Sell Crafts Online

Grow your craft business online with these strategies

There are so many fabulous ways to sell crafts online. Technological advancements have come fast over the past few years opening up a whole range of exciting opportunities to craft professionals.

You might sell traditional handmade crafts in an easy to set up online shop, or you might invest some more time and build your own business website.

Instead of selling hard goods, you might sell you knowledge, providing online instruction in your craft in the form of books or courses, or you might design and sell patterns so customers can make their own version of your design.

The need to have complex technical skills to sell crafts online has dropped drastically, and the opportunities are huge.

Let's explore how you might sell your crafts online...

Getting Started Selling Crafts Online

How to Start Selling Crafts Online: This 8-step plan shows what you need to research before you launch your online business, so you can make smart decisions and lay a solid foundation for your online craft business.

How to Get Started Blogging: If you'd like to grow your creative business online by blogging about your craft skills, you need to be a bit savvy about the tools and resources you choose. Plenty of people will try to sell you a pile of expensive blogging tools. You don't need to go on an internet spending spree to to get started blogging. Here's the savvy way become a blogger.

How Do Blogs Make Money?: Have you ever looked at your favorite blog and wondered how the blogger makes money? Here are 6 popular blog income streams. Plus, links to blog income reports that detail exactly how much money different bloggers with different traffic levels and income sources make.

Blogging Tips for Beginners: How to promote your blog affordably, connect with other bloggers, and monetize your blog.

How I Started My Online Business: I started my online craft business back in 2006; it was a bit of a happy accident. Things have changed dramatically since then. I've learned a lot, and I still love what I do.

I enjoy sharing what I know and continue to learn about career and business building to help people with their own goals, I love constantly learning new things and never being bored with my work, and I completely appreciate the freedom of working according to my own schedule.

Curious to know how CraftProfessional got started? Here's the story of how I launched my own online business.

How Solo Build It! Transformed My Business: Celebrating 10+ years of my journey as a solopreneur. Here's the single most transformative moment in my own business. Plus, how to decide if taking your own business online is the best next step for your craft business.

How to Build a Profitable Online Craft Business: Too many craft professionals fall into the trap of thinking if they put up a free website, they'll have instant success selling their crafts online. 

The truth is, building a successful online business is completely achievable, but you need the right information, a solid plan, and a lot of hard work. Here's what you need to know before you build your first web page.

Four Ways to Sell Crafts Online: An online craft business can take different forms. There are really so many fantastic options available to you.

Here are four different ways you might sell your work online.

How to Choose a Name for Your Online Business

Choosing your domain name is a big decision, and one that can be tough to change. You want to get this decision right the first time!

This series of articles about how to name your business will help you choose a company name and a domain name that's available, catchy and tells a great story about your business.

How to Name a Business: Step-by-step guide for finding a great name for your online business.

6 Traits of Good Business Names: Choose an irresistible name for your online business - Make sure your name reflects several of these 6 common characteristics of good business names.

4 Ways to Create a Catchy Company Name: 4 ways to create a catchy company name your target audience will remember.

Bad Company Names: Get your online business name right the first time - Avoid these unfortunate business naming mistakes.

How to Write a Naming Brief: A naming brief outlines the basic character of your company. Whether you're starting a blog or launching a more traditional business, a naming brief will keep you focused, so you can choose a great name.

Choosing a Blog Name: How to choose a blog name that's available, affordable, and a perfect fit for your online business.

Choose the Right Domain Name for Your Craft Website: 9 factors to consider before you commit to a domain name for your online craft business.

How to Create a Business Name: Discover three ways to create a business name and three types of company names. Plus learn about advantages and disadvantages of each type of name, so you can create a blog name you'll love.

How to Brainstorm Business Name Ideas: There's a right way and a wrong way to brainstorm. Here's the right way to brainstorm a list of business name ideas for your online business.

Help Naming a Business: Loads of resources to help you find the right name for your online business.

Choosing a Company Name: You've brainstormed lots of company name ideas, but which one is best for your online business? Here's how to narrow down your list and find the perfect name for your creative business.

