How to Sell Handmade Items Online

The Internet is a digital marketplace. It’s opened up a means for people to buy and sell without leaving the comfort of their environments.

There are websites where entrepreneurs can market their products without paying a fee to register or set up a store. At the same time, others require a one-off or monthly fee to list products and use marketing tools. These platforms create the opportunity to reach a large audience beyond a city, country or region.

If you’re an entrepreneur interested in selling handmade items online, this article will guide you through the process and the different platforms/marketplaces to consider.

Before selling handmade items online, you need to make certain important decisions. Whether you have thought about these factors or not, here are a few tips to follow before choosing where to sell your products.

Choosing a Niche

Before deciding on which platform to sell on, it’s important to have a niche. A niche helps you target a specific audience for different reasons, including competitive advantage, target marketing, strong brand identity, and so on.

Create a Business Plan

It's important to draw a business plan that outlines your goals, strategies, and financial expectations. Defining your goal provides a strategy or roadmap for where your business is headed. It helps to keep you focused, especially when you intend to commit long-term. It can also help to consider potential risks and develop a backup plan in case of a failure.

Understanding your target Audience

Understanding your target audience can help you create products that meet their demands and preferences. It can also allow you to create marketing campaigns tailored to the preferences of your potential customers.

Setting up your online store

Choose a platform that suits your needs, this is very important because it determines the success of your business. These needs could be based on the features available for sellers to market products or the ease of setting up a store, customization options, or other functionalities like shipping options, transaction processing, SEO and Marketing and promotional tools, etc.

Selling on Multi Platforms

Selling on quite a few platforms can assist in increasing customer reach, visibility, and sales. The broader the audience the more the chances of an increase in sales. Also, having your products on different platforms reduces risk for instance, if one platform is down it would not affect your other audiences.

Creating visually appealing images of your projects

Taking great pictures of products is of utmost importance. A visually appealing product photo creates a good impression and also shows professionalism. It's also a way to grab viewers' attention, especially when you're in a place where others are also marketing their products. It also provides buyers with accurate visuals of the product, which can help in sales conversion.

Excellent descriptions for your products

Product descriptions give customers proper details about the product, this helps customers understand the product better and also helps to make purchasing decisions. Also, descriptions can help improve SEO and drive traffic making it easier for customers to find.

Promote your Brand

After setting up an online store with excellent pictures and product descriptions, the next step is to promote your business. Depending on the platform, you can use paid advertisements and other incentives to entice potential customers.

Start Selling

After putting your products on the platform of choice, the next step is to make sales. It is important to choose a platform that allows you to easily and securely accept payments, as well as manage your inventory.

This can help you see which product is moving faster or slowly, or help you determine products that are running out of stock using notifications, etc

Etsy

Etsy is an e-commerce platform for handmade, vintage, and craft supplies. These items may include jewelry bags, decor, furniture, art, and craft supplies.

There are three selling fees on Etsy: listing, transaction, and payment processing fees. It costs 0.20 USD to publish a listing to the marketplace. Once the item is sold, there's a 6.5% transaction fee on the sale price, including the shipping price.

There's also an advertisement fee on sales made from offsite Ads, promotional tools to promote listings and reach more buyers, there are analytics to show performance trends, and traffic sources, and you can control your business universally with the Etsy Seller App

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an E-commerce plugin for WordPress, it is an open-source platform that helps merchants build online e-commerce shops.

To sell online with WooCommerce, you need to find a host, which means you have to select a hosting provider that supports WordPress and register a domain name for your business.

The process typically involves installing WordPress on your domain. In your WordPress dashboard, go to the plugin, search, and Install the WooCommerce plugin to configure a basic store.

The next step involves designing, customizing, and adding handmade products with descriptions to your store. Afterwards, you can set up a payment method and shipping options.

You can also install plugins for SEO, analytics, social sharing, and other functions. You can also manage your store's inventory, track performance, and collect customer feedback.

