This is part of our traffic mini-tips series for selling crafts. Increasing traffic to your crafts website is the number one activity you should work on. Increase your website traffic and you will increase your online craft sales. Guaranteed!

One of the most important things you can do to help increase your crafts website traffic is to include your relevant keywords and phrases within your website copy. Now lots of people know this and happily pop in their main keyword into the middle of their website copy.

That’s fine but it is much more effective to include two your keywords throughout your copy. So, it is crucial that you include your keywords in your main title, in any sub-headings, in the first paragraph and in the last paragraph. Plus you can include it a couple of more times too if the copy has room.

Also include your keywords in any links that you can, as the anchor text. Do this for any links that go to external sites but also for any internal links within your website.

Lastly if you can make the URL’s of your web pages to include the keywords that is even better!!

Google and Yahoo will love you if you have all these keywords within your site, of course within relevant copy that has informative value for your readers. When a potential customer types in any of your keywords you have a much better chance of ranking well in the search results and hence getting more visitors to your website.

Happy Crafting, happy marketing!

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This is part of our traffic mini-tips series for selling crafts. Increasing traffic to your crafts website is the number one activity you should work on. Increase your website traffic and you will increase your online craft sales.  Guaranteed!

Always choose relevant keywords and phrases to use within your website copy. For example if you are writing copy about a handmade fabric brooch, be sure to include keywords such as ‘handmade’ ‘fabric brooch’, of course, but also think of lots of other words that potential customers might type into the search engines.

Think of long tail phrases as well as single words, so for example ‘unique handmade fabric brooch’, ‘fabric brooch in flower shape’. Whatever words are relevant for the particular webpage you are writing, include them throughout the copy, several times.

The more relevant your keywords are the more likely it is that potential customers will find your website by typing in these keywords in search engines. Google and Yahoo etc.. will rank your website higher in search results if they think your website is the most relevant to a search query.

Happy crafting, happy marketing!!

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Do you dream of selling crafts on eBay? Here’s how to take the plunge and post your first auction.

It couldn’t be simpler! Lots of crafters tell me they’d like to sell their crafts on eBay but they are not computer whizzes and are a bit unsure of the process. So, here just for you, is a step by step introduction to selling your crafts on eBay for the first time.

Step 1: Create an eBay seller’s account.

If you’ve used eBay before to bid for or buy items, then you already have an account – you must simply log in and click ‘Sell’ in the toolbar (at the top of the page).

Next click ‘Create a seller’s account’ and you’re ready to start selling some crafts. Simple! If you don’t already have an eBay account then you’ll need to open one first using the ‘register’ link underneath the toolbar. Then click ‘Sell’ followed by ‘Create a seller’s account’. Next, follow the on-screen instructions. It’s a fairly quick process but remember that you will need to give, for security, card details and bank information.

Step 2: Choosing which crafts to sell?

For your first auction with eBay, it doesn’t really matter what you sell but we recommend selling smaller craft items (both in value and size, if possible). Some customers may be put off bidding for an expensive item if you have a low feedback. It’s much better to build your feedback rating up with lots for smaller auctions than trying to jump right into the bigger items.

Step 3: Creating your first eBay auction.

The next step is to submit your item. To do this click ‘Sell’.

First, you need to choose a category – the easiest way is to simply type out the item’s description and let eBay recommend the most popular one. Then you’ll need to write the title and description. The important t

hing to bear in mind when writing the title is including some key words. These are words that you think may be included in any searches by potential customers – but remember, they must be relevant to the item that you are selling! “No reserve” is a good example as some people only bid on items without a reserve price.

As much clear information about the item, as you can include, should be put in the description box.

Now enter the starting price. It’s always recommended that you use $0.01 as the best starting price; as it will attract more interest and items, more often than not, always sell for much more than the starting bid. Ideally, you need to attract at least two serious bidders. The duration of the auction is the next thing you need to include – the options are 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. Which option to go for depends on personal preference.

Longer sales will usually get more bids, as they are ‘in the shop window’ for longer. However, the turnaround from posting the auction to completing the sale is obviously longer, too. Short auction times are ideal for quick sales and it’s worth bearing in mind that some customers often filter searches to show only auctions that are near to closing.

The next step is to add any pictures to the auction. Items with pictures always sell for more, and good pictures of your items are essential for selling crafts, especially. The last step concerns the payment methods and postal arrangements. Simply tick the payment methods you will accept (Pay Pal is the most common, safest and popular method and we recommend that), and where you are willing to post to (for now just trade within your own country). Now review your item and once you’re happy with everything, click ‘Submit’!