Choosing a Business Name - How to Recognize the Best Name for Your Online Business: Criteria to use to separate out the great business names from the mediocre and bad ones and find a great name for your online business.

Business Name Registration: Benefits of registering your business name and where to go to get started.

Product Photography

Learn Craft Photography: Want to learn product photography skills so you can take great photos of your crafts? Start here! This 15-step action plan shows you everything you need to know to photograph your handmade items.

Equipment Needed for Product Photography: 9 essential items you need to get started photographing your crafts — 8 of them cost $10 or less. Plus, some nice-to-have extra tools you may want to add to your home photography setup.

Lifestyle vs Product Photography: There are two essential types of product photos you'll need to sell your crafts online and apply to juried art shows: lifestyle product photos and product-only photos. Here's what you need to know about when and how to use each type of photo to promote your handmade business.

DIY Product Photography or Hire a Professional: How to decide whether you should take your own craft product photos or if it's time to hire a pro. Plus, tips for making the most of your budget if you do hire a professional product photographer.

Camera Settings for Product Photography: Learn how to use the fundamental camera settings you need to understand to take great product photos.

How to Light Product Photography: Good lighting is essential for effective product photography. Here are the basics you need to know to create well-lit product photos using natural light or artificial light.

Using Natural Light in Photography: Natural light is an excellent option for craft photography. Here's how to find great natural light indoors and outdoors, and how to set up to photograph your products in natural light.

Light Box Product Photography: It's easy to get overwhelmed when you start to research how to photograph products using artificial light. The options available can feel mind boggling. And lighting gear can be pricey, so you don't want to make the mistake of buying the wrong equipment for your needs.

If your products are small enough for tabletop photography, consider starting with light box photography. A light box is affordable, simple to use, and a good option for beginner photographers. Read on to find out how to use a light box for product photography and determine if it's the right choice for your needs.

Product Photography Lighting Setup: Here are three ways you can set up your craft photography lighting using natural light or an artificial light source and simple equipment you'd find in a home photo studio.

Photography Composition Tips for Beginners: Learn how compose your product photos using the rule of thirds and the golden triangle, and apply design elements: line, color, shape, light, texture, and negative space to improve your craft photography.

12 Product Photography Styling Tips: Use props and backdrops to style your product photos for your website, Etsy shop, or social media posts. Create images that connect with your target customers, convey information about your products, and build a desire to buy.

Product Photography Backgrounds: Lots of ideas for backdrops you can buy or easily make yourself to create the perfect look for your brand's images.

How to Edit Product Photos: There's no need to learn about every obscure tool on your image editing software. The 8 tasks are all you need to understand to beautifully edit your product photos.

Product Photography Ideas: Here's how to create a collection of great handmade product photography ideas, analyze those images to understand why they work, and develop a distinct photography style for your brand.

Product Photography Style Guide: Create a written set of brand imagery guidelines to improve efficiency and keep your photos consistent.

Top Photo Editing Software: At some point, whether you sell at shows or online, you're going to need to edit craft product photos. There are all kinds of tools you can use from free, browser based tools, to powerful paid software. Here's a roundup of the photo editing software I use.

Photo Editing Apps: Want to edit your photos directly on your smart phone or tablet? There are some excellent, affordable apps to help you create beautiful images. Here are the apps I use to edit photos for social media directly on my phone.

Choose the Right Photo Editing Tool: There are loads of tools you can use to edit a photo, but all of that choice can make it tough to find the right software for your needs. Here how to choose the right image editing software based on the job you need to do, your skill level, and your budget.

Is the PicMonkey Photo Editor Right for You?: PicMonkey is an easy to use, affordable image editor that has plenty of features, but is it the right software for your needs? Find out here.

Canva - An Excellent, Mostly Free Tool for Creating Social Media Images: Do you need to be able to make social media images better and faster? Yes? Then you need to discover Canva. It's an excellent and free (or low cost) tool for craft business owners who market their crafts online.

