How to Sell your arts and crafts online without eBay or Etsy

Do you need eBay to make money with your crafts?

Do you need to use eBay to sell your crafts? Can you have just your own website? Will people come and buy on your own website? Everyone and anyone who sells on the internet has their story on how to sell and where to sell your crafts or art. Here I explain  my experience with selling with eBay and on my own site. I have been selling on the web since 1999. I started selling on eBay just like everyone else. I wanted another alternative to using  eBay or Etsy to get sales. My main reason was to escape the fees that eBay brought as a cost of selling your wares.  I spent countless hours trying those so-called easy to  build websites. What lured me in was that it only cost a mere $20 a month -once you had your site built. I won't make this post long, just to say that  I found it difficult and very time consuming to try and build a site and save money at the same time. I found some free websites and they  were difficult. If you bought the manual and read it you probably would be fine.I never wanted to take the time to read. My last experiment was using a site called Big commerce. I chose this because I wanted a shopping cart and they had what I was looking for. Beautiful free templates and a nice feel to it which I thought new customers would love. After I chose this product I spent days and days importing my product, which consisted of a lot of prints.

After adding my prints I stopped and thought that I did have a cap on how I could add to my new site. I listed 175 prints and realized I had could have up to 500 items it would cost $40 a month. After 500 items, what then? Do I pay the $70 a month that they wanted? I think not!  What I did not like was the fact I was limited to how many items I could have. I did not like that I could not grow my business unless I actually paid more. There are many variables you need to take into account when it comes to shopping for a website provider that will suite your needs. The most important, of is of course -your time.  If you have homemade crafts  or prints that you make, you  want to spend time on creating and not working hours upon hours on your website.  I will always keep eBay as my main source of selling. Once I make a sale on eBay I have made a customer, and that customer is mine. I can then redirect them to MY site for future deals and bargains they never knew existed.
Ebay  gets me the  traffic and sales  that I  can't get on my own.  If you are just starting out and exploring your options for selling your wares, get a free website  that is easy to create.  Post a few of your items on eBay or Etsy to get customers. Send those new customers to your own site. This way you can save on fees, make more money and be in full control. This process of selling will not happen overnight. It will take time in the beginning, the middle and forever as long as you do business on the web.  If you are willing to commit and put in the time then results will begin to show. I will conclude with my final thought on which type website I finally chose and will probably stick with. It is an easy site to work with and its called Weebly. It could not be easier to make a site and they have free version to use. Until then, happy selling and be in charge....