People have been making handmade items for hundreds of years. In most cases, making things was born out of need. However, arts and crafts have been an outlet for creativity and expression in more recent decades. Do you have some unique talents when it comes to craft projects or art? Have you considered selling your creations to earn extra money?
You may have a side hobby painting calligraphy signs or constructing bird feeders. Maybe you knit baby items, or you’re a digital artist. But, no matter what you’re good at, it might be time to turn your talents into a real business.
Luckily, with the help of the internet, it’s never been easier to make money online. And selling your projects is a great idea. You don’t have to wait for a craft fair or church bizarre to display your wares. Instead, there are many websites where you can sell your handmade items online.
In this article, we will be discussing how to sell your handmade items online. So if you have a craft of your own, keep reading!
Types of Items You Can Sell
Of course, some things are easier to sell online than others. In addition, things tend to go in and out of fashion in cycles. So you should keep an eye on what’s trending. This will give you an idea of which items are hot and how much they are selling for.
You want your items to be popular and trending, but not a copy of what someone else is doing. Buyers appreciate unique handmade items. In the next section, we’ll discuss a few of the most popular categories of handmade items to sell online.
Crafts
The category of crafts can encompass virtually any physical piece of art or craft that you put together. Perhaps you make seating charts for weddings, miniature items for collectors, or you paint portraits. You can usually find a market for your items online.
You can either take orders for custom items or sell your crafts after making them. That choice is up to you, but evaluate the market and site you sell on to investigate what items interest customers the most.
Clothing
Handmade or reworked clothing is a trendy category for online handmade items right now. This is due to the sustainable shopping and thrifting meta trend, which is growing quickly.
If you are a clothing designer yourself, you can make custom, made-to-order pieces or sell clothing items you’ve already designed. People who market reworked items are those who sell clothing that has been altered or updated in any way that makes them more unique and interesting.
Sustainable shopping is good for the environment, so this is a hobby you can genuinely feel good about.
Digital Products
There are various digital products you can sell online. For example, you can sell customized portraits, cosmetic labels, digital planners, printable planners, custom logos, business cards, social media templates, and more!
You can easily create these products ahead of time and set up a system where the product is automatically emailed to the customer upon purchase. With this method, you won’t need to do much to keep your shop running! You can also take orders for custom products, although this system will take a bit more effort to maintain.
Creating A Profitable Side Hustle
The key to making a lot of money selling your handmade items online is finding the right market and selling the right things. Additionally, you need to be consistent.
When you find people who want to buy your items, make sure you treat your customers right. Pack the items with tender loving care, and ship them on time. This will ensure nothing is damaged when it arrives at your customer’s residence. And always provide high-quality customer service. If you make a mistake or something happens that is out of your control, try your best to make it right!
The customer service tip is relevant to any side hustle you undertake, whether its delivering food or writing for the web.
You may also like Ten Ways To Make Money as a Content Writer
Where Can I Sell My Arts and Crafts Online?
There are dozens of online sites for you to sell your handmade items, but some are better and often more successful than others.
Of course, the most popular site by far is Etsy. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only site you can make a hefty profit on. Rather, some lesser-known sites also offer tremendous opportunities for sales. In the following section, we’ll be discussing six of the most popular sites for selling your handmade items.
Etsy
Etsy is an e-commerce site focused on vintage, handmade, and crafting items. Items can fall under a wide range of categories, and more than seven million sellers made sales on Etsy in 2021.
While Etsy has, so far, been one of the most successful and profitable marketplaces for handmade goods, many people opt not to sell on Etsy anymore because the market has become somewhat saturated. Etsy is a great place to start, but if you choose not to use it, here are a few more options.
Amazon Handmade
Amazon Handmade is a separate site from the central Amazon marketplace. It was created to compete with Etsy. Amazon Handmade is not thought to change its algorithm as often as Etsy, which can be great for sellers. Amazon is also the largest online marketplace globally, so the site itself gets quite a bit of traffic.
You need to go through an application process to sell on Amazon handmade, but the site (luckily) does not charge any listing fees. Instead, they take a 15-percent commission on any purchase made.
Indiecart
Indiecart is a community of independent online shops and an e-commerce site that focuses on handcrafted items for your family and home. There are just over 17,000 Indiecart shoppers registered on the site, so the market is much smaller than other similar sites, but it also means you may be able to find a niche easier.
You pay a monthly selling fee of $7.50 to sell on Indiecart, and there are no per-listing fees or commissions.
eBay
eBay might not be the first website you think of when it comes to selling handmade items, but since it is one of the internet’s most prominent marketplaces, eBay certainly has a niche for handmade items. Since there is high traffic and a high sales volume on the site, it might be challenging to find your market. But there is undoubtedly an opportunity to make sales on eBay, regardless of what you are trying to sell.
The site takes a 12.9 percent commission on every item sold for most categories, but some categories can vary. The site has an excellent craft selling guide you can access at no charge.
RedBubble
RedBubble is a great sire for selling your digital art. One of the unique aspects of RedBubble is that you can upload your art to the site and then choose which products you want to create. The list includes mugs, phone cases, t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. From there, RedBubble will put your art on the item and ship it to the customer, eliminating a lot of the work for you.
Since RedBubble handles a lot of the production, they give sellers something called an “artist margin” as profit, which varies quite a bit depending on the item’s price. For more information, check their FAQ.
Finding the Right Target Market
Selling handmade items online can prove challenging, but it can result in handsome profits if you dedicate time and effort to the process. Finding the right market to purchase your products is the key to making a lot of money, but figuring out the appropriate niche can take some time. The most important thing is having fun while learning how to sell. And if one site doesn’t work for you, don’t give up. You might need to try multiple methods before finding a profitable way to sell your creations.
