Many of us love making crafts as a hobby. But what if you could make money by selling some of your crafts? With a growing market out there for handcrafted products, there’s never been a better time to start selling your crafts.
Below are a few tips for turning your craft creations into profitable products.
Find the right platforms to sell through
Craft fairs aren’t the only place for selling crafts nowadays. There are lots of places on the internet where you can sell crafts.
Etsy is the biggest site for selling handmade items. It’s worth creating an account here – from here, you can sell to people all around the world.
Amazon Handmade and ArtFire are similar sites that specialise in selling crafts. Consider setting up accounts here too to reach a larger audience.
You can also sell through Facebook. This could include selling through Facebook marketplace, through specialist craft pages or through your own Facebook page.
It could also be worth setting up your own website. This could help people to take you and your creations more seriously. Nowadays, you can create your own website cheaply without any programming knowledge – the likes of Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and Weebly are all examples of cheap and simple website builders.
Set your price right
Next, you need to consider how much to sell your crafts for.
Start by considering the cost of making your product. Your price needs to be more than this in order for your crafts to be profitable. You should also factor in any other overheads such as cost of postage and packaging and any ongoing website/marketing fees.
It’s worth also factoring in the time you spend on each craft. Most crafters use a rate of about $12 to $20 per hour.
It could be worth looking at other crafts online to see what other creators are charging. It’s best to start by pricing your creations fairly low in order to get a few customers – but not too low. The more established and reputable you become, the higher you’ll be able to set your rates while still attracting customers.
Build a brand
Building a brand will make your craft products seem more professional. This will allow you to charge more and you could find that you win over the trust of more customers.
There are lots of things that go into building a brand. It could be worth starting by finding a signature style or a signature product to theme your brand around. For instance, if you knit and your speciality is colorful winter scarves, you could base your brand around this.
Come up with a brand name that relates to your speciality (e.g. ‘Susies Scarves’). You could also create a logo and find a color scheme.
Consider professional packaging
When delivering your products to customers, consider the packaging. To make your product feel more professional, why not invest in custom packaging.
This could be something as simple as custom printed paper stickers. Alternatively, you could have your own custom printed box designed to contain your creation. You can look into custom packaging manufacturers online.
Pay to promote your creations
In order to attract customers, it’s worth doing some marketing. There are lots of ways to do your own DIY marketing.
Social media marketing is one of the simplest and most effective forms of marketing for craft businesses. Start by creating brand accounts on various social media sites. Then pay to promote posts detailing your product (the likes of Facebook allows you to set your target audience).
Video content is very popular nowadays. Consider using Youtube or TikTok to create videos of you making your crafts – these could be simple behind-the-scenes videos or they could be instructional videos that help out amateur crafters.
You could also try investing in some SEO to help boost the rankings of your website. This could encourage more people to stumble across your site while searching for related keywords.
Don’t forget to declare tax
Any profits made from your crafts are likely to be taxable. Make sure that you’re making a record of your earnings so that you can declare any tax owed on them at the end of each tax year. Fail to declare tax and you could get a fine.
Make sure to also record any expenses related to your crafts such as materials or tools you purchase. These can be used to reduce your tax owed.
There are lots of sites online that can help you with the tax stuff. It’s generally not worth hiring an accountant if you’re selling crafts as a side hustle, but if you do decide to turn it into a fully-fledged business you may want to hire an accountant to handle your taxes for you.
