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Ken Northridge Inner circle Atlantic City, NJ 2392 Posts |
Hello Friends,
My wife wants to start selling her art and hand-made jewelry. She has about 50 paintings and 70 pieces of jewelry to list. (And its growing just about everyday!) It looks like I can set up a standard web site with ecommerce included for about $369 (GoDaddy) per year. That’s a little more overhead than we would like, but if that’s what it takes to make it look professional we are willing? We’ve ruled out Etsy because it seems to be oversaturated with products. I played around with a free square site but it doesn’t seem very professional. Can someone please point me in the right direction? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
"Love is the real magic." -Doug Henning
www.KenNorthridge.com |
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Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
How much money do you plan to generate in the year by doing this?
And don't answer that as it was rhetorical. But if you are planning on running a business, don't make the mistake of skimping on the things that will help you generate money. You will finish the way you start so start right.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
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TomBoleware Inner circle Hattiesburg, Ms 3163 Posts |
Hey Ken,
Be careful dealing with the website builders, having a website means nothing if you don’t have enough traffic going to it. Have you thought of eBay? Places like Etsy, eBay, etc do appear to be oversaturated with products, but that tells you there is a market for such items. Sometimes it’s best to just join the competition. The thing about having your own website to sell your product is that you have to draw prospects to the site and that’s not always an easy thing to do. Places like eBay and Etsy provide you with a huge ready-made market. Tip: The key to selling online, and beating the competition, is having great pictures and a well-written description of the product. Even if you do get a website, in the beginning, I would suggest she list a few items on ebay and Etsy both; Then when she ships the order, include a price list with buying instructions and a card with her own website info. (You can’t include the website address on the listing but you can include your business info with an order.) There is nothing wrong with doing this; the bigger eBay sellers do it all the time. I don’t because I don’t have a product website, but I have got hooked up with wholesale suppliers this way. Not sure about Etsy, (I can’t remember their setup) but you can list items on eBay for free or you can get an eBay store for as little as $4.95 a month. Of course, you still have to pay the final value fees once you sell the item. I have downsized and cut back a lot with my eBay business, I’m just part-time, but I still ship out items nearly every day. I shipped three boxes overseas today. Something to think about; regardless of where you selling online, eBay may still be your competition. That’s where many buyers go to check prices. Good luck with it and if I can help just let me know. Tom
The Daycare Magician Book
https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/amazekids/the-daycare-magician/ My Blog - https://boleware.blogspot.com/ |
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TomBoleware Inner circle Hattiesburg, Ms 3163 Posts |
PS. I forgot to mention, list everything as Buy It Now. Not as an auction where they bid on your items.
Tom
The Daycare Magician Book
https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/amazekids/the-daycare-magician/ My Blog - https://boleware.blogspot.com/ |
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thomasR Inner circle 1189 Posts |
I wouldn’t rule out Etsy, people use Etsy as a search engine for finding unique products.
I have friends who search for products on Etsy a few time a week for fun. If you are looking for a custom website / e-1commerce - Weebly has worked well for me. They are owned by Square so if you also plan on attending craft shows you can use the square app products to sell items in person as well. |
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Ken Northridge Inner circle Atlantic City, NJ 2392 Posts |
Thanks all!
My natural inclination is to do everything top notch with a 'spare no expense' attitude. But the reality is we are not looking for this business to produce a large income, its more of a hobby. After checking out many possibilities I think we are leaning toward Etsy after all. Everything else seems to have some monthly fee and I don't want to get locked into that. With Etsy you pay very small fee to list each item and pay a percentage when is sells. Furthermore, I am confident there are tricks to getting your products to rank higher in Etsy searches, just as there are many SEO tricks. Thanks again for taking the time to respond!
"Love is the real magic." -Doug Henning
www.KenNorthridge.com |
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ezystreamlive New user Australia 35 Posts |
If you want to sell and use paypal for example a wordpress website with woocommerce is an easy way to set up a shop
woocommerce is a free plugin - getting a wordpress website up with all the themes around is super easy - if you want to use paypal for payments you will want to use https instead of simply http but there are plenty of free https services out there depending on your host you could pick the cheapest server if you just want to sell items some are like $4 a month- forget that godaddy BS if you need help PM me- I can help you or I can help you on the open forums so others can learn- I have a lot of experience with wordpress and if its just a hobby then that should be simply a 1 page website and then the other pages are products- mobile friendly- woocomerce is real easy to set up and theres loads of youtube videos on how to do it. You will want great photos for the products if you don't wish to use wordpress you can try wix.com - you can create free websites with them to play around (later you can get a domain name and pint it to your wix website) personally for a hobby I would not hire a developer- they charge like a wounded bull and also charge for adding new content- best to spemnd extra time learning how to easily add new products yourself- no need for a developer for a hobby. |
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Ken Northridge Inner circle Atlantic City, NJ 2392 Posts |
Ezystreamlive,
Thank you. That is very helpful. I may take you up on your offer for more guidance.
