There are a lot of aspects to consider when thinking about selling your work online. If you have the skills and time, you might choose to have your own selling website. You will have to create this yourself (or have it created for you) or use a template (lots of good ones around) and maintain it and be responsible for all the marketing and promotion of it. The good thing though is that you pay no fees (other than your own website costs). The negative is that you have to do everything which includes marketing and dealing with customers and their payments. When dealing with personal details and money you will need added security and data storage facilities (an area I know little about!). This can put a lot of people off, including me!
If you opt for a marketplace such as 'made by hand online' or 'not on the high street' you are joining an established website where the marketing should be done as standard. You will pay a yearly fee plus a commission on all work sold. You will usually be responsible for taking all your own photographs and uploading them and writing descriptions for your work but there should be a lot of support and help with this. Some marketplaces will do a lot of this for you. These websites deal with all the customer orders, emails etc which means you don't have to.
Joining Etsy or Folksy are another good option. you may be sharing the site with thousands of other shopfronts, not all of which are handmade original items but you do get the security of having all payments go through their finance system and being part of a recognised and well used website.You will have to maintain everything including contact with customers but the fees are very low.
Whatever you choose, make sure you have researched all possibilities well. There are more and more online marketplaces opening all the time and makers are in demand so shop around before you commit. This article from The design trust has loads of good advice
http://www.thedesigntrust.co.uk/top-tips-to-sell-your-crafts-
Next I'll talk about my photography journey so far....
Here is a recent interview of mine -
http://www.madebyhandonline.com/blog/article/an_interview_with_jeweller_caroline_finlay/
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| Ring by Alison Macleod |
28th Feb
Yesterday I attended an interesting and informative event on Branding and Selling Craft Online organised by www.craftscotland.org and Applied Arts Scotland
There were 7 speakers including Giles Etherington www.brandsatellite.co.uk a branding consultancy and integrated design and marketing agency, Jules Horne of www.texthouse.co.uk a copywriter and award winning playwright, Alison Macleod www.alisonmacleod.com a jeweller, and Mark McConnell from www.weareyoke.com a home and gift company selling quirky and colourful printed products.
There was obviously lots of advice and sharing of ideas but I would say the overall number one recommendation was to get professional images taken of your work. Fantastic Images will help to bridge the gap created by not being able to use all ones senses when buying work online. By this I mean the inability to touch, feel, hold, smell, try on and examine a piece when buying online.
Words are also invaluable in helping to bridge this gap; full descriptions of the piece and words used to improve the search engine optimisation (SEO) are essential. Good images will be used more readily by magazine/web/blogs reviews and the press. Mark said that being featured in a popular magazine or website had a huge impact on sales of that particular item.
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| These 2 pieces of mine have been added to Craft Scotland's Culture Label shop - Caroline Finlay enamel and silver earrings |
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| Caroline Finlay neckpiece - silver, enamel and semi-precious beads |
Other advice included telling your story; how will you be remembered, making it personal, how are you different, what is your unique selling point?
Online sales already account for 10.5% of all retail sales and this is growing steadily. It is something we all have to embrace if we want to stay in step with our competitors.
So this brings me back to my previous entry on taking good photographs! I still need to be able to do this as well as I can as I won’t always be able to get every piece photographed professionally. I am still undecided as to whether I will have my work photographed by a professional at this stage ( I can hear the speakers saying “can you afford not to?”). I will have to do some research on costs etc. But I am seeing more and more jewellers and makers using models and a professionals photo-shoot to produce promotional images of their collections. Jane Gowans website is a good example of going down the fashion jewellery route and how important a fashion shoot is http://www.janegowans.co.uk
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| Caroline Finlay silver and enamel rings |
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| Caroline Finlay silver and enamel pendant |
I am wondering if I need a macro lens or a better and more up to date camera to improve results; the RAW files drop from 10MB to around 1.5 as soon as I edit them - is this to do with the fact the quality isn’t as good as it could be to begin with? I will need to research further. And yes this is all relevant because a recent application asked for images between 1 and 3MB but sized to 1000x1000 pixels. Once edited and slightly cropped the images were around 1.5MB but dropped to around 120KB when sized to 1000x1000 pixels. The organisation agreed to accept them as they were but I found it very frustrating. its this having to be a jack of all trades (and never having enough time to get on and do what you’re supposed to be doing!!).
On a slightly different matter I thought I’d share this gorgeous online catalogue with you. There are some really inspiring brooches in it.
