advice on how to sell jewellery online

karren

hi ive started to make jewellery, initially for charity now im doing it for myself and aim to give a donation twice a year as was finding it really hard to seperate all the money ie profit, expenses etc.
how do i set up a website? and where do i stand on the charty aspect of it? whats the norm to give? as ws giving 20% of what i took, but didnt take into account the time, expenses and the cost of it ie jewels and postage and presentation.
id really like to do this and dont know where to sell etc, any advice gratefully received, thanks x:T

Purpleroses

Hi Karren, I also sell jewellery online. Its pretty easy to set up a website even if you have little experience, if you look around for basic packages, most have a template which makes creating your site even easier. there are places online to sell handcrafted items, you get your own shop too and its cheap (no its not ebay) im not sure if i can say them on here but if thats something you'd like i can pm it to you.

With the charity aspect i dont really know. Id think it would be up to you to say how much goes to your chairty you can always just have a note up on your site saying you donate x amount of each sale to charity.make sure you take into account postage/time/cost of materials, its like when your figuring out how to price your item, be sure to leave yourself with some profit!

theres a lot of competition online would you be able to get to a local craft fair? ive found i make most of my money/commissions from these.

dont know if any of that helps. good luck with it all.
Cx

karren

ta ciara, im going to look inot it, the craft fair is a good idea, ive done the local school and did well, but got in a pickle with the charity bit as was giving my money away at one point!!!
shall keep u posted and ta for getting back to me, any idea where i can get design idea's too?

eli7

hi, have you tried www.etsy.com ? Its kind of like ebay, without the auctions, so you can set up a free shop and pay something like 20 cents per item listed with free membership. Everything on there is handmade, and the shops range from the professional to small, just starting out ones. It's an american site though, so they work in dollars but they have buyers from all over the world. I'm not connected to them or anything, other than buying a few pieces of jewellery (all from the UK) from them so I don't have any personal experience of selling, but it seems to have a good community feel. I hope that makes sense, it may be worth looking into for low start up costs.

GeorgeUK

I saw an article the other day for tuggle.co.uk - sounds like it's along the lines of what you may be looking for.

karren

ta george, havent had time to do anything yet, as in laws have been living here, and im about to start a new job, but once it all settles down im going to sort it out. thanks again x

misspixierocktastic

Big cartel also has a shopping cart website that will allow you to sell things on :-)
i have had no luck with etsy so far

Jo_F

I've just put my jewellery website online this weekend, I went to Staples and got a MrSite, cost me all of £24.99, and that gets me 12 months hosting, and it takes your through the instructions step by step, was really easy and fun to do

Yoga_Girl

Hi, Etsy.com was mentioned earlier and I've just joined this site (selling some of my hand crafted things). Its very easy to set up a shop on there, the listing fees are very reasonable, and there is a good community feel. The site makes it very easy to upload all your photos and there are lots of FAQ pages to guide you through. Also lots of advice in the forums on there on how to make sales etc. There are quite a lot of UK sellers on there as well.

There is another site, Uk based, for selling handmade goods
http://www.youcraftylot.com/index.php
which I'm thinking of joining but have no knowledge on how much web traffic it gets.

carolbe

Just a wee note about mentioning that you donate to a charity on your website ...

I run a babywear website and used to donate a percentage of sales to a charity. I had to have a legally binding contract with them which gave me rights to use their charity name (and for them to use my name on their website) and included the exact percentage I'd be donating to them, and how often.

So, if you're going to mention any specfiic charity, you definitely will have to check with them beforehand to get their agreement for it or you could end up in a spot of bother!!

Luna69

Hi
If you're still looking for outlets online, other than creating your own website or getting someone to do it for you, as well as the auction sites, big and small, along with Etsy, Tuggle etc.. I recently discovered a new craft market site that is completely free, no fees whatsoever. I recently signed up to it, the craft store who host it have been running for a number of years apparantely.. and no I am in no way connected to it, I happened across it accidentally whilst searching for a craft product. Anyway, with it being very new.. just this month I believe, it might not do much in the way of traffic, not sure yet. However I'm using it as a stop gap until my own site is redesigned and back out there again.

There are only a few jewellery people on there from what I can tell, the majority are cards and soaps. If you could direct people. family, friends, colleagues to something like that if you used it, could be a start and a step in the right direction, plus best of all it won't cost anything if nothing happens.

I did post a thread about it, but would not sure anyone is interested, but thought I'd mention it anyway, since it looks really nice.

I have signed up to Etsy too, but because you need a credit card to leave details and I don't have one to use (just paying them off) I haven't been able to use it yet.

I did look into tuggle, but haven't tried that yet. I do remember seeing a note thought that they didn't want anymore jewellery sellers.. however it may have changed now, not sure.

Good luck.. not sure on the charity aspect. I did contact a fair few charities a few years ago when I had an idea of donating some of my sales a few times a year to charities and they were quite happy for me to do it, but it never came off at that time.

Yvonne