After a time of making jewelry for myself, I began getting comments from friends, family, co-workers, and even a few strangers. At one point, someone asked me if I had ever sold any of my jewelry. I had not, and in fact, selling my pretties had not really occurred to me. Since the bug had been put in my ear, I started contemplating selling my works. I had no idea how or where to start, so I turned to, where else, the internet. Boy was I amazed at the references out there on the subject!
After much research, I settled on a site called "1 of a kind jewelry mall". The fees seemed reasonable, and there were about 15 others selling handmade jewelry. 3 months later, while visiting the forums of Bead and Button, I came across references to Etsy. This site seemed to have a lot more traffic and since I wasn't selling anything at 1 of a kind, I decided to make the switch. I felt a bit guilty saying goodbye to 1 of a kind, but business is business. As it turns out, my decision was the right one. By the end of the year, 1 of kind was no more (my best wishes go to all the creators of this site, they did a great job!) and after just 2 months of joining Etsy, I had made my first sale! Here are images of the first two items from that sale:
Sales were slow, but I seemed to sell at least something about once every 3 months or so. Things were a little better around the holidays. I soon realized, that if I wanted more traffic I was going to have to get my shop out there more, so I created my own website.
Since I am a software engineer in my day job, I've had the fortunate experience of creating websites professionally, so this task seemed like fun way to get more exposure to my jewelry. Yes, I have had so much fun doing this, but it is very time consuming! The next hurdle I ran into was the inclusion of a shopping cart. This proved to be very challenging, it took me about 6 months of playing around until I finally got one functioning to my satisfaction. I decided to use a free shopping cart by Zen Cart. This was the first time I'd ever put together a shopping cart, and the satisfaction once it was done was wonderful!
I still don't have all my items there yet, but I hope to have everything placed on my website by the first part of 2009. My next goal for my business is to focus on the marketing of my site. This too, is new to me. I'll let you know how it goes!
Meanwhile, I'm gearing up for the holidays and I hope to find more time to create some new pieces. I've also got a supply shop on Etsy which is keeping me extra busy! You can read more about that one at my Garden of Glass blog.
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