Social Media Marketing

If you want to sell crafts online, social media really shouldn't be ignored. Yes, it can take up a lot of your time if you're not careful, but it also provides exceptional opportunities to build relationships with customers, increase your understanding of what your customers want, and get your work in front of thousands of well-targeted, potential customers.

This site gets as many visitors from social media sites as it does from search engines. Plus, spending time engaging with craft professionals on social media sites has taught me a lot about what visitors to my own site want to know. The time I spend engaging with other crafters on social sites is definitely time well spent.

The key is to be strategic and use your time as efficiently and effectively as possible. Here are some of the strategies I have learned and used to develop a business social media presence that brings well targeted visitors to my site...

Social Media Marketing Simplified: One thing readers have said they want to know is how to use social media for business without letting it take over their lives.

Managing multiple social media business accounts can take up an enormous amount of your time if you aren't careful, and it can take you away from other important income generating facets of your work. Here's a rational, manageable way to create an effective social media marketing strategy for your business without letting it take over your life.

Connect with Customers on Instagram

Is Instagram Marketing Right For Your Business?: Because it's so visual in nature, Instagram is a great fit for a lot of craft business. Is Instagram marketing the right strategy to promote your business? Read and find out.

Get More Instagram Followers: How to build an engaged group of Instagram followers honestly. No spammy tricks that could put your account at risk. Plus, tools and strategies to make your Instagram marketing more efficient.

Better Instagram Hashtag Management: After months of being more serious about connecting with craft professionals on Instagram, I've found a better way to manage my Instagram hashtags. Here's how I've made my Instagram workflow more efficient and more enjoyable.

Smarter Instagram Hashtags: Find the best, most strategic Instagram hashtags to get more Instagram followers, and grow your business.

The Pinterest Business Series

The Pinterest Business Series - Overview: Here's an overview of the Pinterest Business Series, with links to all nine articles, and definitions of common terms used in the world of Pinterest to get you started on your way to bringing more visitors to your website with Pinterest

Why Pinterest Marketing is Good for Business: You can't use every business marketing platform out there - you just don't have time to keep up. You need to choose the platforms and opportunities that will have the best impact on your business. Here's why Pinterest marketing is a worthwhile way to invest your time to promote your creative business online.

Pinterest Trends Tool: Pinterest has a fabulous tool that shows you what searches are trending currently and over the past year. It's a simple resource you can use to plan your marketing and understand your customers.

How to Use Pinterest for Business: Here's the marketing plan I use to promote this site on Pinterest. It was a lot of work to set up, but it more than doubled traffic to this site from Pinterest, and now it runs along with only small bits of work to keep it going.

Protect Your Pinterest Account So You're Not Flagged for Spam: What if you built a solid online business with the help of Pinterest, and your account was suddenly banned for spammy behavior? Here's what I do (and don't do) to keep my account safe.

How to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Craft Business: Pinterest brings me thousands of visitors per month. It has truly been a fabulous source of growth for my business.

Are you ready to make Pinterest work for your business? Here's why you should use Pinterest to promote your online craft business, and how to make the most of your time on the site when using it for business.

Pinterest for Business: How to optimize your Pinterest account and boards to maximize exposure and grow your brand on Pinterest. Discover where to find good keywords, and how to boost your chances of getting found in Pinterest's search tool.

Pinterest Boards for Business: How to decide what Pinterest boards to develop to promote your business online, plus how to showcase you most important boards, and keep your account targeted to your ideal customer with secret boards.

Pinterest Pinning 101: Here are the pinning basics for anyone who is just getting started on Pinterest. This article assumes you have little to no experience with Pinterest and takes you through the hows and whys of saving pins on Pinterest to grow your online business.

How to Find the Right Pinterest Pins to Share: Finding quality pins to share on Pinterest is essential to growing your presence on the platform, but it can be extremely time consuming if you're not careful. Here's how to find and schedule plenty of quality pins without letting your life be taken over by pinning.

Make Your Craft Website Pinterest Friendly: Learn how to make your website more pinnable, so you can grow your business on Pinterest.

