Selling Crafts Online

One of the things you can do to boost your craft business is participate in craft-related affiliate programs or run your own. Not sure what an affiliate program is? Well let’s explain.

Although affiliate programs really came into being with the internet, they are based on a common business principle that has been used for centuries. If I help sell your craft for you, you pay me a percentage of the profit margin. It’s how most high street stores work. When you buy a tin of beans, some of the money goes to the store and some to the people who put the beans in the tin!

Affiliate programs work pretty much the same way. Except nobody gets paid until a sale is made. OK, but what good is this to your craft business?

There are two ways to look at it. If you have a website or blog you might be able to find complimentary products to your own that have an affiliate program. For example, let’s say that you sell hand-made candles. You might be able to find someone who made soap who runs an affiliate program. If you help sell those soaps you get a cut. It does your business no harm, but your customers might also be interested in that product.

In reality, all you do is add some code and a graphic to your craft blog or website. That code tells the vendor who sent the customer and if they buy something, you get the credit.

It’s a win-win situation. You can sell soap to compliment your candles but you don’t have to pay out for any stock, or store it, or handle deliveries. The person running the affiliate program does that for you. From their point of view, you’re out there selling for them but they don’t have to pay you a salary, you get paid when a sale is made.

Is it worth the effort? Well if your craft business can find another compatible one, why not? It’s a “reward for effort” kind of business but in the main, your effort is little more than drawing people to your craft site – something you would be trying to do anyway. It can add a valuable extra income stream to your craft business. Indeed some crafts people make a full-time living out of affiliate compensation alone.

Next time we’ll look at this from the other side. How you can profit from adding an affiliate program to your craft business.

If you would like a real-life example of how an affiliate program can work check out Complete Craft Publishing and at the bottom you’ll see a link that says “affiliates”. Have a read and if it brings up any questions, contact me here.

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Here’s a cautionary tale for any craft business!

I don’t mind admitting I’ve made mistakes from time to time. Any craft business is going to get things wrong, it’s part of growth. Stupid would be not learning from those mistakes.

Dumb is sometimes not following your own advice – like I didn’t

Let me explain. One of the things I sell is a craft book that I wrote about five years ago. It’s in a very small area and it’s never made much money – although to be fair I don’t put any effort into promoting it. It just sits there selling maybe one a fortnight. It’s an ebook so I don’t have to do anything, it’s all on auto-pilot. At the end of the year it’s a nice little bonus but no big deal.

Then suddenly that book sold a dozen copies in a single day.

So what’s wrong with that you might say. Where’s the mistake? A nice bit of extra income, right?

The problem is that I have no idea where the sales came from. It’s the only site I run that I haven’t put some tracking code on. Result? Although I have the details of each individual who bought the book, I have no idea how they found it – and that means I’m missing a huge opportunity to improve my online craft sales.

Was it another site that recommended the book? Was it an article that I wrote? Was it a blog or a forum? If I’d taken ten minutes to install Google Analytics – which is completely free – I would know precisely where they had come from and I would be able to capitalize!

So it’s kind of frustrating. If I could get even half those sales each day it would definitely be worth putting some effort in – but I don’t know where to start.

I hope you are not making the same potential mistake in your craft business but I bet some of you are… Get some way of analyzing your visitors. Don’t put it off, it will only take minutes.

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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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.

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 →

How to sell crafts online? Well I wish I could give you the one simple answer but sadly it doesn’t exist. Selling crafts on the internet is a series of steps, like any other business, each an important part of the whole. Let’s start by looking at something that’s simple to do but hugely powerful.

It’s much easier to sell your crafts to someone who has bought from you before, than it is to find a new customer. Obvious, right? If you’ve got your customer’s email address you can offer them similar craft items to those they’ve already purchased. You can keep them up to date with new craft products or services that you are offering.

Staying in touch with existing customers is simple and profitable (so long as you don’t take them for granted). You can give them a loyalty discount – make it sound like it’s exclusive to them. Everyone wants to feel special, right?

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s not going to be any surprise to you to find out that I’m a fan of blogging. After all, here we are at a blog. I’d go further than just saying I’m just a fan though.

If you’re serious about the desire to sell your crafts online then whether you already have a website or not, you really must have a blog. I’m not saying it’s something you should consider, I’m not saying it’s something that might help your craft business, I’m saying it’s a must. An absolute. Not having a craft blog is costing you money.

A pretty strong statement, right? Maybe, but a simple blog can radically change people’s craft businesses and the investment required is tiny.

You’ll note that I say an investment required. So that’s not a free blog then?

It’s true that you can go to somewhere like Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad and get a free blog. Blogger is particularly popular amongst crafts people, perhaps because it’s the best known. There are some very entertaining crafts blogs out there that run under that platform.

So what’s wrong with it? Well for me the main problem is that it’s not in my control. It’s not me who sets the rules and regulations. Blogger is owned by Google. Nothing wrong with that but they decide what you can and can’t put in your blog. They decide what is acceptable content and they really don’t like people directly selling from their blogs. To me, that’s an odd way to run a professional crafts business, particularly as running a professional craft blog to sell your crafts online can be done so cheaply!

You’ll need a domain name, which you can get for under ten dollars a year and you’ll need some hosting, which you can get for five or six dollars a month. That’s it. Total investment in your crafts blog is about the same as a family sized pizza per month!

OK, that’s definitely cost-effective, but I haven’t yet explained why it’s vital to your craft business. I haven’t explained why I’m so strongly in favor of a blog rather than a traditional website.

There’s nothing wrong with a traditional website to promote or sell crafts on the internet. It’s certainly better than nothing, but even if you’ve got an established site the addition of a blog will bring you more customers and make you more money.

Blogs are a great way to communicate with your potential customers. They’re generally lively, almost like talking with someone face to face. They’re usually regularly updated so they’re fresh and newsy – and people love to know what’s going on with your crafts. Which is nice for your visitors and good for your business… but still not the number one reason.

The number one reason is that search engines love blogs. If you want to sell your crafts online you need to do well in the search engines… or you need to advertise to get your customers. Advertising costs money but doing well in the search engines can bring you thousands of visitors for free. So which would you choose for your craft business?

I’ll get into this in more detail in coming articles but I’ll leave you for now with an example of a friend of mine who started her first craft blog in April. Never had a blog before.

So far it has brought in well over 3,000 unique visitors. That’s more than five hundred potential new customers each month and, for the moment, my friend only runs that blog part-time.

What would 500 potential new customers a month do for your craft business?

So this blog is about selling your crafts online, but is it just about the money?

Yep.

No.

Well kind of.

I am a huge fan of crafts and they give me a great deal of pleasure. I’ve been a woodworker for about ten years and more recently I’ve gotten into paper crafts. I’ve started mixing the two with some interesting results.

My wife is a potter (you can see some of her work at XandraCeramics.com). So I’m not the only crafter in the house!

I also love working with other crafts people and helping them develop their businesses.

So you could say craft is a passion for me, and it’s not just about the money (although let’s be honest, making a living is important).

This blog however, is about the money. It’s about helping people go from “kitchen table” crafts person to a full-time income that can replace whatever they’re doing now – and exceed it if that’s what they want to do.

If the money isn’t high on your list then that’s fine. For lots of people their craft is a hobby they love and they never want to take it further. I have no problem with that at all.

But the money is what separates a hobby from a business. If you ain’t getting paid, that’s a hobby.

If you ain’t getting paid as much as you’d like, maybe this blog can help!