Tips on Selling Your Handmade Items

With the Holiday Season coming up fast, it's time to start creating and selling your home-made arts, crafts and baking. In order to sell your products, you must first know the best places to sell and how to promote your products to increase your sales. A good plan is to offer your products in several different arenas locally and online so that your product reaches a broader audience. Some good places to start are at local craft fairs. Check with your Civic Center to find out if they host any craft fairs or fall festivals. You can also sell at Fall Carnivals if your product such as baking or children's items would be applicable there. Watch your local paper for event listings that you could sell or promote at. The best craft fairs are the ones that are free or have a very small vending fee. Unless you know your product sells well in your area, stick to the less expensive shows so you don't end up losing money. If you sell children's products such as hair bows or handmade clothing, see if there are any quality kid's consignment stores that you could sell your merchandise at. Go visit downtown shops. Many of them have stores dedicated to renting spaces in their shop to vendors of similar merchandise or will allow you to leave business cards/flyers for your products.

Apart from being a vendor in a local event, a great way to reach a broader audience is to open an online store. Two great websites to do this on are www.ebay.com and www.etsy.com. Ebay is a well known and frequented website for the buying and selling of all manner of products. Becoming a seller on Ebay is free and easy. They charge fees to list items and charge a final value fee based upon the selling cost of your item. The more you list on Ebay, the more you sell because Ebay allows you to view all the items offered by any seller. If you have great success with being a seller on Ebay, you have the option of opening a Store on Ebay. This is a great way to get a dedicated clientele of shoppers and easier to find than a typical seller's account. The online place to go, however, for all things handmade is Etsy. Etsy brings artisans from all over the world together to buy and sell anything handmade or something that is truly vintage chic. On Etsy you create a profile and everyone has their own store for free. The fees are very reasonable and are only applied to list items at a flat rate, currently 20 cent per listing, and a final selling fee. It is easy to become a seller and a great way to reach people who want your handmade crafts. Etsy stores are personalized by the seller and allow the user to upload their business logo as well as pictures and details of each product they offer. It is a very organized site that promotes sellers and gives great business building advice in weekly newsletters.

Promoting your products is something that is very easy to do, but is often not capitalized on. It can be as easy as giving out samples of your products to friends and family and allowing them to display your wares or simply handing out business cards. Another great way is to blog, Twitter, Myspace, or Facebook about your websites and upcoming craft shows. Let friends and acquaintances know what you are up to in your crafting business and you may find some buyers among them. For people who have bought from you before or may just be interested in your work, send out and email newsletter of your newest items, hints of things upcoming, and venues where they might see you next. It's a great way to whet the appetites of buyers. More than once have I been drawn to a new product in one of my favorite seller's newsletter. Once people know the quality of your work, you are more likely to get a repeat buyer. When you make a sale, slip a business card and a promo gift in the bag of your patron. Promo gifts are very simple inexpensive things like mints, pens, buttons, miniatures of your product, or little note cards. Promotional gifts are easy ways to give a buyer a good final impression of their business transaction with you. Now that you have some ideas of where to sell and how to promote your products, get started making and selling those crafts!