"Start-up" Questions

[arianne]

Greetings! You gals are always so helpful, so I decided to post here. My roommate's girlfriend and I make beaded necklaces and bracelets, and the boys are going to be making chainmail (not big things like armor/shirts, I don't think, but jewelry, belts, watch bands, etc). Anyway. Roomie's girlfriend sells her stuff at her work, but it's sort of a limited customer base, so we'd like to start selling things online. I'll have pictures ready to go by early next week, of my stuff at least. My question is what's the best way to start up a bit of a "business"? I've sold things on eBay, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to go. Should I put pictures up with descriptions and prices in my Yahoo! Photo Album? Make a "real" website with all the info? Stick to eBay? Use a combination of those?? Obviously I'd need to advertise with any of the three, though eBay would probably require the least...maybe put a couple things up on eBay with a mention of either the photo album or website? Help! Some of the stuff is really gorgeous, but I can't keep it all, and I need to make back some of the $ that I spent on alllllllll the beads You ladies are my best resource for information like this...any input you can give would be great! Short of selling them to the little girls I teach dance to (since most of them are ooh about 6, lol) I don't think I'll be able to sell them without going to the internet. What think you?

Arianne de la Fleur
Wench #2019
In search of customers...
...who like pretty shiny things...

[AnnaFaerie]

I have my web site and it costs me around $100. a month to keep it up and running and to take credit cards. My webmaster does his work for free.
I don't know about the Yahoo things. I have bought things from seeing them on the Yahoo pictures sites.
I've sold on Ebay and had great success for some items and nothing on other items so I don't know about it. Sometimes I think I'll never sell on them again and then the next time I try....I sell tons...who knows what the difference is?
One of the things I do that seems to get me lots of calls is I take my business cards (I make them on my computer....they have an attention getting picture on them of my daughter in costume) and I put them everywhere I go. I pass them out at faire.
I also advertise in Renaissance Magazine. Their "On the Net" ads are very reasonable.
Good luck!

[LashaLaRouge]

Personally I would set up a free website (yahoo) with examples of your work, a few pictures, and some sample prices with a link for email and questions then set up an EBAY account to seel the stuff through. You can have the link from your webpage to ebay and one from ebay to webpage.
You can arrange shipping and stuff through ebay that way and dont have the issues of paying a LARGE amount of money for secure credit card facilities for your web page.
I Completly sugest the ebay & webpage aproach that way you have a muti aproach.
(im doing the same thing for my own crafts (I hand sculpt dragons, fairies ect from polymer clay)
Hope this helps!

~Lasha~

[LashaLaRouge]

Yes and advertise advertise advertise.

Its pretty cheap to have some simple profesional buisness cards made, or just print some nice ones off your computer.

And flyers!
THen if you can afford put some adds in magz.

stay away from insane popup of ad heavy free sites...if ya wanna great free site which helps you to put up paypal buttons and shopping carts and the works, let me point you in this direction

http://members3.freewebs.com/aboutFreeWebs.jsp

I use it for the Pricked Finger Society, and when I finally have enough stashed away (after the next lot of 100 pins arrives and is sold) I am more then happy to upgrade to their paid site......

Muffin

[arianne]

Thank you all for the advice I still need to play around with the digital camera to see if I can get good enough photos to put up, and I'm not expecting to sell much of the beaded stuff online, though who knows. Once the boys start up their chainmaile stuff though, maybe we can get things going! Thanks again, and once I get the online stuff sorted out, I'll post the address(es) here!

Arianne