Tips for Selling Your Jewelry Creations

© by Cheryl Coccaro; all rights reserved

Your bead collection is taking over your beading closet and drawers, you can make a beautiful beaded necklaces and earrings in your sleep, and you're a pro at making bracelets using stunning beads, dichroic glass, silver, gold, PMC and even polymer clay.

You're an expert jewelry maker - but how do your sales skills rate?

Well, if you are like most of us, we all could use some improvement and tips, especially in this area of selling your jewelry creations.

The most popular venues crafters choose for selling their work are neighborhood craft shows. However, there are others that can prove to be just as successful:

Home Jewelry Parties

For jewelry artists just starting out, I would suggest hosting some home parties or encouraging friends to host home jewelry parties for you.

Similar to a Tupperware party, a home party entails setting up your crafts on display and preparing a story to tell about each one. Don't forget to pass your beauties around for others to hold in their hands and see on themselves in a mirror. In this relaxed environment, you sell some pieces and people have a good time.

Always serve chocolate at these home parties, but do it after the presentation. You will feel nervous at first, but if you can do it with your friends and family, it's should be very relaxed and easy going. Remember, everyone starts at the same place....the beginning.

Craft Fairs

The craft fair market includes shows with casual atmospheres as well as juried shows.

For juried events, you are asked to send finished slides or photographs of your work before you're accepted to participate in the shows. Juried events are usually high-selling shows, with the shows in the months of September through December brining in the highest revenue due to the Christmas shopping season.

I would suggest that you visit several craft shows before deciding to sell at them, so you may decide if a particular show is the best type of show for you.

Browse around these shows and ask yourself these questions:

• Will my jewelry fit in here?
  
• Are there other booths with jewelry similar to mine and selling at a lower or higher price?
  
• Is the attendance slow, moderate or hectic?
  
• Are the people buying and carrying packages of their purchases?
  

Various Types of Shops

Another option for selling your jewelry is through retail outlets, craft malls and art co-ops.

An advantage to selling at a craft mall is that you may rent a space at the mall in which to sell your items without having to be present to sell them. You are responsible for setting up your area and maintaining your products. The craft mall usually hires someone to sell it, and then you pay a monthly fee to rent your space plus a small percentage of your sales. It leaves you free to be home and create more beautiful pieces.

Selling Your Jewelry Online

With the growth of the Internet you may also find several ways to market your crafts creations online.

One example is online craft malls, which provide you with space to display photos of your work along with the work of other crafters including other jewelry artists.

Another option is for you to create a personal Web site. However, expenses include an initiation fee, monthly hosting fees, and several hours per week maintaining the site's upkeep. This is a little more difficult to do if you are not familiar with website coding.

Online Auction Sites

Another method of selling your jewelry online that's becoming more popular everyday is via eBay or the other auction websites.

Here you create your listing and let it run its 5, 7 or 10 day course. Where else can you get millions of visitors every week? Even if the item doesn't sell on the auction site, many of these auction sites allow you to link to your personal Web page on your "About Me" page.

Here others who want to know more about you, or would be interested in your other jewelry, have another opportunity to see and possibly purchase your item. On your "About Me" page on eBay, you can put a direct link to your website, but NOT for the exact same item at a LOWER price.

When pricing your work, most crafters and jewelry artists tend to underprice their work. I offer this formula to help you accurately price your work:

1. Make a detailed list of all the items used in your piece, along with the price of each item.

2. Decide how much your time is worth and how much to pay yourself. I would recommend paying yourself $10 an hour to start. As things improve you can always give yourself a raise and you can decide when to do this.

3. Take into account your other expenses. These expenses include items that usually get ignored. For example, the cost of rent, utilities and telephone bills are some expenses that we creative people forget about. You must include these expenses when you are determining your price. These overhead expenses can often be estimated as 25 percent of the cost of labor and materials.

One other expense you might want to take into account is your home office space. When you run your business out of your home you should consider writing off some expenses for a home office tax deduction.

Also take into account your experience, training and talent. When you are established and your name has become known, your beautiful pieces of art should command others to pay for your creativity, experience, knowledge... just like any other professional.

You deserve it!

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