Free & Affordable Pinterest Tools: You'll need image editing software to create pins for Pinterest, and you'll need a way to manage all of your pins. There are some excellent paid Pinterest tools that will help you with those tasks, but if you're starting a blog on a budget, you can try these free tools and strategies get the job done.

Pinterest Efficiency Tips: Here are the tools and the workflow I use to pin an average of 20 pins per day consistently, and promote my business on Pinterest without taking time away from other core business tasks.

Pinterest Hashtags: Hashtags, once almost completely irrelevant on Pinterest, have become a more important way for your content to be found on the platform. Here's how to use hashtags to grow your business on Pinterest. 

Find Popular Hashtags on Pinterest: It's not enough to simply use hashtags to promote your pins on Pinterest, you need to use the right hashtags. Here's how to do smart research to use the right hashtags to promote your business on Pinterest.

Pinterest sends an enormous amount of traffic to my site, and the book Pinterest Power is where I got the information I needed to make that happen. Here's my review of the book Pinterest Power - A guide to using Pinterest for business that is particularly well suited for craft business owners because the author and his wife use Pinterest to promote their own successful craft business.

Read my review of Pinterest Power

Read more about Pinterest Power at Amazon

How to Market to Social Influencers

Social Influencer Marketing: How to build real relationships with established bloggers and social influencers to promote your craft business online.

Write Better Partnership Proposals: Most proposals for product features or guest blog posts get ignored because they are terribly written. Here's how to write a partnership proposal that has a better chance of being read and considered by an established blogger or social media influencer.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Basics for Craft Business Owners: Email marketing is an extremely powerful tool for increasing sales. Here's the first article in a series on email marketing. Get a handle on email marketing jargon, then find out why sending out a newsletter is worth your time and how to get started building a mailing list and sending out your own newsletter.

Benefits of Email Marketing: Thinking about launching a newsletter to promote your craft business but not sure if it's worth your time? Here are some of the biggest benefits of email marketing.

Boost Your Sales With Email Marketing: How email marketing can help you sell more crafts. Plus, why you need a newsletter even if you already connect with customers on social media.

What to Write About in Your Craft Business Newsletter: You know you want to market your business with a newsletter, but you have no idea what to write about. Here are plenty of ideas to get you started.

How Often to Send Out Your Newsletter: Find the right frequency for your newsletter to maximize business benefits, make good use of your time, and keep your subscribers happy.

Email Marketing Service Providers: Learn the benefits of using a professional email marketing service. Plus, discover the right company to host your business newsletter.

How to Get More Subscribers for Your Newsletter: Simple and effective ways to get more people to sign up for your business newsletter.

Keep Your Subscribers Interested: How to write better newsletters that encourage customers to open your emails, and keep your subscribers interested in hearing more from you.

Make Smart, Informed Decisions About Your Newsletter: Discover the statistics you need to watch, and what to look for, so you can make savvy decisions to make subscribers happy and boost your newsletter's business benefits.

More Online Marketing Strategies

Connecting With a Blogger Community: Should you work with a group of bloggers to support each other in building your online businesses? There are a lot of positives inherent in connecting with a blogger community, and a few pitfalls. Here's how to make sure you work with a community that's well-informed and truly helpful.

Better Business Collaborations: Want to know if it's worth your time to participate in a joint project with another business owner? Here's how to assess a collaborative project and decide if it is a good use of your precious time.

Etiquette of Blogging: Do you think a large company might be trying to take advantage of your small online business? Has another blogger reached out with a request that doesn't feel quite right, but you're not sure whether your expectations are reasonable?

Here are some guidelines for beginner bloggers who want to know where to draw the line on bad blogging behavior. Plus, how to avoid committing blogging etiquette blunders yourself, so you don't make a bad impression on fellow bloggers.

Persuasive Online Copywriting: In person, customers have a real opportunity to interact with your product - to touch, smell, and see up close the colors, textures, beauty, and skill behind your work. When you sell crafts online, you have photos and text working for you. That's it.

