Setting up your First Shop
by Marjorie from Whskr Art Dolls
I see so many talented crafters at fairs and when I ask if they are online they say ‘Oh I’m thinking about it’ or ‘I will get around to it soon’. I know many Crafters can easily feel overwhelmed by the massive amount of information and the number of online sites, and, to be honest, it can seem very VERY scary!
So, for the newbie wanting to test the online selling waters, here are some brief tips to get you up and running in small baby steps!
Site selection
It is important to realise that not all sites are the same. Some work by showing who listed most recently (Etsy), others (ArtFire) use sophisticated search criteria to bring up goods in a random order. Zibbet (Sydney based) falls somewhere inbetween. However, for Kiwi’s there can be no better place to start up your first shop than Felt which is NZ based, friendly and easy to use.
What to expect
Each site provides one thing. A store front for you to sell your handmade crafts.
You will be expected to register, and to provide some information like a legitimate email address, a PayPal account, and/or a credit card number. All online sites go to great lengths to keep your information secure so you don’t need to worry about selling and the money element. Paypal is also useful to have if you expand into international sales.
Each site also provides lots of help. The Felt help area (http://felt.co.nz/pages/help.php) is clean, simple and friendly and with them being New Zealand based, you can look forward to local help from real people if you need it. Felt also recently launched felt forums for registered felt users, a great place to ask questions and also connect with other NZ based makers.
Some sites will expect you to have a banner (shop image) ready to upload. It’s an oblong image that represents your work – and they will give you the preferred size. Felt, however, takes the pressure off by giving you a space to put a photo or ‘avatar’ and lets you concentrate on the most important part of the deal :-
Setting up your shop
You will need two things to start selling once your shop is set up. One is Words and the other is Pictures.
For your shop, aim for the best quality images you can. No, you don’t need to be a professional photographer but you DO need to know your digital camera, and the size of the images your online store accepts. Unless you have access to expensive image editing software GIMP is a good (and free alternative). http://www.gimp.org/
most people can make do with something like iphot or picassa, the trick is to not over edit your items, as make all your images square as most online sites crop to a square
Taking pictures of your items needs a bit of practice, much will depend on what you are photographing so don’t feel you are wrong if you don’t succeed first time. Keep images sharp, clean and uncluttered.
The same approach goes for write-ups. Don’t describe your work in deadly dull prose – try to make it fun, and interesting. Your challenge is to engage the buyer – they liked your item enough to click through to its page – now you must show them how fun, or good, or gorgeous it is!
There are great photography tips here :
- How-to on making a light tent to photograph small items here:- http://www.handmadenews.org/article/index.php?id=3078
Writing tips are here http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/writing-for-an-online-audience-how-to-750/
All are well worth investing a few minutes of your time.
So, there you have it. All the tools to take your first small steps into online selling :-
A Kiwi friendly site Felt http://felt.co.nz/
your digital camera
a bit of time to do your write-up for your items. Voila!
See you online!
MArjorie aka WHSKR
looking for more helps and inspiration then check out the Crafty Business web site – loads of great information from the Christchuch based group run by Lucy from Felt and Miss Millie
