I have thought long and hard about what to charge but I am obviously getting it wrong as I am just not making any sales (last one in June : ( …). I am wondering if my pictures are too expensive. I have had a look around at what others are charging, but it’s difficult to compare are mine are quite different.
I am currently trying to build a profile on Facebook and have been using Pinterest too.
If you have the time I really would appreciate your thoughts.
Hi Rebecca! Golly! I think it is something we all wrestle with! you’ve sold 7 and that is 4 more than me! I sell on Etsy however and do well there so perhaps you could try another outlet, given it isn’t very expensive.
I think people could say ‘well it’s bits of paper, cut out and stuck in shapes’ but I think you have to consider the time, not to mention the framing costs and so I think that £38 is perfectly viable, and so do 7 people who purchased from you!
Success isn’t going to happen over night, and to be honest I think most of us here think we could sell more. Folksy also needs to be responsible for it’s own promotion too and I do have a gripe with this.
Your pieces are lovely so do stick with it - sorry for the pun! Mx
Seems reasonable to me. I’ve seen this kind of wall art sold for the same kind of price in art boutquie shops.
Selling online is a lot of work and any business takes time to take off. Most don’t make a profit in the first couple of years.
How much promoting do you do? That is a big key as it gets your items out there as the internet is a huge place so the more you promote the more chance potential customers will see your work.
Thank you for having a look and letting me know what you think. I have been promoting myself locally by doing local craft fairs etc and trying to build up a profile on Facebook. I have had a few items shown on British Crafters which has been excellent for generating awareness but it is all very new and very early days.
I possibly have unrealistic expectations about it all taking off immediately!
I would try changing your titles and descriptions up a bit. A lot of them are very similar and by doing this you’re restricting the search terms that people can use to find you. Try thinking about the kind of people who will like your work and what sort of things they might be looking for … your butterfly pictures might appeal to people looking for artwork for a little girls room for example. If you make each of your listings a little different it will help with your SEO.
I’m not sure I would use the word ‘personalisable’ so much either. If I was looking specifically for something that could be customised I would use the words ‘custom’, ‘customised’ or ‘personalised’ to do that. You could also throw some American spellings of those words in there too to spread the searching net, so to speak.
For goodness sake, don’t doubt yourself! I have replied to another post about site promotion and you will see why I get cross that sellers end up doubting themselves! Mx
I wouldn’t only just facebook for a start face book only shows your posts from your business page to about 1% of your followers. This is because they want us to pay to promote our buisnesses.
It’s ok for part of an overall promoting package but shouldn’t be your only promoting outlet.
Try using twitter, pinterest, wanelo, craftfjuice and google+ as those you don’t reach via facebook you might caught via one of the other ways.
Do you ever use the ShowCase part of the forum there are lots of threads in there which are aimed at helping each other to promote each other’s items.
Your prices look fine to me. You can see the work that’s gone into each picture. And if you look on any department store website you’ll see your actually in the bottom end of their price range and that’s only for a print.
I wouldn’t say your items are too expensive in the slightest !!! I did quite well up until June but had no sales since then at all and Etsy has gone quiet as well. I promote on FB, Twitter, Craftjuice and Pinterest. It’s not helped much so far but fingers crossed things will pick up for everyone in the run up to Christmas !!! x
I don’t think they’re too expensive either. If I was going to really picky I might say, from a customer point of view, that adding £8 shipping (and I know shipping is expensive, don’t get me wrong) is a big hit and I might be tempted to include part of it in the item price. After all, if you click through to an item you are already ‘ok’ with the price but adding such a large shipping charge might be off-putting.
Also, all your items are listed as custom made to order with a no returns policy. Would you not think of doing some ready-to-ship ‘this the actual thing you’ll get’ ones?
But the main thing is promotion, are people actually seeing your items? If nobody sees them then nobody is going to buy them whatever the price.
This is if you add the postage to the item you will end up paying a percentage of the postage to folksy.
Folksy fee’s are a percentage of your sale price excluding postage so once you add postage costs to your item you’ll lose money.
£8 is not a over the top price to safety send your type of item via royal mail either. I know it costs to send larger, heavier items that require proper packing.
I had this issue, Eileen, when Royal Mail hiked the parcel charges from around £3 to over a fiver I had to decide what to do with the extra. I added it to the item. At the end of the day, if Rebecca reduces her postage to say £4 and loses the other £4 in her item, she’ll pay an extra 28p to Folksy in commission. It’s a no brainer really. Even though I know how much heavy things cost to send, I still look for cheap postage when I’m buying. And I know the extra will have been absorbed into the item too. It’s just one of those things that less postage looks better. Silly really
It’s a psychological thing isn’t it, you see something you like, you see the price and think that’s ok, but then you realise that shipping is going to add nearly £10 and you think again about whether you really like it… whereas if it had been a little more expensive in the first place you’d probably have been fine with it.
I don’t know if that works for everyone as some people see it as trying to hide pricing especially if they were thinking of ordering more than one item. As then they end up paying postage twice.
I think your butterfly art is lovely. I’d already liked your facebook page but have shared one of your pictures just now. Every little helps and you will sell them much more easily if everyone knows they are there
