How to sell crafts online? Well I wish I could give you the one simple answer but sadly it doesn’t exist. Selling crafts on the internet is a series of steps, like any other business, each an important part of the whole. Let’s start by looking at something that’s simple to do but hugely powerful.
It’s much easier to sell your crafts to someone who has bought from you before, than it is to find a new customer. Obvious, right? If you’ve got your customer’s email address you can offer them similar craft items to those they’ve already purchased. You can keep them up to date with new craft products or services that you are offering.
Staying in touch with existing customers is simple and profitable (so long as you don’t take them for granted). You can give them a loyalty discount – make it sound like it’s exclusive to them. Everyone wants to feel special, right?
When you think about how to sell crafts online though you need to look at every visitor to your craft blog or website as a potential customer. The problem is that the vast majority of times people will visit your site, then another, then another… you don’t know who they were or where they went and you certainly don’t know if they will ever be back.
So you need to give them an incentive to come back. The most important thing apart from dealing with your existing customers is getting as much information about your prospective customer as possible, and the most important single piece of information they can give you is their email address.
Tracking services, like Google Analytics (which is free) can give your craft business a huge amount of information about where your visitors came from, how long they stayed, what they looked at, which of your marketing tactics is producing best results… but none of these is half as important as getting your visitor’s email address. If they’ll give you that they’re giving you permission to try to sell them your crafts!
Of course people guard their email addresses jealously. Not surprising with so much spam about. The last thing they want is another set of junk mail. You can assure them that yours is a reputable craft business and you would never spam them, but it’s frequently not enough.
To be frank, they need a little bribe!
Offer them a sample, offer them a downloadable pattern, plan or ebook. Offer them a discount off of their first order. It doesn’t have to be of a particularly high value, it just has to be perceived as such! An ebook, showing a technique or way of using your craft item that’s useful or appealing may take you a while to put together but you’ll only do it once and then you can give it away at no cost. Even if a discount is the only thing you can think of, isn’t it worth 10% to get a customer who might well buy again and again for years to come?
Services exist to collect and manage the information you collect so you just need to write a single email and it will automatically be sent to everyone on your list. Can you see how easy that is? Can you see how potentially powerful a tool that is for your craft business?
How to sell crafts online isn’t just about creating a beautiful or useful product. That’s important, of course, but it’s also about getting your visitors to give you permission to stay in touch… and then not abusing that permission. Treat it with respect, it will pay you handsomely.
So who do I use for mailing list management? After all, you need expert and reliable help here. It’s not something you can manage yourself and there are some providers and software out there that you definitely want to avoid.
GetResponse are one 
of the market leaders and I have used them. Excellent service and a pretty fair price. What’s more their website is absolutely crammed with useful information. It’s a powerful and complex system that can hande anything you might want to throw at it. You will never out grow it.
They do offer a free service, but it only works for up to ten subscribers which, to be honest, is pointless.
I currently recommend YMLP for people just starting their craft business online. Their service isn’t perhaps the all-singing, all-dancing thing that GetResponse is, and there aren’t the introductory videos etc but it’s still a full-feature service. The only thing is lacks is smart autoresponders but I don’t think most craftspeople will find this a problem initially. The big thing in YMLP’s favor is that their service is free for the first 1,000 subscribers, so long as you don’t mind them putting their ad on your emails. It’s small and inoffensive so why not? If it gives you a problem, you can upgrade to a paid version for just a few dollars a month.
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