Five tips for selling crafts online

This is a collaborative post

If you’ve developed a flexible set of creative muscles, there’s no reason you can’t turn your pastime into a profit-making business.   

Whether you have a flourish for flower arranging, or are a nifty knitter, you could turn your humble hobby into a lucrative side business… and eventually a full-time profession. 

When you first dip your toe into the world of online business, you can feel a little out of your depth, especially with so many companies competing for consumers’ attention. If you’re ready to make money from your hobby, check out these five fantastic tips to help you out along the way!

Reproducible Items

Save yourself time, and keep yourself sane, by crafting reproducible items. 

Having to photograph and list every individual item can cut into your valuable creative time, so the fewer times you have to do this, the better.

Of course, limited edition items can be a hit with customers, but having a core range will also help to boost your brand recognition! 

Photo credit Viktor Forgacs via Unsplash

Price for Profit

One of the biggest transitions you’ll need to navigate when turning your hobby into a business is learning how to price your produce, as many beginners make the mistake of drastically under-pricing themselves. 

Start with the mindset that you want to make a liveable wage from your craft, as eventually you might want to progress from being a side hustle. Remember that you should never just price to cover supplies, especially if you’re selling handmade products. If it takes you hours of your time to make, then the cost should reflect that.  

Professional Site

Having a professional-looking, fast-loading and easy-to-navigate site is essential for providing suburb user experience and minimising your bounce rate.

Use a service such as Shopify to set up a site that suits your needs. Shopify also supports blogging, a feature that will really help to drive traffic to your site and grow a loyal customer base.

Photo credit Raissa de Paula via Unsplash

Search Engine Optimisation 

Word of mouth might get you a few customers, but if you really want to expand your reach, then it’s important to implement SEO. 

Your blog and products should be optimised for keywords in order to boost your Google rankings. Getting to grips with SEO can be a little tricky, but luckily there are agencies out there such as Maratopia Digital Marketing who can help get you started! 

Experts in digital marketing can also help you perfect your website and advise you on pay per click advertising.

High Quality Images 

Internet users spend more time looking at images than they do any other part of a site. 

Having high quality images is particularly important when you’re selling goods. As an online business, you customers won’t have the opportunity to see the item in a physical shop, so your images must be detailed so your customers know what to expect.

Have you set up and online craft business? Share your tips in the comments below!