I feel like you need to factor in the Etsy ads as the overall cost of business on Etsy, in addition to their ~15% cut. It ends up being a huge amount of your sale that gets taken.
Selling advice
- Thread starter jb94
- Start date
Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:
Agreed embedding eBay links wouldn’t look as professional compared to the current offerings available.
I set the link to direct to the Etsy store as the website wasn’t published yet, thought it was better to have it go somewhere than nothing.
I’ll checkout shopify, thanks for the tip
I’ve been working a bit on the website this evening and really hate the ionos web designer. Hate all of them really, but that’s what I’ve got. I’m longing for the old days of Microsoft publisher, why can’t I just insert a text box where I want!!!???
I was thinking of simplistic layout, gallery style showcase where you could click on the image to bring you to a more detailed view of the piece, +/- buy option.
Simo
Established Member
- Joined
- 28 Mar 2009
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I've recently switched to PayHip for my website/online store (I run a small side business selling laser cut routing templates). Hosting is FREE of charge.. I only pay a 5% fee on sales (+ PayPal fee). A few quid each year for the domain (with GoDaddy), but that's it for hosting costs. I'd definitely recommend them, if you want a budget friendly but professional looking website.
How have you found customer service?
there seems to be marmite reviews online but it might be because people are trying to sell PLR content (whatever that is) which apparently isn’t allowed
HOJ
Established Member
I work on the principal of asking what price the sale, once you work out your costs etc and especially if your making low value items, seems to me to be a lot of effort for the returns.
Simo
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- Joined
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- 118
I haven't had the need to contact them yet.. so far, so good. I also read the reviews on Trust Pilot, etc, and I came to the same conclusion. It seems to be the PLR re-sellers that are leaving bad reviews, after their sites were removed due to the terms & conditions.
PLR = Private Label Rights. It's pre-made content in various formats, that you can buy the license for, edit to your liking and then re-sell.. basically a lot of 'get rich quick' idiots, selling crappy ebooks, etc.
There are some interesting comments above on websites...
My day job is running a business doing two things - management consultancy advising businesses on how to grow and building website solutions for them... I have been running it for over 20 years and we have seen all the software come and go... some thoughts:
Wix is really a bad idea if you want to grow a business - it is fine as a simple and quick way of getting a website up but is very proprietary and difficult to move away from while not being competent enough to build a big business on there...
SquareSpace is a better option
Wordpress is okay until you start to push it - we have a number of clients using wordpress and without exception every site has issues and the more complex the business / website - the worse it gets...
The best eCommerce solution on the market currently as an all-rounder allowing you to grow a business is Shopify - easy to set up and get going and scales well. Like any online solution - the more you modify it the more issues you will have in the future.
Hosting - depends what you need - we provide business level hosting at £180 p/a or £15 p/m (+VAT) so that gives a good benchmark of likely spend - the advantage of a solution like shopify is that the costs include hosting etc. Domain ownership adds a bit more cost.
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Online marketplaces like Etsy (and there are others) set out to curate the internet and provide one place to go and find hand-made items - but over time there are more products from China / more mass-produced / more of a lower quality, also the bigger they get the more similar they are to simply competing against everyone else on google and yet with a bigger cost. They can be a good advertising platform - and as part of a suite of solutions have their place - however ultimately if you are serious about a business the use of any such platform should always be aiming to push clients to any repeat business on your own platform (e.g. a shopify website).
in today's world I would open a shopify store and then focus on social media to drive business there - tictoc / instagram / facebook / etc. depending on the market profile
---------
There are a lot of people in the 'maker space' who feel that they can make a business from their hobby, but it is really not easy despite all the youtube videos with headlines such as 'I made $250,000 with only these three items' etc. The reality is that to run a successful business means including all costs - overheads of the workshop / tools / your time / heating / insurance / marketing / commission (e.g. to Etsy) / etc. etc. most makers by the time they factor in even 1/3 of those start to be well below the minimum wage - we simply don't have a market which appreciates the value of hand made items.
