Selling via your own online shop - cheapish options?

babybimbles

Hi

I've started making small craft items. I currently have auctions listed on etsy and ebay. I have had great success selling at craft fairs. I get a lot of people wanting to order but have not had any sales through ebay or etsy. People keep asking if I have my own website. I've also started a facebook page but find it very difficult to take orders without a formal payment system.

I came across another crafter's website and saw that it costs £20 per month to run an online shop.

I know I have to consider the number of sales to see if its worth having a shop and ebay / etsy / folksy may be the best way forward for now, but if there is a way of owning an online shop, cheaply, then i'd like to know more.

Sorry if this kind of question has already been posted.

tia

GoodNewmover

babybimbles wrote: »

Hi

I've started making small craft items. I currently have auctions listed on etsy and ebay. I have had great success selling at craft fairs. I get a lot of people wanting to order but have not had any sales through ebay or etsy. People keep asking if I have my own website.

That's the thing, the people that are buying from you at these fairs are interested in your product. People want to know where you are without having to search for e.g 'Babybimbles' on eBay all the time. You could set up a store on eBay but that costs. But again those people want to know if you've got your own shop.

babybimbles wrote: »

I've also started a facebook page but find it very difficult to take orders without a formal payment system. I came across another crafter's website and saw that it costs £20 per month to run an online shop.

Costs for your very own shop:

You mainly need four things
e-Commerce/Online shop (some cost monthly others charge a one-off fee).
Hosting (costs around £15/month).
Domain name (costs around £8/£10 a year. Search for domain name registration).
SSL certificate (costs around £100+ a year).

Payment options:

Depends on the e-commerce you buy. Many have PayPal, SagePay, Nochex etc integrated ready for you to use.

It's also better to have your very own online store. You create a name for yourself, people remember you. Increase visability through search engine marketing. Build customer loyalty and expand customer base. You market it how you want, your own design and customization.

Where to buy e-commerce /go:
Ekmpowershop
Holbi
Megento

Are just a few examples.

babybimbles wrote: »

I know I have to consider the number of sales to see if its worth having a shop and ebay / etsy / folksy may be the best way forward for now, but if there is a way of owning an online shop, cheaply, then i'd like to know more.

You've just said you have not had any sales through eBay or Etsy. E-commerce talk http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59

Pennywise

I use http://freeola.com/website-builder/ £3 + VAT per month (but I get it free because I have my broadband with them). Quick and easy if you're happy with something relatively basic and don't want a lot of gimmicks. Easily integrated with paypal and the other popular systems if you want more than paypal, such as worldpay etc.

debbie42

If you are happy to use a payment gateway such as Paypal then you wouldn't need SSL certification. You'd normally only need this if you wanted a merchant account and would be taking credit card numbers directly yourself.

patman99

Go HERE for a free guide to obtaining a free '.co.uk' domain and free hosting.
On your x10 hosting service you can install any 1 of 3 online stores. The 2 most popular being 'ZenCart' and 'OSCommerce'.

The whole process should take no more than 48 hours to complete.
Good luck

martindow

GoodNewmover wrote: »

Depends on the e-commerce you buy. Many have PayPal, SagePay, Nochex etc integrated ready for you to use.

Sagepay is integrated but charges 20 pounds plus VAT to use them as long as you are below a fairly generous number of transactions. You also need someone like Streamline to process the payments. They charge a percentage on credit cards and a fixed price for debit cards with a minimum charge of about 25 pounds per month.

They are quite likely to also charge an initial fee and/or pay out a few weeks in arrears if you have no track record. It is no certainty that they will accept you in the first place. Many people have gone through intermediaries like Cardsave which seems to be more successful.

You have got quite a list of questions. It might be an idea to talk to Business Link who can probably help with lots of advice.

paulwf

babybimbles wrote: »

Hi

I've started making small craft items. I currently have auctions listed on etsy and ebay. I have had great success selling at craft fairs. I get a lot of people wanting to order but have not had any sales through ebay or etsy. People keep asking if I have my own website. I've also started a facebook page but find it very difficult to take orders without a formal payment system.

A websites does NOT have to equate to having an online shop! As has been seen many times on this board your items sell well because customers can talk to the person that made them, touch them, try them on and generally have a completely different shopping experience to what they can online.

Personally I would definitely set up a website but I would use it to tell your story, build your brand and give information about where your upcoming craft fairs are.

There seems little point selling on Ebay where you might be up against 10,000 similar items. Much better would be to build your relationship with customers that have already seen your work...even if you just let them know where you are exhibiting that will be a powerful way to drive sales.

I would try and use your time and money to book an extra craft fair a month which you know will be successful rather than investing all the time and money in a web shop...leave that until you have saturated your face to face sales and are getting a lot of repeat business.

MsHoarder

I have (not business) hosting with 1 and 1: they are generally OK and have a starting shop package at £4.99/month plus £2.99/year to register a domain for you (ie smallcraftitems.co.uk). They also offer ebay integration so you can still work with your ebay account.

It would seem worth it to me if there are lots of people asking you for the details at craft fairs: would suggest to me that this is how they expect to communicate, and would make expanding to different markets later on easier (think magazine adverts, online advertising) if you want to go down that route.

Note that if you do this it looks a lot more professional if you use a domain email address (sales@smallcraftitems.co.uk) usually included with your hosting package than if you have a free one or one from your home ISP: you can add a second account to most email software so they're easy to handle.

Jo_F

I bought a Mr Site website in a box, it comes with e-commerce software and the paypal facility. Plus it's all very easy to use. Comes with it's own editor, you can have normal pages as well as shop pages.

It cost me about £25 to buy, that got me the domain name, and the first year of hosting. After that its about £35 per year.

I upgraded from the standard to the pro version earlier this year as that give me more things to play with, like stock control and SEO tools etc.

patman99

I had a non-business account with 1 and 1, they were good upto the time my domain came up for renewel, the cheaky sods wanted £35 for a '.co.uk' renewal for 2 years.

To add to my earlier post, Microsoft also do free hosting via their 'Live Spaces' program.

Just make sure you know how much hosting space and bandwidth per month you have. With x10, I get 6Gb of space & 6.5Gb of data bandwidth. If my site starts to get near to exceeding this, then I can upgrade to a paid-for account.

MessyMare

Why not just promote your Etsy shop to people? I know a lot of jewellery crafters who make a decent amount of money from it, but you can't just set up a shop on Etsy or Folksy and expect people to just find and buy, you need to plug, plug plug!