How much online selling depends on luck?

You love making things.  You think the things you make are beautiful.  Others think so too.  You've decided to sell them online.  You open up a shop on Folksy, Etsy, Dreamaid or Zibbet or another selling venue.  You spend a long time getting photos and descriptions of your items as perfect as possible.  You're waiting for the sales to flood in.  You start to engage with the handmade community, because you read that's good for selling.  You are in the forums chatting quite a lot.  You use Twitter, Facebook and any other social media that is currently fashionable.  You're still waiting for a lot of sales to happen.

The amount of time you spend making things begins to be compromised a bit by your activities on the PC.  You read a lot about promoting, you start to use treasuries, blog posts, Craftjuice, Etsy teams, maybe the Folksy listing clubs, and then you start to read up on SEO.  You realise that you need to spend even more time at your computer interacting as much as possible to keep your business name and your items high up in the search engines....

Meanwhile, making things is becoming an activity you can hardly fit in because most of your time is spent on promoting...And you're still waiting for the sales to flood in.  You worry a bit that your items might not be good enough, so you post on the forums asking people what they think.  They all say they love your stuff.  A couple of them might even buy.  But you're still waiting for the sales to start flooding in.

What are you doing wrong?

Nothing.

Let me repeat that:

You are doing nothing wrong.

So why am I not selling things every day?

Because, online selling is 90% perspiration and 10% luck.  And you can't plan for luck.

Let me explain what I mean.  And this, of course, is my humble opinion, and could be as wrong as burnt toast for all I know.

Selling on handmade sites should be easy.  You have a captive audience, the crafting community on Folksy, Etsy, Dreamaid etc.  Their common characteristic is that they are crafters.  If your target market is crafters, then all you have to do is find a product that interests them and all things being equal you will sell, probably lots.  The key thing that most crafters have in common is the love of buying supplies.  Supplies shops do really well on handmade sites.  So open a supplies shop.

But wait, I hear you cry, I make jewellery, I crochet, I paint, I make cards, throw pots, make sock puppets.  That's my craft.  Not selling supplies.

Aha, that's different then.  You need to attract a different sort of customer really, the internet shopper.  This shopper probably hasn't heard of Folksy, Etsy, Dreamaid.  They don't know yet that buying a handmade item can be a much superior experience to getting something mass produced.  These shoppers might spend a long time browsing online and buy whatever takes their fancy.  But in these times when most folk are time poor, they are more likely to go online and search for a really specific item, probably using Google to search for keywords describing the product they want.

These sorts of customers are difficult to categorise.  They don't all assemble in one place like the crafters do in the Folksy and Etsy forums.  They come online at all sorts of times of the day or night.  They search for all sorts of strange combinations of things.  They probably pick something off page 1 or 2 of the search results, because they are time-poor and they honestly can't wade through through thousands of results.  They probably won't pick your item over another solely because it's handmade, or because it's cheaper, or because it's more expensive.  They will use a variety of judgements to make the decision over which of the competing items they find to buy.  

 

Maybe some of these customers are interested in developing a relationship with the seller, so your profile is really important to them, or maybe they just want to buy and fly - get what they need, when they need it, and you'll never see them again.  Maybe they want to buy something being sold locally to them, or ethically produced, or something recycled, or maybe the exact colour match of the item to their needs is the overriding consideration. 

This is where the luck comes in.  Your item needs to shout out to the customer, so it needs to be high in the search engine rankings.  All your efforts at promoting will help with that.  But it also needs to be exactly what that person wants, available at the particular time they need it, in the right colour and size, at the right price point for them, with the right delivery options so they get it exactly when they need it, with the right returns policy for them. 

You can't plan for this customer.  You can make your shop inviting, make your products look good, have great customer service and feedback, and sell beautiful things.  But that customer might still miss you.  It's like the brown bears fishing for salmon - for every one they catch, a lot will swim away!

What do you think - luck or not?

Unconventional tips for selling online

My shops have been open for just over a year and a half now, so I got to thinking about the great advice which I've got from forums, blogs, and other lovely sellers. This advice has been invaluable in developing the style and content of my shops. For anyone starting out, hanging around the forums of the major handmade sites is time well spent. But here are a couple of tips which you don't see so often in the forums, and perhaps that's because they are just a little bit controversial...


They are just my humble opinion, of course, and I'd love to hear what you think of them.

One. If you're just starting out, don't start to promote your shop until you're absolutely happy with how it looks. Everyone will tell you to start promoting straight away, but you might find later that you wish you had waited until you've improved your photos, written better commentaries on your items, and got some feedback on where might be the best places to spend your time promoting. So my advice would be to take a little time to ponder and to tweak your shop, especially when you're starting out.  Selling online is a long game, you probably won't miss thousands and thousands of sales, but you will be laying down a good foundation for later!

