I am wondering if it might be worth doing this. I am currently mainly listing on Folksy. I started off trying etsy but have decided to leave that. I have been accepted for Handmade at Amazon, and have listing a handful of items but even although its meant to be for handmade sellers in the handmade “section”, Amazon is Amazon, and to me, it still feel like its meant for mass produced items and I’m not comfortable with it.
So apart from ebay, which again, seems like its for mass produced items, I am thinking should I try selling on my own website?
When I am on twitter etc it is my folksy shop that I promote, so I just treat that like its my website really, although I do have a wordpress blog that hasn’t much on it and i just use it to record progress of setting up my business and i’m just kind if chatting away to myself
I feel like even although I do love folksy, the community is great etc, it seems like not a lot of people have heard of it, even other crafters.
Does anyone else sell on their own website and is it worth trying?
I think you would do well to first of all build yourself an audience with what you are already using. I see you have a Facebook page but only a very small likers count. There are lots of pieces of advice in the forum about what to do to improve your Facebook reach. These include not using commercial words or url links in your posts both of which I see you normally do.
Just opening more shops / outlets is not going to get your more buyers. Concentrate first on making the best of what you already have.
Thank you! I realise I have been spreading myself very thinly. I was originally also trying to keep up with instagram and pinterest so I am now concentrating on twitter only but would like to keep up with facebook too, as I am comfortable using that.
I did not know I should not put links in my facebook posts! I thought I was doing good by sharing as much as possible
I will have a look for more advice about facebook. I know I should build up the audience before doing anything else, thank you for your advice x
A couple of years ago I did a quick calculation to work out how much I would need to sell online to make the expense of my own website (they are about £20 per month to have one with a shopify cart) a more cost effective option compared to the cost of a plus account and folksy’s commission and the figure I came up with was approx £3000 (annual sales value). If you think that you can generate online sales worth that much then it would be worth considering setting up your own website but if you can’t generate the sales through promotion then its a bit of an expensive option. Crack promotion first.
Maisieboo Always load photos directly, don’t share / use a link. Put urls / links to your phoduct in your shop or whatever, as a comment.
Facebook will restrict views of anything it regards as commerical so don’t use the words : shop sell buy order price etc etc. You may need to some of them but I always change a letter so shop = sh0p etc.
You are right to be cautious of Amazon. There is some prospect that anybody who is successful in generating sales though that site will find that identical items suddenly start to be mass produced by a factory in China, and as the rules state that the intellectual property rights of all designs shared on Amazon belong to them, you won’t be able to stop them. The whole point of Amazon’s business model is to take as much production in-house as possible, and successful book or photographic equipment small businesses have already discovered that Amazon can always out-compete them with identical products.
I am just going to shut down my account. I only have about 5 things listed anyway. I actually tried to shut it down pretty much as soon as I opened it and they gave me the “its not costing you anything” speech…But its hanging over me now actually. Im sticking to Folksy and just going to learn how to properly promote myself xx