Ultimately you have several options to make money:
- high-end - furniture / games / art / etc. all have people who produce high-end versions where the price is enough to cover the realistic cost of production.
- cheap to produce - fast to produce / low in cost / minimum steps / maximum repeatability / maximum ability to batch process - chopping boards / pens / simple items can all appear in this category.
- automated processes - e.g. laser / cnc / cricut / etc. where the machine can sit and make components or the majority of an item without your time involved
but the standard in the middle of the road items that most on here make - there is little realistic chance of building a robust business, the costs are too high / the raw components and cost to produce, too high / the market value perception is too low...
---------
I have a game I invented recently - made from wood, and there are several choices ahead of me in terms of taking it to market...
- make it by hand (as per the first few) - several hours work, so there is automatically a high starting price
- have it made abroad - e.g. in India - where it could be made at a commercial price as an expensive but acceptably priced game
- have it made from plastic - same game play, but loses the beauty of the wood, so while it would hit the right price points for a game it would lose much of the tactile beauty of the current version...
- make by hand but push it even further up market by doing it to a very high standard (baize lined pieces and boards / leather or suede lined wooden box / exotic woods / etc.)
interesting options and not simple...
My day job is running a business doing two things - management consultancy advising businesses on how to grow and building website solutions for them... I have been running it for over 20 years and we have seen all the software come and go... some thoughts:
Wix is really a bad idea if you want to grow a business - it is fine as a simple and quick way of getting a website up but is very proprietary and difficult to move away from while not being competent enough to build a big business on there...
SquareSpace is a better option
Wordpress is okay until you start to push it - we have a number of clients using wordpress and without exception every site has issues and the more complex the business / website - the worse it gets...
The best eCommerce solution on the market currently as an all-rounder allowing you to grow a business is Shopify - easy to set up and get going and scales well. Like any online solution - the more you modify it the more issues you will have in the future.
Hosting - depends what you need - we provide business level hosting at £180 p/a or £15 p/m (+VAT) so that gives a good benchmark of likely spend - the advantage of a solution like shopify is that the costs include hosting etc. Domain ownership adds a bit more cost.
---------
Online marketplaces like Etsy (and there are others) set out to curate the internet and provide one place to go and find hand-made items - but over time there are more products from China / more mass-produced / more of a lower quality, also the bigger they get the more similar they are to simply competing against everyone else on google and yet with a bigger cost. They can be a good advertising platform - and as part of a suite of solutions have their place - however ultimately if you are serious about a business the use of any such platform should always be aiming to push clients to any repeat business on your own platform (e.g. a shopify website).
in today's world I would open a shopify store and then focus on social media to drive business there - tictoc / instagram / facebook / etc. depending on the market profile
---------
There are a lot of people in the 'maker space' who feel that they can make a business from their hobby, but it is really not easy despite all the youtube videos with headlines such as 'I made $250,000 with only these three items' etc. The reality is that to run a successful business means including all costs - overheads of the workshop / tools / your time / heating / insurance / marketing / commission (e.g. to Etsy) / etc. etc. most makers by the time they factor in even 1/3 of those start to be well below the minimum wage - we simply don't have a market which appreciates the value of hand made items.
Ultimately you have several options to make money:
- high-end - furniture / games / art / etc. all have people who produce high-end versions where the price is enough to cover the realistic cost of production.
- cheap to produce - fast to produce / low in cost / minimum steps / maximum repeatability / maximum ability to batch process - chopping boards / pens / simple items can all appear in this category.
- automated processes - e.g. laser / cnc / cricut / etc. where the machine can sit and make components or the majority of an item without your time involved
but the standard in the middle of the road items that most on here make - there is little realistic chance of building a robust business, the costs are too high / the raw components and cost to produce, too high / the market value perception is too low...
---------
I have a game I invented recently - made from wood, and there are several choices ahead of me in terms of taking it to market...
- make it by hand (as per the first few) - several hours work, so there is automatically a high starting price
- have it made abroad - e.g. in India - where it could be made at a commercial price as an expensive but acceptably priced game
- have it made from plastic - same game play, but loses the beauty of the wood, so while it would hit the right price points for a game it would lose much of the tactile beauty of the current version...