Step 4: Wait for your craft item to sell.

This is the easy bit, and the fun part! Do nothing, buyers will find your item and some of them will bid on it. You may be emailed with questions about the item or the postage or delivery. You should always answer these questions as swiftly and clearly as possible and remember, if you come across as polite and efficient, it could make the difference between the customer bidding or not.

If there is no interest, don’t panic! If an item doesn’t sell then you can re-list it for free.

Step 5: Collect your payment and post the item.

Once the auction has ended, eBay will send your buyer an invoice for payment of the item. Do not send the item until the buyer has paid AND you have the money confirmed in your Pay Pal account.

EBay will then send you a confirmation email including the buyer’s address. All you do is post the item to this address! Please note, it’s always worth taking the time to package the item carefully.

I hope you enjoyed selling your first item. Easy as pie! Here’s to many more successful eBay craft sales!

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Now when you arrive at your craft show, keen to start selling crafts there are some things that you can be forgiven for forgetting. You can easily forget cellotape, scissors, or your lunch box and flask. It’s annoying when this happens but not a catastrophe.

But, it is a bit of a disaster if you forget your craft marketing materials, these little items are very important. So I recommend you have a separate little box for these that you pack up at home, call it your ‘marketing box’. Then when you are ticking things off your packing list be sure to pack and tick off your ‘marketing box’!

So what are these craft marketing and promotion materials anyway, and why is so important that they are packed and used?

What are craft marketing materials?
Well in it’s simplest form it might be a pack or two of business cards with your contact details, email and website. That’s great! Or you might have a flyer printed up with some images of your crafts and a little story about what you make, how you make your crafts, how you got into crafting and your background etc. You might even have a price list with images of your stock crafts. For more advanced crafters you might have a little brochure or booklet showing off your wares. What you have is down to your budget and your experience. At the very least have business cards with your contact details and your website address if you have one. If you can give a few little details about your crafts too all the better.

Remember, half the purpose of attending craft shows is to get customers interested in your crafts. Sure you want to sell crafts on the day, but you also want to generate interest in your crafts and start seducing potential customers for the future. It is often said in marketing circles that you need to promote yourself at least 7 times to a potential customer before they make a purchase.

So, you want to promote yourself and your crafts as much as possible in as many different ways as possible. That is why craft marketing materials are so, so important. They provide vital promotion for you even when you are not present. They invite potential customers to think about you and act long after the craft fair has ended.

By far the best promotional tool is a website. I would strongly recommend that you put energy and effort into getting a website, then use your website address everywhere within your promotional materials, on your business cards, brochures, flyers, price labels, and so on. The more people see your web address the better.

So, if you try to think about the process of selling crafts as not just what you can sell on the day of a craft fair or craft show, but also what seeds you can plant for future crafts sales with the use of informative and compelling craft marketing materials.

And of course, as this series of articles is all about things you can do before a craft show, it goes without saying that the important thing to do is prepare your marketing materials before hand. You can write and prepare them yourself on a home PC and print them of on some nice card or paper. This is especially ok for a flyer or simple leaflet.

In fact I suggest that you do it this way for this simple reason. You need to keep adding to it and improving it as you go along. Your sales patter and marketing skills will improve quickly so you don’t want to be stuck with 5000 flyers that you now think are out of date and unsuitable. So if you write and print as you need them you can constantly update them and improve them as you learn and get better.

However, I do recommend that you have some cards printed up professionally. You will need a lot of them and it is very time consuming printing your own, plus they always smack of cheapness and lack professionalism. Get some nice cards designed and printed by a recommended supplier. The best plan is to pop onto your favourite craft forum and ask other crafters who they use.

If you start to market yourself and your crafts at each and every craft show you attend you will soon start to see results and selling crafts long after that craft show has ended.

Next time I will talk about the importance of packaging and how you should pack the craft items that you sell at craft fairs and shows.

This is part five of CRAFT SHOW SUCCESS  – PLANNING YOUR CRAFT FAIR “14 simple tasks for craft show success…that you can do at home before the show”

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I want to talk a little bit about trust and the psychology of selling crafts on eBay. One of the key pillars of eBay is trust. As much as there are rules and regulations and all sorts of checks and boundaries within the massive corporate machine that eBay now is, it is still based upon trust. A seller advertises an item a buyer agrees to buy it for a price, the buyer sends money and the seller promises to send out the item.

