You cant have your cake and eat it too!

When it comes to online selling of handmade items you need to ask yourself some questions.
1) Am I prepared to work hard to promote my products and my store?
2) Am I prepared to network and potentially promote others in order to expand my reach?
3) Do I want to sell on a 'shopping site' ie ArtFire, Handmade Artists' Shop, Etsy or do I want to have my own site?
4) Am I prepared to compete with those who sell mass produced items at a way lower cost than I can make things at?


So let's take a look at each question more carefully.
1) Online selling requires you to market yourself. It is not a case of listing an item with a shoddy photo and no description and making a quick buck. Ok, sometimes someone will strike it lucky and do just that, but for the majority of handmade artisans it takes work. This is not face to face selling where the buyer can pick the item up and look at it, feel it, smell it etc. The only thing they have is your photos, your description, your measurements. Added to that is the fact that the internet is HUGE. Your buyers need to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. So you need to get your 'brand' out there, you need to inspire others to help you.. which leads us to the next question.

2) Forming a network of other online people gives you a wider reach than you could possibly have on your own. If you have a network of 30 unique people, and each of them has a network of another 30 unique people your reach is considerably expanded. The likelihood is that they will have many common connections to you though, so the more diverse your network the better your reach is. But you don't just want to promote yourself and your items to them. This will quickly be viewed as spam and you will lose connections. You need to engage your network. Share topics of interest, answer questions, and introduce them to other artisans that you find inspiring or who sell products you would buy. You will find that sometimes this promotion of others results in further promotion of you without you doing it. Don't expect it to happen every time, and if you do find that it happens, acknowledge it.. it may just lead to a new connection for your network, a new friend or a new customer.

3) Where to sell - well that will depend. Do you have the skill and time to design a website and maintain it, or the funds to pay someone to do it for you? In this case you may decide to go it alone and start your own website with its own shopping cart. This is not for the faint of heart, it can be extremely time consuming, which will mean less time for promotion and, more importantly, creation.
Your other option is to sign up to a shopping site.. or several shopping sites. The benefits of these sites is that the code work, the maintenance etc is taken care of by someone else. But it is not free (ok, some have a 'free' account, which is usually quite limited). To gain the most benefit from these sites you will need to pay.
Some sites, ArtFire, Handmade Artists' Shop, Zibbet, have a monthly fee. You pay your fee, and you can list as many items as you like for as long as you like, and you wont have to pay a fee after you sell either. The searches on these sites tends to be based on relevancy - matches to keywords.
Other sites, Etsy, MadeIt.com.au, Ebay, have listing fees. This means you pay a certain price to list your item for a certain amount of time, after which you need to pay the same fee again to relist your item. They also have a sales fee, which means you pay a percentage of the price your item sold for to the site. The percentage you pay varies, but expect it to be around 7%. These sites generally have searches that return the most recently listed items first, meaning the best way to be seen is to relist on a regular basis, paying the fee each time.

4) Now assume you have joined a selling site. Regardless of what their 'mission statement' might be, there is a major issue with most sites that sell handmade. They are know as resellers. These are people who buy ready made items in bulk really cheap, then sell them on. In the case of sites such as ArtFire and Etsy, they are supposed to be against the Terms of Service. These are meant to be sites that have Handmade Items, Vintage Items and Commercial Supplies... not mass produced finished pieces. But they are a fact of life for the online handmade seller.
There are sites that are 100% handmade, namely a site such as Handmade Artists' Shop, which is relatively new.
But here is the catch - you can have lots of traffic and compete in a really saturated marketplace with resellers, or you can have lower traffic, but not have to compete with the mass produced items being in the same marketplace. Most of the bigger sites are more interested in the money they make from sellers than the integrity of their 'mission statements'.

Nothing is perfect in life, and the same goes for online selling of handmade items. There are pros and cons for every option, every site, every situation. You, as the artisan looking to put yourself into this marketplace, need to weigh up for yourself what is right for you... and remember that even if the grass looks greener on the other side.. its probably a trick of the light.

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Raining Donuts

This weeks Saturday Shopping feature is actually happening on Sunday in Australia!
These weeks theme is 'Raining Donuts' - those keywords together didnt really get any results - but donuts did!
On a completely irrelevant note - in Australia they are doughnuts not donuts.

Let's Shop!!

HappilyEverAlways

Bizzee-Beek Creations

boopsiedaisy

ddots

Erin E Gennow Arts

Darcy Arts

BeeLicious Crafts

mgenomgeno

jarck101

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Help Me Have a Fabulous Birthday

February is my birthday month, and to celebrate this illustrious occasion I am having a sale. I have put every store on sale for the whole of February!

HaffinaCreations and BeadsByHaffina on ArtFire have 20% to 40% off depending on category. You can see which categories by reading the blogs in these stores.

HaffinaAgain on Etsy, Zibbet and MadeIt are 30% off everything.

HaffinaCreations on HandmadeArtists' Shop is 30% off everything.

All prices have already been adjusted to reflect the discounts.

If you have been eying something off in any of my stores, now would be the time to buy!

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A new year, and new shop.

2010 has officially begun!! I am so excited about the possibilities for this year. I have several goals I am working towards, both in terms of my business, but also to do with my creativity, and several of them are very closely connected.. unsurprisingly!
One of the first changes for this year is that I have opened up another online shop front.
The newest addition to the HaffinaCreations family is on the Handmade Artist's Shop. I have been a member of HAF since very early in its life, and have watched it grow in leaps and bounds. I am a proud member of the HAF staff, and when I heard that there were plans to open an online selling site in conjunction with the forum I was very excited. The HAF shop is merely days old, but I am confident that it will grow rapidly under the guidance of our leaders, Andrew and Kimberly.

To any readers who might be interested in setting up a shop there as well there is one thing you will need to do, and that is sign up at the Handmade Artist's Forum and become a subscription member. Subscription costs $5 a month and this is the only cost you will have to pay, no listing fees, no commissions, nothing else. The shopping cart software is incredibly customisable and it would be a fabulous stepping stone for those who are considering opening their own website with shopping cart.
Yes, I have an interest in it growing, like many of my fellow artisans I would like to make regular sales, and the way to do that is to tell people about it.


One of my goals for this year is to make regular sales, preferably in all my shops. I know this is going to take a fair bit of work, including promotion. But I am so excited! One of the things I am looking at doing this year is some tutorials of particular polymer clay techniques, with the aim of listing them for sale in my stores.
One of my other goals is to promote at least one other artisan right here on my blog every week, along with continuing to write for HandmadeNews.org.
I wont go in to everything I will be doing this year.. it might make me chicken out LOL! Suffice it to say I will be busy, but in a fabulous kind of way. 2009 was a year of huge growth for me as an individual, and I am hoping for even more in 2010.

So keep an eye out for more promotions, both of fellow artisans, and also my growing 'family' of stores. You can now find me at
HaffinaCreations on ArtFire
BeadsByHaffina on ArtFire
HaffinaAgain on Zibbet
HaffinaAgain on Etsy
HaffinaCreations on Handmade Artists' Shop
And of course at the original HaffinaCreations on Alundra's Conundrum

To all my wonderful online friends, colleagues and fellow artisans.. Thank You for all your support and encouragement in 2009, I wish for the best for all of us for 2010.

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