Selling Crafts Online

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

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?

Read the rest of this entry →

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!

Read the rest of this entry →

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!

Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

One of the great advantages of a craft blog over a website is that you can just jump in on any subject and post something useful. The downside of this – and I’m as guilty as anyone – is that as a result there sometimes isn’t much of a coherent flow of information.

All trademarks recognised

The way to fix this is to use categories – an easy way for someone to find related posts – and with that in mind I’ve created a new category “Craft Business Basics”. The first subject I want to cover is search engines.

There’s a lot of different information about search engines, how important they are, how many you should submit to, what you should pay, etc. Some of it is useful but some of it is misleading – occasionally deliberately so. Let’s try and cut through the bull and see what you need to do to get the best from the search engines for your craft business.

Read the rest of this entry →

Most people think it’s nice to be popular. If you’re building a craft business online it’s absolutely vital!

After all, if people don’t know about you, how are they going to buy from you!

The most straight-forward way of getting people to notice your craft business is to advertise it, and pay-per-click programs like Google Adwords can be very effective if you’ve got a budget to play with.

Thing is, most new craft businesses don’t. So how can we get some bang for no bucks?

Read the rest of this entry →

If you’ve ever thought about publishing your own craft book I would encourage you to give it a go! It’s hugely fulfilling personally and if you self-publish can be very profitable too.

Digital publishing (ebooks) is increasingly popular and has far and away the biggest margins. What’s more, it’s all completely within your own control.

Of course it’s always nice to have a hard copy, and print-on-demand companies such as Lulu.com (probably the market leaders) will produce just one if that’s all you need. Another company in this market are Viovio.com who I mention because they specialize in photo books and scrapbooking.

So if you’re writing a craft book that’s about how to do your craft I would go with en ebook first and then maybe Lulu. On the other hand, if you want a glossy collection of photographs of your work to show prospective customers or galleries, that’s where Viovio would probably be your best choice.

I would also give them a serious look if you’re a digital scrapbook maker, or you put together hybrid scrapbooks, because they obviously understand your language and offer a number of sizes right up to 12 inch square.

To visit Viovio click here. For more info about publishing your own craft book visit CompleteCraftPublishing.com.

Just a quick update. I while back I wrote a post about places to sell your crafts online (read it here). Well I’ve just been having a bit of a browse around other craft blogs – as you do – and discovered a great article over at Craftster.org.

Now I have to say first off that Craftster is a great site. Ecclectic tastes, humorous and all kinds of useful info. I’ve picked this article out because of how appropriate it is, but they’re well worth a look anyway.

Anyway, the article gives a brief overview of eight different places you can sell your crafts and a comparison of prices/fees. If you’re not at the point of selling via your own site or blog, or if you’re looking for numerous outlets, pop over here.