Selling Your Handmade Items Online

There are two ways to sell the items that you have poured your heart and soul into, in person and online. 

In person sales are going to be in a shop of some sort, maybe a pop up shop, or a local vendor market or even your own brick and mortar store. Nothing beats selling in person. The customer can feel the item and maybe try it on if it's a garment. It makes impulse shopping a lot easier. 

In person sales don't necessarily work well for custom handmade items that take hours or even days to create. 

Enter ECOMMERCE. Selling your items online. 

Statistics show that online shopping has overtaken brick and mortar shopping. More people would rather buy online than travel to a store. I know this is true for me. I recently bought a refrigerator online. Had it delivered. I never left my house. Easiest thing ever! Statistics also show that more small businesses do not take take advantage of this trend. This is bad for you as a small business owner. You are missing out on sales.

 

I'd like to talk just a little bit about some reasonably priced options that are available to you for selling your handmade creations online. This is in no way a definitive list of all the options that are available. 

1. Etsy. The Grande Dame of the online handmade marketplace. You can open your shop for free and it's only .20 to list an item. Once an item sells, you pay a transaction fee of 3.5% and a payment processing fee, which varies according to location. Having an Etsy shop is like renting space in a vendor market. You maintain your shop, the market takes payments and you pay your agreed-upon fees to the market.
2. Shopify. A lot of ecommerce coaches suggest opening an online store through Shopify. Shopify is easy to open and it looks great. They have lots of tools to help you. It is $29 per month, plus payment processing fees of 2.9%+.30. You will have to drive traffic to your store front as you own your store front. You can also use your Shopify store front as a plug in on various platforms such as Facebook and Wordpress. 
3. Handmade at Amazon is another choice where traffic will be generated by the host. Like Etsy, it is not YOUR store, you are leasing space. I honestly don't know a lot about it. You do have to apply to be a seller and there are fees, but I cannot find a list of those fees. 
4. Squarespace is a website builder with an ecommerce option you can use to sell your items. It is $26 per month, or $18 if you pay for a year up front. It is your store front. The success or failure is up to you. Squarespace does not charge processing fees but your credit card processor will charge you. Squarespace does charge a 2% transaction fee. 
5. Ecwid is another ecommerce platform that works similarly to Shopify. You can have your own Ecwid store front, or you can use it as a plug in on your own blogging platform. Ecwid does have a 100% free plan. It is limited to ten items. Beyond the free plan, there are three different plans that range from $12.50 per month paid annually to $69 a month paid monthly. Ecwid does not charge processing or transaction fees. You will generally pay the transaction fee through your own payment processor and they offer channels to Square, Paypal and a number of other options. 
6. Wix. Wix is the last option that I'll cover in this post. Wix is a website builder like Squarespace with a plan for ecommerce. They do not charge fees per transaction, you pay monthly or yearly for the hosting. Your per transaction fee will come from your own payment processor, such as Paypal. 

My opinions. 

1. Etsy. I would like to say that Etsy is easy. Etsy is easy if you do all the stuff, use up all the spaces they provide you with. It is important to remember that this is not YOUR store. You are leasing space from Etsy and they can close you down for a myriad of reasons, including mistakes. I don't know any ecommerce coaches that suggest putting all your eggs in the Etsy basket. Maintain another place online to sell your handmade creations. 
2. Shopify is, in my opinion, too expensive. And you still have to drive traffic to your store on your own through marketing. 
3. Handmade at Amazon. As I said before, I don't have any personal experience with it. It's intimidating to me that you have to apply. That means you can be turned down. Some sellers do very well with it. Just from comments that I see on various forums, some things that sell well on Etsy, don't sell well on HaA and vice versa. Like Etsy, you don't have to drive the traffic, they do it for you. 
4. Squarespace is a very reasonably priced choice. The template choices all look modern and clean. You don't need to understand website building to use it. You will have to drive the traffic to your storefront on your own through various methods of marketing. 
5. Ecwid. I use Ecwid as a plug in on my Wordpress site. I like it because the lowest priced plan offers unlimited customization options that I need for homecoming mums. I don't love the look of the store itself, but since I am using Wordpress I can get around it. I have found the online support to be quick and very helpful. 
6. Wix. I like Wix. I think it's really pretty. I love the drag and drop website builder with the snap lines that tell you when something is centered. I do not use it simply because the shopping cart does not allow for the number of options that homecoming mums need. As it is your own website, you do need to market it yourself. I have heard that Google is prejudiced against Wix sites and does not rank them high in search. I can't say that is true because if you search Lago Vista Homecoming Mums, my free Wix site is what shows up.