You really need to take the time to write great listings for your online products. Here's how to write to motivate your customers to buy, plus an excellent, free resource to give you in-depth instruction in writing to sell.

How Shipping Fees Affect Your Online Sales: Have you ever stepped away from an online purchase because the shipping fees were just a bit too high? I certainly have. Shipping fees are often an afterthought in an online sales strategy, but they can have a surprisingly big impact in the success of your online craft business.

Don't underestimate the impact shipping fees can have on online sales. Here's how your customers think about shipping fees and how to adjust your shipping fees to make to make the most of your online sales.

Free and Inexpensive Ways to Bring Customers to Your Site: Here are two free and inexpensive strategies for bringing more traffic to your site, plus good resources you can use to learn, in depth, what you need to know to use those strategies effectively to sell crafts online.

Craft Business Resources: There are so many resources for building a website it could make your head spin. And, sadly, a lot of them are overpriced or not reliable.

The internet marketing niche is, unfortunately, rife with bad advice that will either cost you a lot of money without providing much value or might work for the short-term but could get your site penalized by search engines, or could result in having your important social media accounts suspended.

You can keep it real and build a legitimate online business, but you need to wade through a lot of bad advice to find the good stuff. To help narrow your search for the good information, here are several reliable and effective resources I have used for building an online business.

Where to Sell Crafts Online

Rule Your Craft Business Online!: Are you in charge of your online craft business, or is someone else in control? You might be surprised. Find out how you might be losing control of your online business without even realizing it, and what to do about it.

Selling on Your Own Site vs. Third Party Sites: Can't decide whether to build your own site or go with a third party site like Etsy? Here are a few things to take into consideration to help you decide where to sell crafts online.

Find Bloggers to Promote Your Etsy Business: Here's an easy way to research bloggers in your niche with a good sized audience who might be interested in promoting items in your Etsy shop.

Etsy's Affiliate Program: Etsy has an affiliate program that could help boost your shop's sales. It hasn't been talked about much in the Etsy forums or other crafter-circles I've checked out. But, if you attract the attention of a blogger with a large following that's a good fit for your products, you could see a real boost in sales. Here's what you need to know about Etsy's affiliate program.

Get Your Shop Promoted With Etsy Affiliates: There are plenty factors that make your shop more (or less) attractive to bloggers looking for Etsy shops to feature. Some might surprise you.

Want to have your Etsy shop featured on a popular blog? Boost your shot at being featured in popular blogs with these tips for making your Etsy shop attractive to affiliates.

Selling on Etsy: Are your making the most of Christmas time sales on Etsy? Here's an analysis of Etsy sales statistics from 2008 to 2012 with a special focus on holiday sales on Etsy, and what those numbers mean for your own Etsy shop.

Handmade at Amazon: Amazon has jumped into the handmade arena with Handmade at Amazon. Have you tried it? Check out Amazon's marketplace that is strictly for handmade items only.

Zibbet Review: Everyone has heard of Etsy, but have you looked at Zibbet? Guest author Barbra La Bosco shares her insights into selling on Zibbet.

Find Your Business Niche

Niche marketing - appealing to a very focused, well targeted segment of a market - is an important part of online business building, particularly for small business owners who have limited resources.

Have you found a great niche for your online craft business? Read the articles below to discover how to sell crafts online with a great niche that you can serve better than anyone else and how to make a strong impression on customers within your niche.

Finding a Market Niche for Your Craft Business: Finding a market niche that you know and understand, and that has committed customers ready to buy your products can go a long way toward making you stand out from the crowd. Selling to niche markets works particularly well online because you can reach a large number of customers with very specific interests and needs. Read on to discover how to find a market niche for your craft business.

Develop a Craft Business Concept That Stands Out From the Competition: If you choose the right niche - one you know well and can serve better than anyone else, you can truly stand out from the competition. Here's how to find a niche that takes advantage of your own unique skills and experiences.

Own Your Niche: Here's how to stay on top of the latest developments in your craft business niche. Be the first to know, so your customers will think of you as the go-to person in your field.