How to sell craft online – the essential guide for beginners
Is there a secret to success when you sell craft online? Maybe. There are certainly things you can do that will make your shop more visible on the internet (as well as on Folksy). There are also steps you can take to ensure the creative business you are building is sustainable. We’ve put these together into an action plan that you can go through, one step at a time, to make sure you have each one covered. We’ve also included practical exercises for each point that will help you apply the advice to your own business, as well as recommended reading so you can explore each step in more detail.
Even if you’re an established seller, a lot of tips and exercises included in this post should be useful. So whether you’re a new seller setting up a shop or a more established maker looking to grow and get more sales, follow these 7 steps and you’re more likely to have a successful craft business on your hands.
Start Selling on Folksy >
Main photograph: Lotus Blossom by Sarah Chatterton
Step 1. Do one thing well
It’s a common mistake, especially when you’re starting out, to think that if you have a wide variety of products and offer lots of choice, you’ll appeal to more customers. For most designers and makers, the opposite is actually true: limit your product range and you’ll have a stronger business.
If you try to please everyone your shop will end up feeling muddled and so too will your social media channels. Customers need to understand who you are and what you make, and trust that they are buying from someone who really knows what they are doing.
Focusing on one thing also makes it easier to define your customers, target your marketing, hone your skills and build a reputation as the go-to designer for that specific product or style.
Do one thing and do it well.
Exercise 1: Think about what you make. How could you narrow it down to make it appeal to a niche market? For example, if you enjoy sewing and want to open a shop selling your stitched goods, what could you specialise in? Is there a community you could create a particular product for? This could be hair accessories for Lindy Hop dancers, or if you’re jeweller, it could be wedding rings made with traceable, non-conflict diamonds for eco-conscious engaged couples.
Exercise 2: Think about how you can reach this niche market. Where will you find them, what do they read, who do they follow, what words would they type into search engines?
Read our tips on how to find your niche and use it to your advantage:
Bullseye Marketing and Sell More Crafts by Clearly Defining Your Target Audience
Wooden Children’s Hangers by Red Hand Gang
Step 2. Build a strong brand
The most successful brands invest time and money in building a strong identity. Even as an independent maker, a strong brand will help your business.
Having a strong brand identity is so much more than just having a name and a logo, it’s understanding who you are, why what you make is special, what your story is, and then projecting those core values in everything you do – from your shop name to the photos you post on Instagram, the voice you use in your item descriptions and on social media, and how you style your product shots.
It’s worth noting that it’s much easier to building a strong brand if you make niche products for a niche market.
Exercise 1: Write a shop tagline that distills your brand into one short sentence.
Exercise 2: Write your ‘About Me’ section for your Folksy shop. (You can find this here in the ‘About’ section of your shop dashboard.) How can you tell your story and convey your brand? Try to incorporate ‘keywords’ that relate to your business to help people find your shop on Google and other search engines.
Read more about the importance of having a strong brand and how to create one:
How to build a strong brand identity for your craft business
Branding case study – Red Hand Gang
How to write a fantastic ‘About Me’ page
How to harness the power of Instagram hashtags to grow your community and brand
Read more about keywords and SEO
11 reasons why good packaging matters
Waterproof Purse by Jiggle Ma Wiggle
Step 3. Get your prices right from the start
Pricing your work is a major worry when setting up a small craft business. You need to hit that ‘sweet spot’ where your work sells and you make a profit. If you want to have a healthy business, it’s worth investing time at the beginning to get your pricing right. Otherwise, even if you get lots of sales, your business will fail.
Factor in everything (time, materials, packaging) and consider whether you want to sell your products wholesale in the future, as this will affect the retail price. Don’t forget potential promotions either. If your margins are rock-bottom slim, you’ll struggle to offer any discounts in the future. For example, if you want to be able to give customers special offers to encourage repeat orders, discounted or free postage, or run Christmas promotions, you’ll need a little bit of wiggle room in your prices. You also need to think about where you want to sit in the market. Are you a luxury brand or are would you rather make affordable pieces for the masses?
Sadly, there is no magic one-size-fits-all formula for pricing handmade work, but there are some methods that can help you come to a price that gives you enough profit to maintain a sustainable business. Follow the links below to read more…
Exercise 1: Calculate the cost price of one of your products (read the posts below to find out how).
Exercise 2: Once you know the cost price of a product, calculate the retail price. There are various ways to do this – you could set a multiple of your cost price, or add on a set amount as your profit. Or you might prefer to set your retail price based on comparable products and what a customer expects to spend. Find the one that is right for you, but bear in mind that if you sell to shops they will take a percentage of the retail price (often 50% or more), that it’s useful to leave room for offers and promotions, and also that if you go below your cost price you will be making a loss.
