Identify the stage to promote and display your hand craft products. I will suggest getting a blog and start blogging about your crafting activity, passion and lifestyle. A free blog from Blogger or WordPress is good enough to get your started. But it will be best to purchase a domain name and blog hosting services. There is a risk of having your blog deleted without notice if you choose to work on a free blog. If you are serious about making money online via crafting, it is best to get your own domain name and blog hosting service. You may try out those free blogging services at the beginning and transfer your blog later on. Besides the free blogging services from Blogger and WordPress, you have the option to choose Facebook or Pinterest as your base to promote and introduce your work to the world.
The range of customers you are trying to target. Let me rephrase that. You need to identify the group of customers who are willing to pay for the price that you set for your hand craft. Obviously you want to go for the highest price that you can get, but you need to make sure customers have the buying power and are willingly pay for it. One of the methods is state the minimum price of your hand craft products and the currency accepted. You may also mention your business coverage area or countries that you are prepared to ship your hand craft products.
Determine payment method. PayPal is one the best options that you can use. But remember that not every customer has a PayPal account or knows how to use it. A larger group of customer can be targeted if you are able to provide more payment option. You may consider other type of payment methods such as cash on delivery, credit card, check and direct bank in. Remember to study each payment method before implementing them. Try not to create too much trouble for customers. Some customers might back out or cancel their orders if they find it too troublesome. You may consider having insurance coverage if the price of the package exceeded a minimum value.
How do you deliver your hand craft products to your customers? You will have to study your package method so that the hand craft product delivers to customer without any damage. You need to consider if changes in temperature, humidity, pressure and external force may damage your hand craft product or not. The word “fragile” should display outside the box clearly. Remember that sponges, bubble plastic bags and thickness of the card box are necessary to protect your product. These materials will add up to the cost of your business. Be sure to use enough but not too much.
Alternative source of income related to crafting. In order to make sure that you really make money or maintain a stable income, you have to do more than just selling hand craft products. One of the methods is to teach others who are interested in crafting. You can open a class locally at your home or teach online using tools like Skype. You may also hire somebody who is good in capturing videos and create several crafting lesson videos. You can upload the video clips to YouTube for FREE or sell it online. Since you are constantly getting crafting supplies for your work, obviously you know very well how and where to get supplies easily. Those who are interested in crafting and hoping to try it out will need to purchase some crafting materials. You can make life easier for them by gather all the necessary crafting materials in one box and sell it to them. You may try to sell other necessary kits or tools that are required for crafting too. Remember that while you are teaching, you are actually promoting the tools and kits. You just have to tell them some equipment is necessary to create a good hand craft product.
The above are just some of the basic things that you need to consider when starting a business related to hand craft. You will encounter a lot more problems when you actually get involve with the business. This is just the nature of running a business. When there is a will, there is a way. Just don’t give up easily.