Established 6 figure strategy for selling crafts online - Etsy - Amazon Handmade

How to Sell Crafts Online by Craft Life Academy

Top two Craft Selling Ideas for both Etsy & Amazon Handmade stores

By Chris Tailby from CraftLife.Academy – How I sold 7 figures selling crafts online. My exact method,  revealed below.

So, you want to become an Etsy or Amazon Handmade top seller?

Or maybe you’d like to learn how to start a craft business to have something enjoyable to run on the side to pay for additional luxuries?

Whatever your motivation,  I’m here to show you how to sell crafts online the right way,  to avoid the many pitfalls and to cut the learning curve right down.

Let’s get started!

Craft Selling Strategy #1

The first thing to decide when starting a Craft Business is to decide what selling strategy you are going to deploy. 

Are you going to be making all of your own items?

If you are going to be making your own items,  I do recommend adding customizable products into your range as these allow for you to price higher as they are personalized and also allow for you to be original and create your own items (hopefully better) than what’s already proving to be a good selling Craft product.

I also recommend that you spend at least 40% of your available time doing product research.  This is time well spent (often neglected) because by doing so you’ll constantly uncover superb craft selling items that you can recreate your own versions of for selling on Etsy and Amazon Handmade.

For this,  you’ll need to draw up your own check list for finding the best craft products to sell.

If you know what niche you are going to sell in,  start with a search on Etsy or Amazon for your niche,  then scroll down to continue on the Craft Check List,  under the table below.

Also,  to have an idea of what other successful Etsy sellers are making, take a look at the table below for the Top Ten best-selling Etsy shops.

 

Etsy Shop Name

Craft Niche

Caitlyn Minimalist

Jewelry

Seed Geeks

Home / Lifestyle

Bailey Designed Co

Art and Collectables

TaraSparkes

Paper Crafts and Party Supplies

SilverRainSilver

Jewelry

ModParty

Wedding Supplies

AcornandCrowStudio

Electronics and Accessories

TheGreenEscape

Home and Living

BeadBoat1

Craft Supplies – Tools

SouthernSeedExchange

Home & Living

 

Prefer to watch the video of this article?  See my YouTube Video of my top two Craft Selling Strategies HERE

What are the best selling Handmade Products? 

Sellers that sell over a thousand craft products will have most likely built up to that number over time.  It can be daunting starting out, wondering where to start so I have developed this simple guide as a starting point to selling crafts online.

1 – If you know your niche,  start by doing a search within your niche.  I prefer to sell items of a higher price and so I recommend using the filter to only include items over $20 / £20 / Euros 20.

2 – Look at best sellers that you can create for yourself.  Check how long a product has been available for.  If an item has been around for less than 12 months and has recorded over 20 reviews and / or best seller status,  it could be a product to recreate. 

3 – Calculate the “product review to shop review ratio”  If an Etsy Shop has an item that has recorded 28 reviews and the entire shop has 560 reviews the calculation would be as follows,  28 divided by 560 multiplied by 100 = 5% - and so 5% of the stores total reviews have been generated by this one product,  so quite high!

Sometimes you’ll find this figure pushing way higher over 10% and beyond.  Many craft shops attribute a high percentage of their craft sales to just 1,2 or 3 items only.  Learning what craft products sell best and creating your own version is a fast track way to record sales and success quickly.

My own journey was exactly this:

1 – I decided on a large craft niche to sell in.  My choice was Craft Supplies.

2 – From the 20 or 30 thousand Craft Supply products I found a niche market and I decided to focus on Transfer Paper.

3 – I sourced 6-7 top selling transfer papers and developed stores at Etsy, Amazon and Shopify.

4 – I became good at writing SEO optimized titles and tags for Etsy and Amazon. I spent lots of time getting this part right.  For more on writing titles and tags,  see my video on how to write titles and tags.

5 – I developed an email list of buyers and now have over 24,000 contacts in my email sender list to mail too each month.  I recommend you start doing this from day 1,  especially if your plan is to have a Shopify store as buyer’s emails can be collected automatically through the mailchimp app with Shopify.

