep this real short.

The thing is, it works – and here’s the proof:

That’s this blog, number one in Google, against 21,200,000 other pages – and I didn’t spend a cent on advertising. I write for the blog, I submit articles.

Now I’m not showing this to brag – I’m showing it to prove what works. How much better do you think your craft business would be doing if it was number one in Google – and it cost you nothing?

If you’re new to the blog and I haven’t had the chance to bore you to death with this yet check out a free, craft-only article site: Great Craft Articles and the best book on the subject: The Art of Article Marketing.

Google rankings change rapidly and maybe the site won’t be number one tomorrow. It’ll still be right up there – and every day in the top ten makes a huge difference to the exposure your craft business gets.

There are two sides to your craft business. The first is making your crafts, which is the bit we all know and love to do. The second is selling them and it’s probably the area where most crafters are less comfortable and know least about.

Fortunately selling crafts online gives you the ability to reach far greater markets and can provide your craft business with a huge boost.

Setting up an online craft store is now within the range of any of us, there are even some – like Artfire.com – that are free to start. The store is only half the challenge though. Unfortunately many crafts people think that you can just open a store on the internet and the customers will flood in. They get very disappointed when it doesn’t happen.

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Well here’s a new category for selling crafts online – a craft book review!

I happened to be talking to Robert Morris from OurPaperFlowers.com the other day and he asked if I would like to review their craft ebooks (he and wife Jane run the business together). It occurred to be that there were a number of things here that were of interest to crafters – not just their paper flower books, so here we go!

First off, from a craft business point of view, look how clear and professional the site is. No beating about the bush, if you want to learn how to make paper flowers, this is where to get the info!

They also have a free newsletter. I’m always going on about how important it is for you to be able to stay in touch with your craft site visitors and here’s that in action.

There’s a short video, and then some content detail that tells you what you can expect, all backed up with that important money-back guarantee which reassures customers that they aren’t taking any risks by buying either of the books. Finally they help you out with a link to where you can actually get the materials to make paper flowers, just in case you’re stuck

But what about the paper flower making books themselves?

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Chances are that if you’re reading this post about selling crafts it’s because you’ve heard that search engines are important to your craft business but you need more information.

Happy to oblige!

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If you’ve been dropping by here for a while you’ll know I’m keen on article marketing as a means of attracting people to your online craft business. So keen in fact that I wrote a book about it

Well now I’ve gone one quite big step further – and created a whole website, designed to help you profit from it. What’s more, it’s completely free!

What I’ve done is built a craft article directory. Now, rather than have your article in amongst anything from Aardvark Food to Zipper Collectors, you’ll just be with fellow crafts people. As it grows it will become a definitive source for craft information off all kinds so your own articles will do better in the search engines and attract more visitors for your site. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

All you need to do is register for your free account and start submitting your articles. There’s no “qualification”, no minimums, just add as many or as few as you like, when you like. Each one will help grow your craft business.

I think I’ve covered most of the things you need to know over at Great Craft Articles, so I won’t take up any more of your time here. Of course if you’ve any questions just drop me a line.

It will add valuable backlinks to your site for the search engines, draw dozens, possibly hundreds of potential customers to your craft business, and it’s free. Why wouldn’t you want to try it?

The last few posts we’ve had a look at getting your crafts blog or website better noticed – by getting some link love going, submitting to search engines and giving yourself a better chance of ranking quickly at Google with their webmaster tools.

Now lets take a look at other ways of getting some love for your site – all of which is going to help get the people in. If you want to sell crafts online, you’ve got to get those lovely people in!

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SEO is search engine optimization or, for those of who have had enough of buzz-words and acronyms, it’s getting your craft blog or website to rank as highly as possible at Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

It’s important because typically 60% and upwards of people finding your crafts will have done so via a search engine. It also costs you nothing in direct payments like advertising would. It costs you in time and effort perhaps, but you don’t have to lay out any cash.

Trademark recognised.

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