Artfire - a Venue for Handmade, Vintage, Supplies

Artfire is a relative newcomer to the handmade venue scene. It has been open a little more than a year. But in that year, it has seen remarkable success and growth. Artfire's CEO is progressive and willing to try new things to make the site better for studio owners.

Artfire has a completely different fee structure. There is a free option with unlimited listings but limited features. Artfire things the more listings they have, the better the chance of showing up in Google and Bing and this will increase traffic to the site. Verified members have access to many great features for a price of $12 per month. There are no insertion fees and no final fees for either plan.

Artfire does not require an account to purchase. This has dramatically increased sales as many carts are abandoned due to the customer not wanting to create yet another online account. The checkout process is quick and easy for customers whether they are signed in or not.

Payment can be made to the seller with Paypal, Amazon or RME. Paypal doesn't require an account so you can safely use your credit card without revealing any of your numbers to the seller.

Artfire also has a Rapid Cart for for verified studio owners so they can place a button on their website or blog for customers to buy from there. This means for your $12 a month account, you can use this as a shopping cart on your blog.

Artfire has done a great job with search engine optimization (SEO). Artfire listings are picked up quickly in Google and submitted to Google Shopping. This can bring a lot of traffic to your studio if you follow their guides for SEO tips.

Being new, Artfire doesn't have much of an internal customer base just yet. Almost all customers are through Google or studio advertising. No matter where you sell, you have to advertise outside of the venue but there may be a bit more advertising for your customers involved with Artfire.

Artfire has added coupon codes and gift certificates for its studio owners to use with the verified account holders. There is also an importer to import items from other venues and batch editing to save time when changing tags, price or shipping.

Artfire shows a lot of promise in development and is regularly updating the site and adding new features. The fee structure is great if you sell a lot, but if you're unsure how you'll do it can be a big investment for a small business. Each studio owner must do their own advertising to draw customers to their studio as there is little built in customer base. However, the high Google rankings do offset this a bit.