- make by hand but push it even further up market by doing it to a very high standard (baize lined pieces and boards / leather or suede lined wooden box / exotic woods / etc.)
interesting options and not simple...
HOJ
Established Member
It would be interesting to hear from all the prospective wood work entrepreneurs that have posted similar questions on here in the past, as to their success rate.
In my situation most of my work (Joinery) comes through referrals but I do get a few direct enquirers, via my old unmaintained HTML written website I set up years ago, (I think its because It refers to a specific product material) this last week I sent out 4 quotes for projects, from £3k to £5K on the back of it, if I get one, i'll be happy, but it is tough out there, however at the end of the day my overheads are very low, and I'm cheap to keep.
I do think the old saying applies to all this, how do I make a small fortune, simple, you need to start with a big one.
It would indeed...
Our experience working with people in the creative world is that their most creative efforts seem to be in their accounting where they forget to include half the costs that go towards making something - even something as simple as sanding paper might have a £1 cost on an item - soon adds up.
Business is brutally black and white - and the biggest issue with turning our hobby into a business is simply the availability of cheap alternatives - people don't value craft at its actual cost level. Interestingly though different crafts seem to have different value points - so ceramic bowls and wood bowls have different price points, maybe because we have learned over the years that fine china is a thing and wood = simple and basic version...
Etaf
Established Member
i have been following a guitar maker on youtube since last year , and she handmakes Acoustic Guitars which sell for 1000's and order book is full for the considerable future - maybe making some really high end quality realwood products and not trying to compete with the cheap china items maybe the way to go.....
Cabinetman
Established Member
Absolutely correct, but there lies the rub as they say, getting up there to start with is the almost impossible bit, quite often happens by serendipity, just talking to the right friend of somebody else.
But one thing is sure you will only succeed by not stop plugging away and talking to as many people as you can, even then they have to be the right people, who knows that little old lady you thought was wasting your time might have a son who runs a string of companies and is just looking for someone like you!
Cabinetman
Established Member
I’ll relate this story, it’s absolutely true, a friend of mine was in the car body repair business in the most god awful smelly premises near a Docks, he realised that the cars coming off the ship round the corner might occasionally get damaged so he dropped the local import manager a quick note offering his services. ( Big European car maker).
Within a year he was in new premises and really flying, carried that on for years till he retired.
You just never know but if you don’t try you definitely won’t succeed.
Ian
Within a year he was in new premises and really flying, carried that on for years till he retired.
You just never know but if you don’t try you definitely won’t succeed.
Ian
Etaf
Established Member
yep, thats what i used to do, make sure i answered everyone, as if a serious buyer of my services, and i have what seemed to be "wasted" someones time , but only to go back later ...... and spend a lot of money .... and even repeat business with them , if thier customer service attitude is good.
trying to explain that , can be difficult, answer ALL enquires from website , AND all Facebook messages, even if someone is only interested in a few quid item.
Cabinetman
Established Member
Another success story, my son was working with me making bespoke furniture, a friend of the family who I didn’t know wanted a Maple and Mahogany bent/laminated full height music stand, I asked him if my son could do it for him as I was tied up with another job. Long story short after a very successful build he was so impressed with my son that he offered him a managerial position in his Civil Engineering Co and he is doing very well indeed.
It was done with my blessing as I could see that making furniture was never going to give him the sort of lifestyle I would want for him, fun interesting mentally satisfying but small rewards. This was why we didn’t progress with the saddle equipment side of things btw.
So it’s all down to interacting with people.
Ian
It was done with my blessing as I could see that making furniture was never going to give him the sort of lifestyle I would want for him, fun interesting mentally satisfying but small rewards. This was why we didn’t progress with the saddle equipment side of things btw.
So it’s all down to interacting with people.
Ian
Bit of an update, I mentioned my small business to someone at a dinner meeting this week and have managed to convince them to let me set up shop at their beer festival this weekend and again at a local craft event a few months from now.
