Craft Marketer Newsletter
Craft Business Ideas
Issue Number 3, July 3, 2000
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IN THIS ISSUE
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1. Selling Your Crafts Online - How to Plan for Success!
by James Dillehay
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After speaking with many craft persons in business, I hear
over and over again that they want to put their work for
sale on the Internet, but they don't know how or where to
begin.
If you have ever browsed the net and ended up at other
sites
than the one(s) you were looking for in the first place,
you
know how easy it is to get distracted. This is even more
true, when setting up your business on the Internet.
An approach that I have found that works best is to start
by making "to do" lists of the different online marketing
avenues. For instance, your major activities should include:
* sell your work at online auction sites
* get listed in the major search engines
* seek links from other sites
* write articles to get publicity
* add affiliate programs to your site
* set up an organized email campaign to follow up with
your site's visitors.
Create a list of activities to be accomplished under
each of those marketing tasks.
Every day, plan to accomplish a group of tasks to promote
your site. For instance, here are a few suggested actions
to be taken daily:
* seek links from 5 craft related web sites
* post two auctions for your craft products
* resubmit your new web pages to the major search engines
* post an article to at least one media outlet about your
craft site as publicity
* post a helpful comment on at least two discussion groups
* weekly, send an email newsletter to visitors to your site
I know many craft artists who never give much thought to
marketing or planning offline or online. They just do the
shows or get their store accounts and go along merrily
until
trends change and all of a sudden sales drop and they don't
know what to do.
With a little time spent planning, one can determine
several
alternative markets for sales. If one avenue slows down,
you
have other options for staying afloat.
Answering the following questions will help you begin
thinking
about your marketing plan.
* What does your site do? What is the main benefit to your
visitor? Do you want it to educate, entertain or sell? Do
you
want to create new prospects or stay in touch with regular
customers? Do you want to attract more wholesale buyers?
Are
you looking for international buyers?
* Who is most likely to be your customer? What type of
person
is she/he? Example: age, sex, income level, education.
Give
serious thought to determining who are the visitors to
your
site(s). This is a big part of learning how it should be
designed. You may have more than one type of visitor. For
example, you may have U.S. retail customers, wholesale
customers, catalog buyers, and international buyers.
* What other kinds of sites are your visitors likely to
visit?
For instance, if you make and sell quilts, people visiting
your
site might also be reached through sewing web sites.
You want your site to get visitors to do the following:
* interact with your site
* leave their contact information
* purchase something you are selling
* refer others to you
Create targeted goals for your online business and measure
the results you get whenever you complete a phase. By
working
in measurable steps, you can pace yourself and track which
efforts are worth pursuing further and which activities
you
should abandon. If you don’t work in stages, you may find
yourself overwhelmed, scattered and consequently
disappointed
in the whole process.
If you want to learn more about how to plan and promote
your
crafts online, see "Selling
Crafts on the Internet."
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