Promoting Tips & Tricks Part I: Shops

So I decided to do a post on how to promote whatever you’re selling online. It quickly became apparent that it’s not going to fit into one post — or even a few. So I’ll split it up, and here’s part one.

The question of whether to open multiple shops is a complex one. On the one hand, multiple shops mean more exposure, more potential customers. On the other hand, each shop is another thing to maintain, and each one spreads out your effort a bit more. For some it may make more sense to concentrate on one.

I’ve got three shops now. My main one is my Etsy shop; it was my first, it’s where I’ve gotten most of my sales, and it’s where most of my energy goes. It’s large but generally friendly; you have a lot of potential customers but you also have to worry about getting lost in the crowd.

Etsy charges $0.20 per listing and 3.5% of any sales. For this you get a shop with personalized URL, space for five photos, and a description box that does not allow HTML or formatting of any kind. A listing lasts for four months though I usually renew my listings before then to bring them back up to the top of the category.

I’ve had quite a few sales from Etsy. There are a lot of tools for promotion available and a lot of people know about it. I find it’s quite a good place to start.

My secondary focus is my shop with the Creative Cafe Salesrooms. This is a much smaller, more cozy community; you’ll have a much smaller potential customer base, but it’s easy to stand out. I’ve made a number of friends through the Salesrooms (and their associated Ning group) and also made quite a few sales.

The Salesrooms also focus quite closely on helping people with disabilities — many of the people who sell there are disabled, and Jill (who runs the place) does a very good job of bringing the issues the disabled deal with to the forefront.

Creative Cafe charges nothing, allows you quite a few photos — something like ten; I’ve never used them all — and allows HTML and other formatting in the description. It also lets you keep your listings up for basically unlimited amounts of time and will automatically renew listings for you as well. Their listing tools are the easiest I’ve found to work with so far.

My newest shop is at DaWanda. DaWanda is European and is actually a conglomeration of three sites — one in English, one in German, and one in French. You can post to one or all, though it’s highly recommended that you have at least some understanding of the main language for each site (I’ll be posting my items in the German one eventually, though not the French one).

Currently they charge nothing though there is word that this will change in the near future. They allow four photos and space for a description — I’ll confess I haven’t experimented with it to see if HTML works. The community on the English side is small but friendly. I haven’t made any sales yet but I’ve only been there for a very short time — in a few months I should have a much better idea of how the site will work for me.

I have heard that listing my items in German as well as English should help quite a bit.

There are other places to sell as well. There’s always eBay. All of the sites I’ve listed so far focus on handmade things and that gives me a fairly level playing field — on eBay I know I’ll be competing with people selling necklaces made in bulk by people being paid almost nothing. The competition is uneven and so I’ve never tried selling there.

That said, I know people making things similar to mine who have had quite a bit of success selling on eBay. It certainly can work for some.

Their charges vary by a number of factors and their help isn’t particularly useful for telling me how it works. I know that they allow quite a bit of HTML in their descriptors and photos are basically unlimited as long as you can host them elsewhere. Your customer base is about as big as it can get but I really can’t call it a friendly place to hang out. And I know there’s been a lot of controversy lately with how they’re treating their sellers.

There’s also WinkElf. I played with this a little but I’ll admit I gave up after entering a couple of items. They’re free to start but give you a lot of options that add up quickly — like more than one photo. On the other hand, you can put as many photos as you like in your description as long as they’re hosted elsewhere. I found their method of posting new items somewhat arcane but I’ll admit I’ve got a lot going these days and not a lot of attention to spare.

I can’t speak for their community or how well things might sell, as I haven’t really tried it. I might when I’ve a bit more time, though.

There are other places — I’m sure you know of some. I’d welcome comments with places I haven’t listed, or further information on the places I have. And discussion of the ‘one shop vs. several’ question would be awesome too.

Next up, directories, and getting your shop into them.