Shopify

First, you create a Shopify website, sign up for an account, and choose a plan that suits your business needs and budget. Shopify offers a three-day free trial, 1 dollar for the first month and $32 per month afterwards for solo entrepreneurs.

Standout features include;

• 10 inventory locations
• 24/7 chat support
• Localized global selling (3 markets)
• POS Lite

Shopify provides a setup Wizard to guide users through entering a store name, currency, and address, among other things.

The next step is to customize your store using any of the themes provided by Shopify and configure it. After this process, you can explore the admin dashboard to add products and create product listings. After listing your products, you would have to configure payment and shipping methods.

Shopify provides marketing tools such as; email marketing, automation (marketing on auto-pilot), shopify forms, etc.

IndieCart

Indie cart is a marketplace where artisans who create handmade items can run a store that can reach over 10,000 registered shoppers for $7.50 per month. Sellers pay only if they want to stock their store, this means if you have nothing in your store and you're not active you're not required to pay the monthly fee.

iCraft

iCraft is a marketplace for artisans who sell handmade items. There are over One million international customers on the iCraft platform, making it easy for sellers who set up their shop to reach a wide audience.

There's a one-time registration fee of $25 and a monthly subscription fee between $10 and $15. The community section provides forums for sellers and a seller boot camp/marketing program to boost their business.

Facebook Marketplace

Facebook marketplace is a great place to sell handmade items. Facebook has billions of active users and you can reach potential customers locally and globally.

It is very straightforward to list items, and there are no fees for listing items on the platform. There is also the option to promote listings and target audiences based on demographics and interests. Sellers can also create or join groups to promote the items they sell. There's a lot of competition and there are also rules and regulations or taxes that may be required when selling goods on the platform.

Instagram

Instagram is a great platform to sell handmade items, you can display items using high-quality pictures, reels, and stories to share your products and the creative process involved and engage followers by building a community around your business. Collaborations are also a way to reach more audiences, business owners can collaborate with influencers to promote or market their products.

Instagram offers built-in analytics to trace engagement and evaluate the performance of posts and promotions. This can help you refine or improve your marketing strategy

INTUIT MailChimp

Intuit Mailchimp can be used to build a website to start selling handmade items. The website builder makes it easy to create a custom website without writing code or having programming experience. There are also marketing tools to help businesses thrive. For example, email marketing, audience management, social media tools, AI marketing tools, content creation tools, analytics and reporting on marketing performance, etc.

Creating a simple website with a MailChimp-branded domain is free for businesses and there are a lot of features like;

• Unlimited website pages,
• 24/7 email and chat support for the first 30 days
• SEO tools
• SSL certificate
• Site Visit Analytics
• Content studio
• Creative assistant
• Marketing channels, etc.

Amazon Handmade

Amazon Handmade is an online store that is specific to artisans that make handcrafted products. Artisans get to showcase their products to Amazon customers, which exposes them to a vast customer base. Sellers are also provided with support and other resources to manage their stores and market their products.

Sellers have to go through an application process to ensure that they are legitimate and ensure customers can buy without worry of being exploited. Joining Handmade, creating a store, and listing products is free however, when you sell a product, Handmade would deduct a 15% referral fee.

When registering, you have to register with a professional selling plan that provides handmade-specific tools to support and grow your business. This plan costs $39.99 per month, but for approved applicants, it is waived after the first month.

Before you can sell on Handmade, you need to set up a selling account with Amazon, and then apply to sell on Amazon Handmade.

Starting a business is never easy but following steps like creating a niche, having a strategy, and choosing the right platform to sell makes it easier. However, remember that setting up the business is one thing, and managing is another.

This is why business owners must consider platforms that offer features that can help them promote and manage their businesses effectively. Depending on the business needs, budget, and platform flexibility, there are options to choose from.

Ultimately, the internet has made it easy for entrepreneurs to set up online stores, and also reach a wide range of audiences globally.