If you love making things and have been having some success in selling your crafts whether locally or online through stores like Etsy, you may be thinking that Christmas would be the perfect time to make more sales. After all, most crafts tend to be things like jewellery, ornaments, home décor pieces and clothing, which can often be exactly the kind of things people want to buy as gifts when they are looking for something unique and unusual to give to a friend or loved one.
As well as boosting your production so you have more pieces to sell in the upcoming Christmas run up, and making sure you are booked in for a stall at any Christmas gift markets or craft fairs in your area, one thing that might not have occurred to you, but which you do actually still have time to do, is to start your own online store.
Can This Really Be Done In Time?
Actually, when you use a good e-commerce site management platform like Magento ecommerce, you can have your e-commerce site designed and published on the web ready to take your first orders in a matter of hours. You can use ready-made Magento themes for the front end to give your site a professional look, and you can set up the catalogue of products from the back office area using an intuitive interface that requires you to know no programming at all. You may need a little longer to take good pictures of your products and work out pricing for all of them including shipping if you don’t already sell online at all, but there is really no reason why you couldn’t get your site up in a day or two even if you have this to do as well.
But How Will People Find My Site?
Once you have your site working, you are ready for business, but you will need to help people find your site by marketing it. You can arrange a fairly inexpensive advertising campaign on Facebook that will help target people who are interested in the kind of things you sell, which will help you get some initial hits as we get into the gift buying period, but you may also want to look at longer term marketing strategies to take you into next year too, by doing things like blogging and guest posting on other people’s relevant sites.
Can I Get Help?
If your main objective is to get your site up and looking great, and start driving people towards it, then you don’t have to do everything yourself – that is just the cheapest way to do it! You can find Magento specialists who can get you the perfect store set up and configured for your preferences, and you can also talk to SEO companies who can help you get your business out there and gain more and more potential customers on your site.
Christmas isn’t far away, but there really is still time to capitalize on the gift buying season!
Photo: Royalty free photo