Only problem is it doesn’t give me a huge amount of time to ready stock but I’ll bring what I can. Been making blanks after work this evening to turn into handles for bottle openers and thinking of doing some tasting beer boards and coasters if I have time.
Also I’ve been working on the website this week during lunch breaks, I’m pretty happy with how it’s going and looks loads better than how Etsy shows listings. I’m wanting to get it up and running to give me the best chance for an application to local makers market.
I’ll have to update you all on how it goes, wish me luck!
Only problem is it doesn’t give me a huge amount of time to ready stock but I’ll bring what I can. Been making blanks after work this evening to turn into handles for bottle openers and thinking of doing some tasting beer boards and coasters if I have time.
Also I’ve been working on the website this week during lunch breaks, I’m pretty happy with how it’s going and looks loads better than how Etsy shows listings. I’m wanting to get it up and running to give me the best chance for an application to local makers market.
I’ll have to update you all on how it goes, wish me luck!
Etaf
Established Member
thats good news , wish you all the luck this weekend , mmmmm "Beer Festival", and selling , be careful later in the day you don't give stuff away to all your "new mates" (Drinking to much) , or maybe customers will be a bit looser with their cash.
Ae they charging you much of a fee to be there?
A bit short notice to get things ready this weekend, unless you have done fairs/popups before - but a great opportunity to get some feedback , get noticed , and for you to get your name amongst the locals
Just an idea, Maybe printout a contact QR code (free on a lot of sites, i use https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/#vcard ) with your contact details also written out, then people can use phone to a) add your contact details to their phone or b) simply photograph the sheet. The guy i helpout has a few around his stall and often sees people use , AS do i and for many years I have taken photos of details rather than pickup cards, or use their QRcode if they have one.
Maybe wont be fully ready for this weekend , BUT i hope you get a lot of interest, discussion and feedback to help you maybe decide what to do.
for the craft fair in a few months
have a lot of cards or A5 paper flyers to give away , with your details on , maybe if you have time , photos of any old work and large commissions.
How will you take card payments , as mentioned before Zettle is good - just a card reader linked to a Phone, and with a paypal business account can take card payment for Just the initial cost of the reader and a transaction fee. I think some phones you just need the app on the phone and NO card reader (Tap to pay, not sure what happens if you need to insert a card , over £100 or security check, as i often do)
https://www.zettle.com/gb/payments/card-reader
you get a big discount on the card reader via the paypal business site application and the paypal business helpline offered a lot of help with this, I seem to remember we paid something like £29+vat, for the reader , and then about 2% per transaction , free to convert to a business paypal account.
I suspect you may see those traders using those and other POS at the fair
good luck with the website , glad thats coming along for you.
let us know how the weekend works out and even if it doesn't go well financially hopefully you will learn a lot, maybe even get a few leads , or at the very least try out a few new beers.
We are attending a local garden show this Friday , We have been going since around 2004ish ( I think the show has been going 30 years) although this year is its last year at this venue - Stanstead house - they also have a lot of craft stalls, in various marques and around the site , i'll probably notice the wood makers more this year
Ae they charging you much of a fee to be there?
A bit short notice to get things ready this weekend, unless you have done fairs/popups before - but a great opportunity to get some feedback , get noticed , and for you to get your name amongst the locals
Just an idea, Maybe printout a contact QR code (free on a lot of sites, i use https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/#vcard ) with your contact details also written out, then people can use phone to a) add your contact details to their phone or b) simply photograph the sheet. The guy i helpout has a few around his stall and often sees people use , AS do i and for many years I have taken photos of details rather than pickup cards, or use their QRcode if they have one.
Maybe wont be fully ready for this weekend , BUT i hope you get a lot of interest, discussion and feedback to help you maybe decide what to do.
for the craft fair in a few months
have a lot of cards or A5 paper flyers to give away , with your details on , maybe if you have time , photos of any old work and large commissions.
