How to Sell Crafts Online

1. Find your niche

The first step to selling crafts online is determining your niche. There are lots of people selling crafts online, so what do you offer that separates your store from the competition? Figure out what type of crafts you want to make and sell before you do anything else. Maybe you like to make jewelry or carved wooden pieces, or you might be a metal worker. Whatever you want to do, you need to narrow down your niche and expertise before you start selling crafts online.

Keep in mind that some crafts are more competitive than others. You can also combine some of your interests with your crafts to create a more niche product. If you’re a big fan of a particular sports team or you love nature, you can make themed crafts to sell on your online store.

2. Build a website

Once you know what you want to make and sell, you can focus on building your online store. You have two options when it comes to building a website: using a website builder or hiring a professional web designer/developer to build your website for you.

Using a website builder is the easiest way to build a website for selling crafts online. You have your choice between free website builders with basic features and paid website builders that offer premium features. You don’t need to know HTML, CSS, or any programming languages to use a website builder; simply drag and drop until your website looks the way you want it to.

If you need more advanced features, you can hire a professional to build your website. You may want to hire a professional if you want to accept alternative forms of payment or if you want to build a custom e-commerce platform. Hiring a professional to design and develop your website is the easiest way to build a website, but it’s also the most expensive route.

3. Create your crafts

Now that you know what you want to make and you have a website set up, it’s time to create your crafts so you have something to sell. Start by determining what materials you need and purchase those. Next, make as many crafts as you want to make initially to ensure you have inventory when you’re ready to sell.

You may want to start slow when it comes to creating crafts because you don’t know how well a certain product will perform. Start with a smaller inventory and look at your sales over the first few months. After you have an idea of how much your products are selling, you can determine how much inventory you need to keep on hand.

4. Price your products

Before you can actually sell your products, you have to determine a price. Understanding how to price your products is one of the most essential parts of selling crafts online, especially if you want to turn a consistent profit. Product pricing can be difficult because lower prices mean lower profits per sale, but higher prices can reduce the overall volume of sales. Ideally, you want to find a price point where you’re making a decent profit per sale while selling enough products to earn a decent income. As is the case with inventory, you might need to tinker with product prices to find a price point that works for you.

5. Photograph your crafts

The next step to selling crafts online is taking pictures of everything you’ve made. When you’re adding items to your online store, each item should have its own picture, title, and product description. Pictures help draw attention from people who are looking at your products, plus they help people choose between multiple products they may be interested in.

Quality is key when it comes to photographing your crafts. If you want to take the easy way out, you can hire a professional photographer to help you get high-quality pictures of your crafts. If you want to save a little bit of money, you can pick up a white photography backdrop and take your own pictures at home. You can find tons of videos and resources online to help you take high-quality photos with your phone or camera.

Make sure you take pictures of any new products you may decide to add to your online store. Creating a comprehensive online storefront is essential when you’re selling crafts online.

6. Write product titles and descriptions

When you design product pages, each page should have a picture of the product, a title, and a product description. Now that your pictures are taken, it’s time to do a little creative writing.

Product titles should be relatively short — the ideal length is somewhere between 20-70 characters. The goal is to accurately describe the product while making titles easy to read. Your product title should include a clear description of the item as well as any keywords you may want to include.

Product descriptions give you a great opportunity to attract customers by providing information and specific details about the item they’re interested in. Product descriptions are typically longer than titles, with some being as long as 300-400 words. This is where you can paint a better picture of your products and tell stories about them to get customers interested.

7. Promote your brand

Once you’ve finished setting up your online store and adding pictures, product titles, and product descriptions, it’s time to promote your brand. Promoting your brand is vital if you want to sell crafts online — more traffic to your website means more potential sales.

You can use paid advertising to promote your brand when you’re just starting out, but you can also offer incentives for custom referrals and coupons for signing up for your email list. Once you’ve built a mailing list, you can use email marketing to let customers know about new products and sales. The goal is to drive more traffic to your website so you can sell more products.

8. Start selling crafts online

After you’ve created your crafts and a fully customized website with ample traffic, you can start making sales. This is a simple process as long as you pick an easy-to-use e-commerce platform when building your website. An integrated e-commerce platform allows you to securely accept payments from website visitors, so all you have to do is pack up your crafts and ship them out when somebody makes a purchase.

9. Manage your inventory and website

Just because you have a website and an online store doesn’t mean your job is finished. Selling crafts online is a full-time job, so you need to stay on top of managing your inventory and keeping your website up and running.

First off, make sure you have a system in place to notify you when a product is out of stock. That way, you can keep your products in stock to avoid missing out on sales opportunities. If a product is out of stock, you can simply make more.

You should also check your website for bugs and glitches periodically and fix any problems you have. You can make this process easier by rewarding customers with small savings if they report a bug to you.

Sell crafts online with Mailchimp

Selling crafts online can be a great way to reach a larger audience and increase your sales. Learning how to sell to any audience may not be easy, but building a website to sell crafts online is simple as long as you follow our guide.

With Mailchimp, you can build your website and start selling crafts online in no time. Our website builder makes it easy to create your own custom website with no programming experience, plus we provide tools that make marketing easier. If you want to start selling crafts online but don’t know where to start, give Mailchimp a try today.