In this process the buyer is sending money for an item they haven’t seen, or touched or even know actually exists apart from a photo that is supposed to be the actual item.

Even with Paypal assurances and cover, the buyer is still ‘trusting’ the seller to send the item.

And here is where lots of new eBay craft sellers make things harder for themselves. When you set up your new eBay account and you are eager to start selling crafts, just take a moment to think about how your account looks to your potential buyers.

You see eBay has a system called ‘feedback’ and this allows buyers and sellers to provide feedback for each other after a purchase has been made. Other eBay users can then view the feedback and see if a seller or buyer is to be trusted.

So you register your new seller account and a potential customer comes along, views your crafts and wants to make a purchase. Before they buy your craft item they go to check out your feedback, and viola you have a zero rating – you don’t have any feedback at all, not as a seller or buyer. So you are not really seen as a ‘trusted’ seller yet.

Here what you should do. After you ahve registered your eBay seller account, have a good search around and buy up to 10 items from other eBay sellers. Choose sellers that are selling crafts, buy cheap $1.00 items that you might need for your own craft projects.

After your craft supplies arrive, leave feedback for the seller (hopefully positive) and it is very likely the seller will leave positive feedback for you.

The outcome will be that for about $20.00 (10 x $1.00 purchases plus say $10.00 p&p charges) you will have gained some eBay history and more importantly some eBay ‘trust’!

This is a fantastic way to instantly give your eBay seller account a boost and set you up on the successful path to selling crafts on eBay.

To your online success!

Steve

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As an Ebay seller with 1000’s of positive Ebay feedback scores I aim to provide 100% satisfaction to my customers. However when selling crafts on Ebay it is inevitable that at some point a customer will leave a negative feedback.

It’s likely that you will log in one day and there it is staring back at you – a negative feedback. It is also likely that it will have been left without you ever having the chance to address the customers problem.

As a good eBay seller you put up great looking auctions, great clear photos, you reply to questions quickly and you post out your items promptly and very well packaged. You are gutted! So what do you do when this happens?

1. The first thing to remember is that it isn’t the end of civilisation as we know it, the world won’t stop turning. It hurts but you have to move on. It is more than likely that the buyer got up out of the wrong side of the bed, had a bad day, got home popped on the PC and took out their frustrations on you. After all you can’t fight back!

2. Don’t have a knee jerk reaction and send a damning email to the buyer. It will make you feel better for two seconds then you will feel bad. Instead think about what the buyer has commented and if you know you provided a great service then don’t let it get under your skin.

3. Leave a reply comment under the negative feedback comment. Say something like ‘Dissapointed that the buyer didn’t contact us first – we always offer refunds’. That way any prospective buyers will know that the buyer reacted without giving you chance to solve the problem.

3. By all means contact the customer by email and explain that you would like to have had the chance to sort out any problems and that you still can if it is not too late. This may seem like a bit of an effort but remember that selling is all about your reputation as a seller, especially on eBay. Chances are you can turn a bad buyer around and actually get a loyal customer just by going that extra mile.
You can then end up getting more sales from the customer.

4. Work on all aspects of your selling to avoid negative feedback. Look for areas where you feel you are weak and try to improve. So if you are slow to post speed up, if you don’t reply to emails quickly, work harder to respond quickly. At the end of the day providing excellent items and a top notch service is the best way to avoid negative feedback.

5. Every now and again you may make a mistake and it’s only human, it happens. Most buyers will give you a chance to address the problem and sorting the problem quickly and courteously will go a long way to avoiding negative feedback from that buyer.

At the end of the day there will always be awkward customers and it can sometimes make your blood boil. But if you want to succeed selling crafts on eBay rise above it, deal with it and move on to the next happy customer.

To your online success!

Steve

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And the lucky winner is…….

….. Michael Bryant.

Well done Michael, your prizes are on their way to you. You have won 6 different sets of our wooden christmas shapes.

If you’d like a chance of winning our next craftshapes competition pop over to the craft shapes competition page…

Happy crafting and good luck!

Steve

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I am sure you have often surfed eBay and seen terrible photos of craft items perched on beds, couches, or dumped on a messy floor.

Unattractive photos will cost you money, and make selling your crafts much harder. Here are some easy and effective ways to improve your photos that will easily increase your eBay craft sales immediately.

1. Get a digital camera. A must, just don’t even think about using anything else, it takes too long. Borrow one if you have to.
   
