Selling Our Crafts

I’ve mentioned this several times, in different ways, since I began this blog on 5/25/08. Years ago, selling our crafted works required either a booth at a fair, or an ad in a magazine, or a craft sale on our driveway. Now it is simple to set up shop and have access to millions of potential customers.

There is a problem, though, with Internet selling. In addition to millions of potential customers, there are untold numbers of competitive sellers. When I sell on my driveway, I can place an ad in a local paper and put up signs on telephone poles, and get a predictable number of customers. When I advertise in a magazine, their promotion department can tell me the approximate number of readers. At a craft fair, the sponsors usually have an idea, from previous years, how many visitors to expect. But on the Internet, it is possible for my wares to be viewed by anywhere from one to thousands of potential customers, daily.

This is wonderful, but how do I compete with all the other vendors? How do I get a large piece of the pie? Before all else, I keep up to date; I do my homework. The Internet has tons of resources for educating vendors on how to attract customers. If we really want to do this with a measure of success, we need to work at leaning all we can learn.

Dear Father, guide me when I search for the help I need to educate myself about the market today.