Read more about how to price your handmade work:
Pricing your handmade products
Doug Richard: How to price your work when you are a new business
Cat’s How To: how to price your work
Shop Talk: Red Paper House share her method for pricing jewellery
Pottery Mug and Illustration by Zan and Me
Step 4. Write great titles and descriptions
Once you know the focus of your business, understand your brand and where you want to place yourself in the market, you’re ready to get your products listed and get them in front of people.
To get your listings seen on search engines like Google and showing up within Folksy, you need to write clear, easy-to-read titles and descriptions that contain words someone might use to find your product (these are called keywords). A search engine can’t “see” your photos, so think how you would describe your product to someone over the telephone. Include as many details as possible so the customer has all the information they need.
Don’t forget to add lots of tags to your listing as these will help your product get found too. (See the link below for more details on how tags work.)
Use this 4-step checklist for all your listings:
- Do you have great photos of your product? We’re always talking about the importance of product shots, but better photos really are more likely to get shared, featured, get people interested and get your work sold. This is important because the more links into your product, the higher it ranks on Google – plus every share is a chance to get seen by a new customer.
- Have you included ‘keywords’ that people use on search engines in your product title, description and tags? Finding the best keywords for your products involves a little bit of research on your part – possibly by asking your friends or family what words they would use to describe your products, using tools like Google Trends and Keyword Finder or Keywords Everywhere to see which words people type into search engines to find products like yours, or typing words into Google and looking at the similar searches it suggests. Then incorporate these words in your titles and descriptions as part of easy-to-read sentences.
- Have you removed as many ‘barriers to sale’ as possible. The first job of a listing is to attract potential customers, but once they are there, the listing still has to turn that view into a sale. To do that, you need to make sure you have included all the information a buyer might need (eg dimensions, materials, how you will post it, how quickly you will post it).
- The single biggest reason people don’t go through with an order is the cost of postage (44% of shoppers abandon an order because delivery costs are too high). So consider offering free postage and look at your postage costs for additional items – if you don’t want to charge postage on additional items, set the amount to ‘0’. (If you leave it blank customers will be charged at full price).
- Get that listing shared! You can share it yourself on your social media channels (Pinterest comes in very handy here as Pins last forever) but a feature with a link through to your shop on a well-respected blog, magazine or website is the Holy Grail. Not only will it give buyers more confidence in buying from you, but a feature on a popular website will greatly increase the chance of your product appearing higher up in the search engines. The more relevant links into your product, the better, as it will boost your ranking on Google.
Exercise 1: Choose a product and ask a friend to describe it to you and what they would type into a search engine to find it. Pull out the ‘keywords’ from their description and find out how many people search for those keywords every month on Google. Remember, keywords aren’t necessarily single words, they can be strings of words too (like ‘jug for flowers’). Does the number of people searching change if you move around the words (ie gift for bridesmaids, bridesmaid gift) or are there alternative words you could use that are more popular (eg pottery vs ceramics).
Exercise 2: Incorporate the keywords into the title and description for that product (make sure they form part of legible sentences) and choose 15 keywords and phrases to add to its tags.
Read more about what makes a good listing:
How to write a listing that gets seen in search results
Product Listing Review 1 – watch this video to learn more about writing a great listing
Product Listing Review 2 – how to improve a listing for a cushion
New Clickable Tags and Tag Pages on Folksy. What they are and how to use them
Selling Craft Online: How to Write Good Product Descriptions
Why you should NEVER copy and paste product description listings!
Should you offer free delivery?
Everything you need to know about postage for your online shop
Prints and cards by Jane Crick
Step 5. Always have great photos
Shops with good product photos sell more. No matter how amazing your products are, if you don’t have great photos they are less likely to sell. Your pictures can make the difference between a sale and a scroll – and it’s not just about grabbing their attention, it’s also about giving a customer confidence in you and your product.
As we mentioned in Step 4, good photos will also help you get press and lead to more shares on social media – and that’s great for getting seen because with so many products out there, you need as many links into yours and shares as possible.
Ideally you want to aim for a consistent style and look to your photos as this will help reinforce your brand and make your product shots instantly recognisable as yours.
Remember that when shown on index pages on Folksy (ie search results, gift guides, recently listed), photographs will be cropped to a square. So although you can use landscape-format or portrait-format photos in your listing (in fact, tall photos do particularly well on Pinterest so can be a great asset), make sure your photo looks good in the square frame, that it fills the space and that the product is easily identifiable and visible when cropped.
Exercise 1: Set up a space in your house or studio, choose one or two of your products and spend a few hours photographing them. Try using different props and backgrounds. Try shooting from different angles and heights.
