Paracord guild Empowering the paracord community.
In this article I will show you the basics of selling crafts online.
Selling products online has become quite widespread. It serves as a complimentary channel to the traditional, live selling or as a channel in itself. Because of the advantages it brings, many crafters have become interested in making money by selling online.
It does offer quite a few advantages over selling live, such as:
- no stock required
- no need for a physical location
- automated process of selling
- reaches an online audience over distances
Naturally there are more advantages, but also some disadvantages.
The problem
I fund that the biggest problem when selling crafts online is that the crafters get overwhelmed quite fast. The amount of information out there is too much for any person to handle and often crafters, new to the online business will want to become proficient at it. This provides two problems:
- selling online is a profession. By specializing it you are not focusing on your your profession, your craft. Do you want to craft for a living or sell things online?
- the process takes long to develop and is inevitably connected with trial and error.
To avoid getting overwhelmed, I have made a system for crafters to be able to simply and efficiently start a business online.
The solution
So, how to sell crafts online? You will need the following :
- an online presence in the form of your own site or a listing under another site (Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, Craigslist)
- an understanding of how the online sale happens. In short, you will need to drive traffic to your site and see how that traffic performs.
- a system for growing your business. This includes your ways of growing a business (such as releasing new products, getting more people to your site, improving the quality of your website etc.)
By following these three steps you can make sales. It is what I highly recommend doing at the start. It is a solid way to start selling without over complicating things.
I have written a book on the subject which can help you further break down these steps. I encourage you to read more on the subject if you want to hit the ground running.
