It is very important for every serious business owner ~ ie: those of us whose business is our partial income, sole income, etc. not a hobby ~ to find our niche. Your niche is the venue or venues by which your items sell the best.
For some, it’s eBay, a website, other auction and e-commerce sites; for some it is non-Internet venues such as a brick and mortar store, mall kiosk, or arts and crafts shows.
I personally over the years have tried eBay, a website, a mall shop, and most recently, arts and crafts shows.
eBay wasn’t bad at all for the first few years before the fees skyrocketed and the search results were blown out the back door into oblivion. The mall shop would have been nice had the mall actually had the foot traffic that they claimed. Lastly, the arts and crafts shows would have been nice too, except for the fact that the people who shop these shows generally do so with what I call a flea market mentality ~ shopping to get a bargain instead of pick up a quality handcrafted item or gift.
By now I think you can guess which venue I’ve gone with. My website.
I like staying home, working from home, and having no overhead and hence no overhead expenses. I own my own website hosting and design company, and so my bottom line there is very inexpensive. I like not having to travel or commute except to the Post Office to send out orders. I like being able to work in my studio day or night, whenever I like, creating more handcrafted items.
I think the very, most absolute worst venue that I tried was arts and crafts shows. You have to pay good money for a booth, and people come by and ask you how much is this or how much is that, you tell them, and they look aghast and say “That’s too expensive!!!!!”
Towards the end of my stint as an arts and crafts show vendor, I would laugh when they would say that, because the very same items that they are expressing pure sticker shock about sell very well on my website!!!! Which leads me to conclude that poor or non-existent sales at arts and crafts shows are NOT a result of the economy, or anything else other than the public’s perception that an arts and crafts show is a glorified flea market and that they should be able to get a “bargain” and buy things “cheap”.
Which totally goes against the whole artisan’s work and labor thing. I’ve heard this and discussed this with many vendors at quite a few shows, and we’ve all ran into this. And, when you are self supporting via your craft, it doesn’t do much at all for YOUR bottom line except put your books in the red. It sure doesn’t help pay the bills.
On the other hand, a website designed well, SEO’d well, and promoted well DOES pay the bills. After a great deal of hard work, effort, and steady, dedicated tweaking.
At least this was my personal case. If you would like to discuss what works best for you, why not come on over to Jewelry Collectibles Design Small Business Forum and let us know? It would be interesting to hear what works for everyone!
