Publishing companies use pattern samples to sell craft patterns online. What we can learn from them plus some free patterns.
Category: Selling Crafts on the Internet
In many ways selling crafts on the Internet isn’t all that different from selling crafts in person. You create a product, determine a price and market your items to potential customers. When selling in person, you generally reap the benefits of someone else’s marketing efforts when you sell your items at a craft fair, gallery, boutique or consignment store. But, when selling crafts on the Internet, you become responsible for all of your own marketing. Granted, folks selling their handcrafted items on Etsy, Artfire and other shop sites do gain the benefits of the marketing being done by the site. But, you still have to compete with all of the other shop owners to get attention.
Getting attention is a major part of what this section of Blog About Crafts is all about. A copywriter and online marketing consultant (that would be me) is sharing her thoughts and ideas on how to effectively market handmade items (and any other type of items for that matter) online. You are going to have to forget a great deal of what you have learned about marketing in the real world – column inches, paying extra for full color printing and a whole list of other things that no longer restrict your marketing efforts.
The bad news is that artists and crafters are either going to have to find someone to do it for them or learn more about SEO, writing product descriptions and building websites than they ever thought they would have to. Even worse news is how many crafters and other small business owners, who invested in professional help, often find themselves in worse circumstances than they started. My goal here is to help professional artists and crafters learn how to promote their websites, blogs and sites along with effectively selling their handmade items. We’ll talk about writing product descriptions, writing about me pages, protecting your copyrights and brand, and so much more.
Don’t let the dates fool you, most of the posts in this section contain information that should still be helpful. Even those posts which date back to when I first started Blog About Crafts still contain great information and shouldn’t be missed.