Exercise 2: Ask people which photo they prefer. Is it clear what you are selling? Which props and background work better? Friends and family come in handy here or you could post your photos in this thread on our forum – Put Your Product Shots Up For Review!
We have LOADS of tips about product photography on our blog! See them all here:
Handmade Photography Tips Folksy Blog
These blog posts on photography might be particularly useful:
How to take great styled product shots – 5 photography tips
Quick and easy ways to get better product shots
How to take product shots on your phone
5 ways to achieve consistently great photos
A step-by-step guide to photographing and styling more traditional products
Five top tips for photographing jewellery
Professional Photographers share their product shot tips
How to be featured on Folksy – product shot tips
Succulent Necklace by Grace and Flora
Step 6. Use social media
Once your shop is up and running, you need to tell people about it! One of the best ways to do that is through social media. There are lots of different channels – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest – and each has pros and cons. You don’t need to cover them all. To start with, choose the one that your target customers use the most and focus on that one. Remember though, social media is just that – it’s social. You need to interact with your followers, not just post and run.
Social media is an amazing tool for sellers – not only is it free but it allows you to build a relationship with your customers. It allows you as the maker to build a customer base of fans who love your work and want to know more about what you do. The trap a lot of people fall into, though, is to think of it as free advertising. If you approach social media just as a place to promote your products, you’ll probably fail. Social media is all about being sociable – the clue is in the name.
Use hashtags to connect with people interested in similar things and start conversations, join in with Instagram challenges, be interesting, engaging and genuine, and spend as much time commenting on other people’s posts as you do on your own.
Exercise 1: Choose one or two makers you admire and spend some time looking at their social channels. Which ones do they use? How do they get their followers to engage with them? What kind of content do they post? If they are on Instagram which hashtags do they use? How do they use Instagram Stories?
Exercise 2: Draw up a social media schedule for the week. (If you’re new to social media, this can just be theoretical.) What kind of posts will you share during that week? Can you manage one post a day, mixed-in with some real-time updates? Try to make your posts conversation starters, rather than “I’ve made this, you can buy it here” adverts.
Read more about how to use social media if you’re a maker:
Start selling on Folksy and join a supportive community of makers
Social Media tips for designers and makers
How to choose the right social media channel for you
How to reach more people on Facebook
The best Instagram Challenges for makers
How you can learn to love Twitter
What are Instagram Stories and how do I use them?
How to find great content to share
The best craft and handmade Instagram hashtags
How Pinterest can help your online craft business
Colourful Stud Earrings by Clare Lloyd Jewellery
7. Keep your stock fresh & regularly review your shop
Once your shop is open, check in every day to ensure you haven’t missed any messages or sale notifications, and make sure there are no items still listed that have already sold at a craft fair or elsewhere.
Try to keep your online shop well stocked and updated regularly with fresh products to keep people coming back to see what’s new. If you’ve had the same items in your shop for a while, they can start looking a bit tired and you might find your shop views and sales start to drop, as regular customers lose interest. Introducing new pieces or even just photographing your best-sellers in new ways will give you new content to share and new opportunities to tempt customers to your shop.
Listing regularly also puts your shop and products in front of more people, as new items appear on the Folksy front page, in our Recently Listed section and in people’s Favourites View. Recent listings are one of the factors used to sort results in Folksy Categories and Gift Guides too, meaning new items appear closer to the top. We also send Folksy subscribers an email that features new items from their favourites sellers, so every time you add a new item to your shop, you increase your chance of going directly to a customer’s inbox.
Tip: Did you know you can list your products for free with a Folksy Plus account. Find out more here >
It’s worth regularly reviewing your Stats page, to see which items are getting the most views and where those views are coming from. If there are particular products that are getting more views than others, are there lessons from these listings that you could apply to others – eg popular tags, particular titles that are working well? Are you getting lots of views from one social media channel, if so can you spend more time growing your presence and following on there?
Exercise 1: Draw up a launch plan for a new product. What will your new product be, how will you photograph it, where, when and how will you launch it?
Exercise 2: Launch your new product in your Folksy shop and see where it appears in Folksy searches, tag results and relevant categories. Track it over the next week and see how many views it gets and where those views have come from. Which part of your campaign was the most successful?
You can do these two exercises for existing products that you want to relaunch too. Can you get more views for a product simply by photographing it differently, changing the tags or title, or making it appeal to a new market (see the blog post below for tips).
Read more about how to manage your online shop:
Why open a Folksy Plus account?
Your new Seller Stats Page and how to use it
Semantic image names on Folksy – what they are and why they matter
How to keep your online shop fresh without making new products
How to write a listing that gets seen in search results
