Making jewelry has been your hobby for a very long time. You use a range of natural media and semi-precious stones to create your jewelry, but you usually make it only for personal use, and as gifts for friends and family. In the last two years, you have noticed that your items are really popular, and people have asked for personalized earrings and neckpieces. That has given you the idea to set up your own online store, but you aren’t really sure how to start a jewelry business, and proceed with the entire thing. You do know that you want to make your line profitable, but you want to keep expenses to a minimum. Not to worry, there are several ways by which you can turn this dream into a reality. However, before you actually set up a website, the business website Entrepreneur states that there are a few things you should know about how to create, list, price and advertise your items online.
Decide Your Niche and Your Capacity
Jewelry covers several cultures, materials and designs. As a designer, you have to showcase your strengths but appeal to as many customers as possible. Before you even set up a website, you have to decide on what you want to display on your website. If you specialize in a particular niche like American contemporary, Native American, South-Asian, etc. you have to define what you can offer in that category and start buying raw materials. Once you have sufficient stock, you can then contemplate setting up a website. Please note, designing custom jewelry for special customers is a great idea and you should spare time, inventory and space on your website to incorporate this feature. If possible, stock raw jewels, fittings, wires, chains and encourage customers to order custom pieces. You can be much more creative with personalized designs and a happy customer will provide lots of word-of- mouth publicity.
Do a Cash Flow Forecast
Making jewelry from precious stones and metals is expensive. You might have a few ready pieces but this will not be enough for a website. You have also picked up orders from customers for gold and platinum jewelry but you don’t have the money to buy raw materials and create the items for customers. These are common situations that occur in almost all new businesses and for this reason, having a cash flow statement is necessary. Make sure you plan and have enough cash for setting up your website, for raw materials, high-resolution photos, and videos and so on. If required, take a small loan from friends or family or approach a bank for small business financing.
Decide Where to Promote
Most people think that the only way to sell anything is through a personal website but you can also use other forums to promote your jewelry and sell it quickly. For example, The Beading Daily site states that setting up a page on Facebook is quite easy and you can easily load high resolution images for free before you set up a website. Not only will this display your inventory but it will provide additional advertisement before you set up your website. Other good free places to display your pieces include Pinterest, YouTube, online craft exhibitions, etc. Holding lucky dips and contests on social media websites is also a great way of increasing interest in your artwork before your website goes live.
Price Your Work
Pricing your work is very important and it has to be done before you set up your website says The Design Trust website. Now that you know how much raw materials you ordered and the time you spent on your designs, it’s time to place an accurate price tag on your work. However, you can also do this the other way round. For example, you can decide on a price range and then make items to fit into that bracket. Both methods work but make sure you list wholesale and retail prices to encourage bulk orders. Take the time to check online websites and how they price their items made with the same materials you are using.
Finally, the small business website Chron states that the key to setting up your online business is to establish goals right in the beginning. Think about it and decide what you want to achieve. Do you want to cater to just friends and family or are planning to make the range bigger and better? Is it still going to remain a hobby or are planning to work fulltime to turn it in to a money-making enterprise? These are legitimate questions and they will determine the future of your jewelry business. The answers to these questions will also determine your choice of website, marketing, sales, social media involvement, pricing and sale process.