January 24, 2011 • tony
Do you like making handmade crafts? Let’s see how you can turn this hobby into a profitable business. Selling homemade crafts is a growing market in US and if you can transform your creative ideas into art, you can profit by selling it online.
What to Sell?
Here is a list of items which you can make and sell.
Accessories, bags, purses, books, ceramics, clothing, dolls, house wares, holiday crafts, jewelry, toys, paper, wood crafts and many more.
Where to Sell Crafts Online?
Etsy – Etsy is a very popular site for selling homemade crafts online with lots of active buyers. You don’t need to have any web knowledge to sell. Simply take a nice photo of your craft. Upload the photo and list your item on Etsy for a very small fee. It will be available on the site and you just have to wait for the sale. Shoppers will pay your directly when they purchased it and you just have to ship the item to your customer. I highly recommend you to sell your crats at Etsy for a start.
Selling Crafts at Ebay
Another sites to consider selling is at Ebay. Ebay is one of the top auction sites in the world with lots of buyers. You can set your item for bidding or sell it a fixed price at Ebay. Other than crafts, you can sell your antiques or hold a garage sale at Ebay. As the target traffic is more on consumers looking for a bargain, you may have difficulty selling at a higher profit margin. Same as Etsy, you are charged an insertion fee for listing your item and a final value fee when your item is sold.
Creating your own Craft Site
Instead of selling your crafts at a third party site, why not consider making your own craft site? You set the rules and you won’t have to worry about paying commissions to third party sites. However it is easier said than done. First, you will need to spend some money hiring a good web designer to setup your site. Don’t expect traffic to come by itself once your site is completed. You have to do lots of online marketing to promote your new site and it usually take months before seeing results. Thousands of crafts sites will be competing against you and making your site stand out take some effort.
Selling Craft at Shophandmade
A new handcraft site that allows you to list your handmade crafts for FREE! You can sell jewelries, children’s items, cards, Christmas cards and ornaments and other holiday gifts. It also accepts left-over supplies such as rubber stamps and stickers. Although the buyers are less compared to Etsy, you may still earn a good profit margin as the listing is free.
The above are some interesting ways on how to make money selling crafts online. Once you have some success on selling crafts online, you can also take you hot-selling handmade crafts and resell it to crafts shops in your local shop. Selling online is a cheap and clever way to test the market of your crafts before mass production.
Resources to Make and Sell Crafts
