Jewelry Making

One of the most difficult things for the beginning jewelry designer is figuring out how to sell items online. Sure, you could just open up an Ebay account and sell items on there and many jewelry makers have been successful at that.

However, there is a huge amount of undercutting competition on Ebay… people want bargains and unless you’ve already made a name for yourself it can be tough to attract buyers unless your prices are perilously cheap.

So maybe you are interested in doing some sort of consignment. This can be tough for pricing too, because many consigners take 30-40% of the sale price. Plus, many want to see some sort of track record already and of course there are the dreaded “returns” if your items don’t sell.

Enter Etsy.com which was launched just month or so ago but already has a pretty large following. You can think of Etsy as a sort of “mini-Ebay” that lets you have your own “shop” site. Everyone gets their own shop that is customizable, along with a subdomain url (yourname.etsy.com). Here’s a screenshot of a sample shop:

They charge a $0.20 commission in order to list an item no matter the quantity or price. This is nice to be able to have the same item listed without getting hit with the listing fee again. For every sale they take a 3.5% commission fee which is pretty reasonable, in the range of a fee that is charged by credit card companies. Like Ebay they are merely a “connection” site between buyers and sellers. So it’s a buyer’s responsibility to pay and a seller’s responsibility to handle shipping, etc.

One important note is that they only allow “handmade” items to be sold on the site (no mass produced manufactured junk) From the Etsy site:

Etsy is a site by crafters for crafters. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to sell their handmade items, without the hassle of setting up an entire website and with much lower fees than eBay. Etsy is for selling anything that is handmade, from clothes to furniture to computer cases, so let your crafting run wild.

So the benefits over Ebay is that you won’t have retail and “cheap” factory made jewelry to compete with, but you still have a large enough audience who might be looking for handmade jewelry.

The site is currently in Beta, but one of the best things is that until November 1, they are waiving ALL fees, both listing and sales commission! This seems like a pretty good way to try out the Etsy site for a bit to see how your jewelry does. Although jewelry designers who already have a webshop setup may not find much advantages in using an Etsy subsite, those who don’t yet have one or who sell through word of mouth or shows only might want to give it a try.

http://www.etsy.com