Some recent sold items.  Can you spot a target audience?

Two. Don't worry about your target market. You'll probably find lots of different sorts of people will buy what you make, and they won't obligingly fit into any different categories. Of course, if you make a particular project niche product, this won't apply to you.  But even if you make for a particular market, for instance, clothing for babies, you may also find your items are bought as gifts by folk who are not parents or close relatives of babies. I've found many different types of people purchasing my jewellery. They don't seem to fit into a particular age bracket. Are they rich or poor? I have no idea. Does that matter? Probably not. Are all my customers women? No, a fair few are men buying gifts for friends and family. A quick look around the bus or Tube reveals that is very hard to categorise which women buy which sorts of jewellery. And those who are magpies, like me, will probably have loads of different styles in their collections. People just refuse to sit in the neat categories the marketing folks would like them to! And what a good thing it is that people don't - the world is a much place for us all being different, IMHO.

More sold items - my customers have eclectic taste!

Three. Have excellent customer service.  Communicate with your customers as much as possible so they know you've acknowledged their order, have put it quickly in the post, and want to hear back from them that they love the item, or even if there's a problem with it. This is where the handmade movement can really outshine the big online retailers. Don't worry about bothering people too much - if someone doesn't like getting an additional email from you, they can always leave it unopened in their inbox.  But most customers I think, appreciate getting a note to say when their item will be posted, I know I do.  So make first class service your aim.

Lastly, be very patient. Neither Rome nor Marks and Spencers were built in a day!  However much you promote (and you could find yourself needing 36 hours in a day very quickly) it will take people time to find your shop. It's a online jungle out there and you need to prioritise taking care of yourself and your time.

What would your unconventional tips for other sellers be?

Photography tips from a non-professional

Can't believe that I'm going to give advice on photographing jewellery - I am anything but an expert!  However, a couple of people recently got in touch to ask me how I got my photos so clear - this was really flattering, and honestly not something I was expecting.  If you had seen the photos I started out with and the ones now, you'd appreciate what a steep learning curve I've been on.

After 8 months selling online, I've probably redone my photos about six or seven times.  It's an incredible waste of time and effort, so if I can pass on anything I've learned and save someone a bit of time, that'll be good.  Most of the advice I've picked up has come from lovely people in the Folksy and Etsy community (including members of the Lonely Jewelers on Etsy), they are the best source of tips and great at critiques.  Frequently I was in despair with the photos, and ready to close the shops because of them.  Although I don't hate taking photos now, I'd still rather be making jewellery or writing about it.

Professional photographers should look away now (or in fact anyone who knows a lot about it) because I'm sure I break most of the rules.  After all this time and a lot of reading, I still don't really understand what an F-stop is or why depth of field is critical.  I'm sure these things are important, but I've got to that age where you realise you can't learn everything about everything so you have to be selective! 

This is also about photography with limited space and little equipment.  I use a digital camera that is old and bulky by today's standards, and I live in the smallest house you can imagine.  My most expensive piece of new equipment is my floor standing tripod (it cost about £15) and it's now probably something I'd reach to save if the house were on fire.  You can see it in my set up here:

There it is all ready for the camera to sit on top.  It lets me get every possible angle on the jewellery and takes up very little floor space.

You might have noticed by now that the tripod is pointing at a windowsill and a piece of mulberry wrapping paper is blu-tacked to the window.  I told you this was non-technical stuff, didn't I?!  I did buy a light box originally but it never worked for me as well as natural light.  The wrapping paper diffuses the light nicely, I think.

Here I've placed the earrings to be photographed.  They are on a piece of silver craft card.  I've probably tried every background you can think of, and reflective ones definately work best for me.  For some, I use a piece of white glossy photo paper, but for the mookaite colours here, I like the silver card.  It actually comes out more white than a white background.  The physics people could probably tell you why, but I can't!  I love the reflection, and so long as your customer doesn't think they are buying two pairs of earrings, I don't see there's much harm in it.

You can just see our neighbour's house across the road in this shot!

My other tips for getting a good shot are:

• set the white balance manually on your camera every time you start to shoot a new object
• experiment with different exposures (+1.3 and above work best for me)
• if it's too sunny or too gloomy outside, forget pictures for the day!  There are probably other things you can do for your shop that day
• use macro and a bit of zoom together (I'm sure that's breaking the rules completely...)
• get up close and personal - you can have one shot with everything in, but the others can celebrate the detail of your work
• use some free software like Gimp to touch up, but don't overdo it.  If you're photo needs too much adjusting, it's probably better to start again with a different shot.

Here they are.  What do you think?  Comments and tips most welcome.