2. Set up an area just for your photos. A nice clear and tidy spot. It’s best to have a plain background so that it doesn’t distract from the craft item you are selling. A plain wall is just perfect.
   
3. Get the lighting right. Natural daylight is the best. Try to get the light source coming from over your shoulder, that way it lights the craft item you are selling and you avoid any dark silhouettes.
   
4. Props. You can use props if you need them. For example if you are selling your handmade clothes its worth buying a cheap half mannequin (get one off eBay!). You can add other props to ‘dress’ your photos but don’t go overboard, you don’t want to distract from the craft item you are selling.
   
5. Edit your photos. Upload your photo on to a PC and do some simple editing. You don’t need to be an expert to do this, just a little cropping and maybe adjust the colour and brightness to enhance the image.
   
6. Lastly upload you photos to eBay along with your craft item description. You can use one of eBay’s auction listing templates to make your auction a little more interesting to look at. Choose a colour scheme that compliments your photos.
   
7. Lastly be sure to learn more information about eBay and selling crafts whenever you can. Go to the eBay forums, craft forums, study other crafters auctions and use the ideas they use to increase your selling skills. Keep learning and improving and you will continue to increase your craft sales.Steve

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Hi everyone, I want to talk about a simple technique that will give you fantastic results. It will increase the sales you make at your next craft fair.

As you are standing behind your craft show table on a wet winters day at your local craft show remember this solid gold tip.

SMILE!!

Smiling WILL increase your sales at every craft show. Full stop. It will.

Now I don’t have any hard and fast figures to give you or months of testing results to provide for you. I can’t really take the chance of doing one craft show smiling and the other frowning!! But think about this.

If you saw two stall holders selling exactly the same crafts, one is smiling, pleasant and fun and the other is not smiling and looks unhappy and fed up. Which would you walk towards? Which would you buy from? The answer is always the same, every time!! You go to the smiler!! You go towards the happy seller. Even if you do it subconscioulsy, without thinking about it, you gravitate towards the smiling craft stall holder. Why? It’s human nature.

My old business partner used to say that people will always prefer to buy from a friend rather than a stranger. You can trust a friend, you can accept a friends advice, you know they are honest and truthful. When you are smiling and being happy, naturally you look more friendly and are therefore considered to have more of the attributes of a friend than someone who isn’t smiling. So, inturn you appear that much more helpful and trustworthy and honest. And your sales will increase as a result! Every time!! It’s true, try it, it works!!

So, whilst you may have worked hard on your crafts table display, your leaflets and other marketing materials, don’t forget the most important element. You, and your smile. It will get you more sales than any other sales tool you could use!

Happy crafting.

Steve

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We are living in uncertain and volatile times. Everything that is happening in the world economy at the moment is bringing fear and doubt into our lives. So with all this pessimism and problems in the stock markets and banks what chance have we got as small business owners? How do we go about selling crafts and creating income in such uncertain times?

Here are two ideas to consider.

1. When big purchases decrease, small purchases can increase. When times are hard people tighten their belts on the bigger purchases. They put off buying that new car, or sofa, or upgrading to a flat screen tv. At the same time they tend to look more towards little purchases, the smaller items that make them feel good. Do your crafts fit that bill? Consider a family that would normally take a weeks holiday in Europe.

With things as they are now, they put off that expensive trip until another time. Instead at the weekend they take cheaper days trips out with the kids. They visit a craft fair for example, and they might buy your crafts at the fair. So you can see that there are always opportunities, you look to exploit that and use it to your advantage. Make sure your sell arrange of lower priced items, don’t just have the $300 painting you just finished, have a selection of $25 paintings too.

2. In hard times people move away from large sellers to smaller sellers. With all that is happening in the stock markets average consumers are seeing massive organisations, even banks, falling. Confidence is low. Money is tight. Even if consumers are not consciously aware of it, they are having doubts about large corporations.

The spin off to this is that big is bad, small is good. Global is bad, local is good. Do you see that there is an opportunity to exploit this. When things are tight there is an opportunity for small local sellers to provide a real and friendly, reliable service to customers. You can push this in your marketing, at your craft fairs and so on.

These are just two examples of opportunities that you can look for during the current credit crunch. There are loads more ideas and ways to increase your craft sales, all you have to do is think about the current situation and look for the positives that you can draw from it that you can use to sell your crafts successfully.

So, ditch the doom and gloom, look for the positive and sell your crafts better than you have ever done before. It can be done.

To your crafting success.
Steve

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