Selling Crafts Online

In the last craft business post I looked at the profit potential for you from getting involved with other people’s affiliate programs. This post is going to look at the basics of how you can run your own.

Having affiliates for your online craft business can be a great bonus. It’s a bit like having an extra sales force. They have the ability to reach people who might never find you. They can multiply your profits many times over.

It isn’t really too difficult to implement an affiliate program either. Although most of us get a bit concerned about adding extra code to our craft websites we are fortunately offered an easy way out. For a small  cut, some people will do a lot of the work for us.

This is what I do. Although there are many software programs around for managing an affiliate program I would rather be spending the time in my craft business making crafts. I try and leave as much as possible to other people.

Best Providers?

So for ebooks or downloadable patterns and plans I use either Clickbank or E-Junkie. These two companies are both experts at digital downloads which is why I use them. Clickbank I use for digital ebooks over $8.00 because under that their fees make E-junkie cheaper. So for patterns, plans and short reports, things in the $3.50 to $8.00 range, E-Junkie give me the best deal.

There’s a little more to it than that. Clickbank have a huge army of potential affiliates and they will manage all that for me. I have to set up the download page but Clickbank handle pretty much everything else and pay me twice a month. E-Junkie also have an affiliate program but I have to manage it. Not difficult, and their fees are very low, so for low price items they are my preference. There is nothing to stop you selling a more expensive product through E-Junkie but you will have to work harder at getting your affiliates. You can also use E-Junkie to provide secure download for Clickbank products but that’s getting too complicated for me!

E-Junkie will also handle “real” good for you and provide you with a shopping cart (Clickbank don’t). In fact E-Junkie are one of very few people whose technology works equally well with blogs – an area where some affiliate programs struggle. For this reason I also use E-Junkie to sell my “real” crafts.

I recommend both these companies but that doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Investigate thoroughly before making a decision. E-Junkie you can start from just $5.00 a month which is ridiculously cheap but that doesn’t mean someone else isn’t more appropriate for your craft business. Have a search around, ask awkward questions and keep asking until you get the right answers.

How Much Should I Pay?

The question which most craft business owners ask is how much should they pay their affiliates? The answer is as much as you can afford. It has to be worth the affiliates time and effort or nobody will be interested. On digital goods it’s usually between 25 and 50% – and it can go higher. You might think that’s a lot but think about it for a moment. Once your digital product is finished there are no production or distribution costs so why not make it as attractive as possible to your affiliates? If you want more info on the whole ebook and digital publishing thing, click here.

For real goods, affiliate payments are usually in the region of 5 to 15%. You have to think harder about your profit margin here. Remember, you never pay an affiliate until a product has been sold and you have been paid, so if you have to give away half of your profit margin but you make five or six times as many sales, it’s probably worth it.

Of course there are no guarantees, and adding an affiliate program to a craft business isn’t for everyone. There is great potential but there is also some investigative work to do beforehand and some ongoing management. You might get many people join your program but few will actually put in a lot of effort. 90% or your payments will go to 10% or less of your affiliates. Nevertheless, it gives you the chance to reach many more customers for very little outlay.

E-Junkie can be found here.

Clickbank can be found here.

Make sure you read the details carefully!

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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Whether you are running a blog or more traditional website there are craft business basics that you need to use if you want to succeed. Keeping potential customers coming back to your site – making it “sticky” – is obviously pretty important!

You might hope that interesting info, nice pictures, easy and clear navigation would all guarantee that. Unfortunately it won’t. Truth is people skip by and skip on… there’s a very short attention span online. Your craft business needs to do more than just look good.

Even if your potential customer likes your site, they might never come back. They might think about bookmarking you… and they might not. We’ve all done it, said you’ll go back to a site later – but then not got distracted by something else, never to return…

The fact is your craft business loses out on customers every day. In business, not everyone will buy from you! However, you can do something very positive to try to grab those “hovering” people. Those “nearly” customers.

What you need to boost your craft business potential is a newsletter or e-mailing list, just like I’ve got here to keep you up to date with site changes or important news. Just think about it for a minute. If your visitor will give you their email address you don’t have to worry about them coming back to your craft site, you can get back in touch with them!

And because it’s via email you can do so as often as you like, for virtually no cost.

OK, there’s a cost for the management of these services (you let other people handle the software and all that for you so you can concentrate on what you do best) but you’re talking about a few dollars a month. Don’t you think it’s worth that? To have the potential to get back to your craft business visitors with news and special offers. To give them multiple chances to come and buy from you… even if they forgot they once visited? Frankly, you’d be mad not to.

I currently recommend YMLP because they offer to manage your first 1,000 subscribers for free! Can you imagine? A thousand potential new customers you can get in touch with with a couple of clicks – and it costs you nothing? Craft marketing doesn’t get any better than that!

Even when you exceed that, it’s literally just a few dollars a month. In fact you’ll likely find their prices in Euros because the operation is based in Europe – but who cares, this is the internet!

A slight word of caution though. Run well, a newsletter can add tremendously to your craft business. Done badly it will put people off. A lot of companies want your visitor’s email address so if they pay you the compliment of giving it to you, treat them well. Make them feel special.

As an added bonus you might want to give them a discount off their first order, or offer them something of value (like the dowloadable ebook I give subscribers). It’s easy for you to do and you’ll recoup any small cost many times over, so why not make a little extra effort?

Do that, right at the start of your relationship, and your new subscriber will feel that they are being dealt with personally. Chances are that will get you loyal, repeat customers who have a tremendous impact on the long-term profitability of your craft business.

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.

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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.

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Good craft marketing can make an enormous difference to your business. To separate “marketing” from “selling”, lets call marketing the stuff you do to communicate with your potential customers. It’s not a precise description for those who are picky about these things, but it’ll do for us I think.

With the internet you have opportunity to market your crafts to a global audience, but how exactly are you going to do that? How are you going to benefit from the massive potential?

One way is by running a craft blog – and I’ll probably keep saying it until you’re sick of hearing it!

Fact is, they’re easy to start, fun to run and visitors love them. Done properly they’ll also rank very well in the search engines, often outranking craft sites that have been established much longer or those which might appear much bigger.

So particularly when you’re starting to sell your crafts online, when you’re just getting into craft marketing, a blog is a very valuable tool to have at your disposal.

Google's RSS reader page

One small, but extremely effective part of your craft blog’s armoury is RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Sadly many people don’t actually understand what this is and so fail to take advantage. That’s a shame, because RSS really is simple! Here’s how it works.

If you’re anything like me you probably visit a number of different craft blogs. It’s quite time consuming to visit each one and if there’s nothing of interest we just move on to the next. Putting them in your favorites reduces the time, but sometimes we just don’t bother to visit because we don’t have the time or inclination.

What if we could go to just one page though, where we could see a run down of the latest posts from all our favorite craft blogs? That would be quick, wouldn’t it. Then you could just visit those who actually had stuff you were interested in. Great idea!

Well that’s exactly what RSS does and that’s why it’s important to your craft marketing. People might visit your blog every so often, but if you get them to subscribe to your RSS (otherwise known as RSS feed) then they can check up on your news quickly and easily. If you want to see it in action, click on “Subscribe” over on the right under where it says “RSS Feed”.

Now it might be argued that it would be better if they came by your blog – which is true – but you have to accept that most people aren’t going to do that with any regularity. It’s also a good idea to have a newsletter so you can get in touch and market to them directly (more on that in another post).

However, good craft marketing means taking advantage of every opportunity to get your message in front of your potential customer and RSS is not only fast and easy but once set up requires no further involvement from you – it automatically sends out new post information every time you write one!