Selling jewellery on Social media site vs Etsy, Folksy, Ebay etc.

Hi.

Thought I would tell you about my experience with different ways of marketing and selling my jewellery design on line.

I have been designing and making kiln fired glass jewellery for some years now and have tried many different types of on line selling. 

Here the list so far:

Etsy

Folksy

Ebay

Jewellery Making Daily

Blog

Facebook

Website

All of these are really easy to use although some have some little annoyances that make me want to chuck my computer through the window. It has been close a few times, I can tell you..

Marketing is time consuming necessity for any business, large and small. Although it's a bit harder if you are a small business trying to wedge yourself into a very busy market.

Anyway, I was saying about the different sites.

First on the list is an American selling site, Etsy.com This is quite a simple way to get your designs out there with little financial input. At $0.20 per item and a advertising time of four months is quite an attractive offer. I listed about 50 items on here and let them run for the full 4 months and did not sell anything. That meant  that these 50 designs were held back from craft fares and markets, so "dead stock" really. And dead stock to any business is not a good idea. Stock has to move, sold and the money reinvested to make more designs and so on. The simple out come of this type of marketing/selling was nowt, zero, sweet FA, zilch in other words no sales. So, about £7.50 down (not a lot I know) and 50 pieces of jewellery never sore the light of day for 4 month. In hindsight I should of realised that most people want to buy in the country they live. A USA site like Etsy was not the right one for me.

Next on the list is Folksy.com This is also quite a simple way to get your designs out there with little financial input. At £0.15 +vat per item and 6% + vat sales commission. The designs are advertised for four months. I listed about 20 items on here and they are still running. The one thing I did notice on my profile was the jewellery for sale was viewed quite a few times in the first week but then tailed off to about one view per day. Again whilst these jewellery pieces were listed, they could not be taken to craft fares and markets so 20 pieces of dead stock until they sell or get to the end of the four month period. This I thought might be a better site for my designs because it's a UK site and being based in the UK thought people might be more inclined to buy from me. So far I am wrong. We will have to wait and see what happens.

Now Ebay. Everyone's heard about this site. So I gave it a go. One of the big problems with Ebay is the listing cost. At £0.50 per listing for 21 days, charges for this that and the other. I soon stopped and gave up. You can list free on certain weekends but it only allows bid listing and not buy it now listing. Well I ain't selling one of my unique gorgeous pieces of dichroic glass jewellery for 99p that's for sure. And that was the end of that.

Now Jewellery Making Daily is in another ballgame altogether. You don't pay for listing or commission fees but you only list a few things. It's based on a members gallery wall. Just list a picture, description and price and see if you get any takers. I only put the odd piece on here as it's aimed at the American market and as I said before. People generally want to buy in the country they live.

Now these are my favourites on line sites

Blog, Facebook and Website

Except for the website ownership and hosting these are free to list as many items as you want with no time limit and no commission charges. Most of my business is done through Facebook but they are all linked together so it's easy to navigate between the sites. My website is always growing so hopefully that will support the marketing of the others.

So there you go. A small insight into my small business marketing efforts.

My conclusion is. Stay as much as you can on your own social networking sites or websites. If you have a large friend list, it's great.

I just need to quickly mention my most favourite place for marketing/selling. That's face to face with the customer. I love talking about my designs, how they are made and what they are made from. To see a happy customer walk away with one or more of my designs is amazing and yes it keeps the till afloat so I can buy more glass and make more stunning pieces of jewellery.

I think that's enough for now

Thank for reading and I hope this helps some and please feel free in clicking the links at the top of this blog to get to my other sites.

Steve