Moving on, same model,  different example.  Let’s say that you like Jewelry making and you’ve made some necklaces for family and friends and you’d like to learn how to open a craft shop.

What most people do is create items that they like personally,  open an Etsy and Amazon selling account,  list their products and then go on to (often) record disappointing levels of sales.

To be successful at selling crafts online you have to make in demand products.  There’s no harm in being original and testing on completely new products but the fast track is to find existing products that are recording high levels of sales and to then recreate your own version whilst using my check lists to improve on the listings.  Doing so with give you a great chance of being the next generation of Etsy and Amazon top sellers.

So,  as an example,  let’s say you’ve decided to make items of Jewelry.

1 – Visit online Jewelry stores on Etsy and Amazon to locate top selling items using the check lists above.

2 – Choose a niche.  Let’s say that you’ve noticed that daisies incorporated within Jewelry are great selling items.  You’ve noticed both necklaces, pendants, earrings and bracelets all recording both reviews, best seller statuses and sales.

3 – Now,  you’ve decided on the daisy Jewelry niche,  decide how many products you are going to release.  This could be around 12 split between necklaces, earrings and bracelets. Ensure that you place your item into the exact category for your product.

4 – Take great close up photography with white backgrounds.  Buy a cheap white box photography booth from Amazon for this if you don’t have one.

5 – Write great titles and tags for every listing.  Always conduct extensive keyword research before listing your item.  Download the Keyword Surfer extension from the Chrome extension store to get some great ideas for buyer craft keywords for your items.

6 – Once you have your in demand product listings live with SEO optimized titles, tags and descriptions,  you are ready to provide further support for your items.  This could be through have a business Instagram account or being active in many Crafty groups on Facebook,  posting photographs of your items and asking for opinions.  Ask questions on Facebook,  help others but don’t sell directly through posts on Facebook,  it has little impact in my opinion.

7 – Finally,  to support your niche product range,  I recommend using Pinterest.  See my 1hr video on selling crafts online to see a daily Pinterest Strategy

I also have an advanced Pinterest Strategy inside Craft Life Academy which aims to bring around 10,000 visitors to see your item every month on autopilot through re-pinning software.

Craft Selling Strategy #2

Another tried and tested way to sell craft online is to play the numbers game.  This is as it sounds with the aim of adding large numbers of products to your Etsy store or Amazon handmade listings.

I first saw an example of this back in 2017 when a lady called Rachel Rofe did a 1hr presentation at London’s Excel Centre to which I was present for.

She showed how she’d take a great selling custom mug,  tweak it to make her own version,  then list it on Amazon and Etsy for sale.  She was selling over $100,000 a month and had built up several thousand listings.

So lets see how this strategy could work.

1 – You need to commit to being consistent.  This strategy only works through creating a set number of new products every week,  maybe between 10 and 30 and to consistently create new mugs to list every day / week / month.

2 – Learn how to identify great selling mug designs and then recreate them in Canva or paint by taking a blank mug image and dropping the text or photo onto it.  In recent times “Digital Downloads” Planners, life hacks, etc have also been deployed with the numbers game strategy.

3 – List your new products,  spending lots of time to get buyer keywords into your title, tags and descriptions.

4 – When items sell,  shoot them off to print on demand to fulfil or make yourself through sliding. 

5 – Maintain your daily routine split between product research to find craft products that sell and product fulfilment to your customers as quickly as you are able.

It’s important to remember that playing the numbers game is different from using the niche strategy as almost all of your visitors will be coming in through the search engines at either Etsy or Amazon.  You are not going to be able to support your products individually via social media as you’ll have too many products so it’s crucial that your product listings titles, tags, descriptions and photography is all to the best of your ability.

That concludes my how to sell crafts online – guide to hitting the ground running. 

For more craft selling tips, tricks, strategies and hacks,  consider subscribing to my Craft Life Academy YouTube channel,  where I am releasing new videos weekly.

1hr free training - Craft Selling Masterclass HERE

 

 


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