"Love is the real magic." -Doug Henning
www.KenNorthridge.com |
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eatonmagic Special user Orlando, FL 737 Posts |
Ken, I have some bits of helpful advice I could share with you on this topic. I do digital marketing and e-commerce platforms come in all shapes. I have some suggestions I can email you or send you a PM if you'd like. There's a LOT of options out there and they can all get expensive QUICK! Shopify is great but you have all the third party plugins that start making it a lot pricier than it needs to be. Etsy has a wonderful community around it so, it's a pretty good choice.
Are you planning on doing your own fulfillment or do you have someone handling all that for you? Are you going to run everything organically or did you plan on doing Facebook ads? Google AdSense? Youtube Ads? Instagram or Pinterest? |
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Ken Northridge Inner circle Atlantic City, NJ 2392 Posts |
Hello Michael,
Its nice to hear from you. I always appreciate your advice. This is primarily a hobby, so we will be handling the shipping and will be very careful with ads and all expenses. My wife has become quite the expert at selling on ebay during the pandemic. So, we know what we are getting into with shipping. Right now I'm focusing on getting a functional web site for as low of a monthly cost as possible. Then I'll look into the many ways to drive people to the web site. Anyone looking for some awesome handmade jewelry? LOL
"Love is the real magic." -Doug Henning
www.KenNorthridge.com |
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TomBoleware Inner circle Hattiesburg, Ms 3163 Posts |
Ken,
Speaking of shipping, the best investment I ever made with my eBay business was the Zebra LP2844 Thermal Printer. You can link it to ebay/etsy and throw away the tape, scissors, etc. I’ve had one for a couple of years now and it’s a great time saver. It only cost around a hundred dollars. You may already have one but if not I can highly recommend it. Tom
The Daycare Magician Book
https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/amazekids/the-daycare-magician/ My Blog - https://boleware.blogspot.com/ |
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eatonmagic Special user Orlando, FL 737 Posts |
Ken,
I sent you a private message through Facebook Messenger. |
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Ken Northridge Inner circle Atlantic City, NJ 2392 Posts |
Michael,
Thank you for taking the time but I did not get your message. Update: I have not been able to contact esystreamlive to follow up on his post. He suggested that you could get a word press web site for $4 per month with a free plug in of woocommerce. This is misleading. The free plug in of woocommerce is only on available on their business plan which is $25 per month. We've been having some success on FaceBook market place and plan to give Esty a try.
"Love is the real magic." -Doug Henning
www.KenNorthridge.com |
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ezystreamlive New user Australia 35 Posts |
You have sent no messages
https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/ there its free. cheap hosting https://www.greengeeks.com/web-hosting cheaper than lunch |
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Ken Northridge Inner circle Atlantic City, NJ 2392 Posts |
Ezystreamlive,
I sent this private message on May 10th: I signed up for the $4 a month wordpress but I'm having trouble getting woocommerce. It wants me to upgrade to a business account. It there a way around this? Thanks! Ken" All I can tell you is I contacted wordpress and they told me I must have business plan to include free plugin of woocommerce. Greengeek's prices are awesome and it says works with wordpress. But again in order to have wordpress with woocommerce I must have $25 per month account. Thanks again for your help.
"Love is the real magic." -Doug Henning
www.KenNorthridge.com |
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ezystreamlive New user Australia 35 Posts |
I sent you a PM
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ezystreamlive New user Australia 35 Posts |
Quote:
On May 25, 2021, Ken Northridge wrote: Ummmm contacted wordpress? how do you do that? you mean your host where the website is stored you need to ask more questions before you spend money depending on your own web server for your ken magic website you may have had a sub domain and it would cost you nothing to store an additional website on your server- only the domain name but now you are stuck with a server that I have no idea about and I can't help if I don't know what server you are using |
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ezystreamlive New user Australia 35 Posts |
I help those who are motivated. I don't help those who don't reply- good luck My offer is off the table
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Mindpro Eternal Order 10587 Posts |
Ouch! Way to treat a longtime member here. Seems you're only here to try to promote and drum up business, not much in the way of contributing. No, you're only interested in helping those that pay you.
All of this would have been done much better by PM anyhow as Michael did. Same for the thread on getting into speaking. I took the time to type out a very decent and well-thought-out reply to inform and assist that probably took an hour+ to create and reply to which you haven't even returned to the own thread you started. |
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Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
OK. Ok. Ok.
Everyone is pretty. I would also add that Ken is motivated.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
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