How will you take card payments , as mentioned before Zettle is good - just a card reader linked to a Phone, and with a paypal business account can take card payment for Just the initial cost of the reader and a transaction fee. I think some phones you just need the app on the phone and NO card reader (Tap to pay, not sure what happens if you need to insert a card , over £100 or security check, as i often do)
https://www.zettle.com/gb/payments/card-reader
you get a big discount on the card reader via the paypal business site application and the paypal business helpline offered a lot of help with this, I seem to remember we paid something like £29+vat, for the reader , and then about 2% per transaction , free to convert to a business paypal account.
I suspect you may see those traders using those and other POS at the fair
good luck with the website , glad thats coming along for you.
let us know how the weekend works out and even if it doesn't go well financially hopefully you will learn a lot, maybe even get a few leads , or at the very least try out a few new beers.
We are attending a local garden show this Friday , We have been going since around 2004ish ( I think the show has been going 30 years) although this year is its last year at this venue - Stanstead house - they also have a lot of craft stalls, in various marques and around the site , i'll probably notice the wood makers more this year
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Thanks for the vote of confidence, appreciate it!
I’ve been informed that most people who go to this take cash, which is fortunate as there’s probably not enough time for a card reader and new bank account to be set up before Saturday morning. I could always ask for an instant bank transfer via mobile banking if they spent all their cash on beer!
And yes I’ll try and not get too carried away with sampling the wares, luckily my wife is also coming and won’t be drinking so at least someone will be able to count the change!
There’s no fee for the table, but the idea of the event is to raise money for charity, so I’ve agreed that a portion of profits (I.e equivalent to what I would loose in Etsy commission etc) would go to the charity.
Good idea on the flyers, I thought about this but again it’s a bit too late for me to get a vista print order in. I’ll do the QR code idea for the website and try and make sure it’s live before Saturday. Got a few business cards but the QR code on them directs to Etsy store.
I also had an idea to set my iPad on a slideshow of past works as a showcase which might draw some potential customers!
Agent_zed
Established Member
After watching numerous episodes of 'money for nothing' the thing that strikes me is how much money they end up making for something that isn't always that good. The trick seems to be to make it unique and sell it to a seller who's market is in affluent areas e.g. London/the cotswolds etc.
As already mentioned you need to big up the allure of handmade items by making you or the business part of the value. I watch a lot of the videos by JHS who make guitar pedals, part of his marketing strategy is to make funny videos demo-ing his pedals but also other peoples pedals. He often praises others work and points out they are cheaper etc. It creates trust though and an emotional attachement to his business, so it's not just another faceless manufacturer.
Another thing that might help is locally sourcing timber etc so you can market as more env friendly/less miles etc and also it becomes a unique selling point that your item has provenance.
As already mentioned you need to big up the allure of handmade items by making you or the business part of the value. I watch a lot of the videos by JHS who make guitar pedals, part of his marketing strategy is to make funny videos demo-ing his pedals but also other peoples pedals. He often praises others work and points out they are cheaper etc. It creates trust though and an emotional attachement to his business, so it's not just another faceless manufacturer.
Another thing that might help is locally sourcing timber etc so you can market as more env friendly/less miles etc and also it becomes a unique selling point that your item has provenance.
petermillard
Established Member
As mentioned before, it takes no time to download the free Zettle app which uses your phone as a contactless POS terminal - I think folks are more likely to tap and pay than to want do a bank transfer. Cash is great, but you have to manage it, take a 'float' and deal with change.
If you have a printer then bang a few sheets of thin card through it to make A6 postcards with an up to date QR code, website details etc.. I have some A6 'thank you' postcards commercially printed with generic QR codes on the front (website, newsletter, YouTube, Instagram etc..) and then put any event-specific show specials on a label on the reverse - time limit any discounts to encourage purchases. FWIW I've had far better experience with Digital Printing - http://digitalprinting.co.uk - than I ever had the likes of vistaprint.
Yep, with a QR code to your store in the corner of every photo.
Good luck with it.
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
I drink beer but don’t carry cash. I wouldn’t do a direct bank transfer as that gives you my bank details and having just met you at a show don’t know you.
I hope it’s a success but perhaps take a look at the Zettle or SumUp apps to take contactless payments on a smartphone. It takes less than 15 minutes to set up.
