Do Handmade Ceramics And Pottery Sell Well Online? All You Need To Know!
Handmade crafts and other art are naturally gifted skills and can also be learned with practice by artists. Artists with an interest in handmade crafts are often faced with the challenge of monetizing the skill.
Pottery as a passion is expected to generate income for an artist, as the popular saying “earn from what you love doing” but the problem arises when you don’t know where your product can be sold or if it will sell at all. In this article, we’ll be discussing how to sell handmade ceramics and pottery online?
Handmade and ceramics do sell well online when you use the right marketing strategy and target the right store for your product, with the right price based on demand, as well as willing to put the required effort in marketing it for sale.
How Do You Price Handmade Ceramics?
Pricing handmade ceramics follows the same principle as other goods and services. It involves calculating all your raw materials, time expended, and also including fixed assets expenses I.e your consumables, the clay, the glitz, etc used to produce a particular product. How long it takes to finish the product, breakdown to hours spent in the manufacturing processes.
- Fixed assets are the equipment used in manufacturing the product, the amount required for maintenance, and replacement in the case of damages. Rent for studio or physical store.
- Financial goal- how much you want to earn in a year(breakdown to the hourly rate to achieve the yearly goal). This can be calculated by dividing the number of hours used to produce a product in a week by several products made and multiplied by the hourly goal rate plus the cost of production. (Hrs/No of product×hr rate goal)+cost of production. This formula gives the perfect price to achieve a desired financial goal on an hourly basis.
- Expertise on how good you are in the craft? And how long you have been in the craft? This is a factor of time spent in the development of the skill as well as money invested for continuous skill improvement, this forms the major component which makes expertise.
- How well is the product selling, a product with high sales tends to be more pricey because it requires constant restocking as the general saying the higher the demand the higher the price? Also included are the advertisement cost and online store charges. All these are what are added up to make up your pricing list.
Can You Make Money Selling Ceramics Online?
Making money while selling ceramic online is a function of how well you can market your product. Aside from your product being unique and not just a piece made for the fun of it. The art of selling on its own is a daunting one and requires expertise or learning on the go. selling ceramics online like any other product requires knowledge of e-commerce and digital marketing. How well you sell online is a factor of how much energy you are willing to expend on it. You can make money selling ceramics online by partnering with an expert in e-commerce or a digital marketer if selling online is something that doesn’t resonate well with you. while you focus on your expertise in pottery. This helps you both complement each other’s skills and focus on what you love doing thereby yielding great results. You can also consider hiring an expert to handle the sales aspect of the business If partnering is out of an option for you.
You also need to determine the particular type of ceramics or pottery which you would like to produce, this is to help you niche down your business and be regarded as a specialist in that niche.
It is also important that you take branding seriously because this is necessary for your business to sell well online. Your logo, website, and also content should help customers recognize you and be able to relate well with your brand.
People often find it difficult to buy things online due to certain notions of distraught among online sellers. For you to be able to sell online, it becomes necessary that you post and share reviews of previous customers and be available to put their concerns to check, by answering questions they may have.
Where Can I Sell Ceramics Online?
After you must have finished your product, getting a platform to sell online becomes essential. There are lots of options for you to sell online.
- You can get your online store by building your website or get an expert to do it for you, your website serves as an online store where your product can be accessible to people who are interested in your product, you get absolute control over the operation of the site but you also have to put in required work to generate traffic to the site.
- Another alternative is for you to get an account on a popular craft store such as Etsy where you post your goods for people who are interested in handmade ceramics and pottery and are likely to buy. The pros of this option are that it allows intending customers to build trust in you, you also do not need to generate traffic and manage the site yourself, allowing you ample time to focus on your craft, it also discards any doubt of scam or originality, being a popular store with a name to protect. Although you have to pay certain fees as stated by the store and also have restrictions according to their set guidelines.
- You can also own a blog or Facebook page where you share valuable content with your audience as regards ceramics and pottery. If you can string words together to make a nice piece, that comes in handy, otherwise you might require the service of a content writer for this.
Making an informed decision on the right option to market your product, either a personal website or a craft store like Esty is sure to guarantee massive sales.