I Feel Pretty

I just love these hand blown scent bottles by Eloise Cotton. Eloise is known for her lampwork jewelry but her scent bottles are a lovely addition to her line.

Selling Jewelry Online Part 2

Selling jewelry online is always a question of time or money. Do I have enough time to run my own shop or am I willing to give up a piece of my revenue to have someone else do it for me. Let's take a look at the online vendors I discussed in my earlier post and how they may fit into your marketing plan. I have divided the different venues into three categories.

The first category I call wholesale sites. Wholesale sites ask the jeweler to provide them with a wholesale price (usually 50% of retail), images and descriptions. The site then manages the sales process. The wholesaler advertises, runs the site, pays the cost of shipping, processes payments, and pays the artist a commission at some designated time. They have a stringent jury process and can therefore maintain quality on their site. Two examples of wholesale sites are Artful Home and Art Jewelry Online. I think Object Fetish falls into this category but I am not certain. If someone could give me a heads up I would greatly appreciate it.

The second category I call step up web sites. They maintain a juried site so there is some guarantee of quality but since the fees are significantly less than wholesalers you will have to do a lot of the work yourself. Soleyne and America Creates fall into this category. Soleyne charges an 8% commission and America Creates charges 25%. In both instances you have to upload images of your work, provide descriptions, list tags and input pricing. Both sites indicate that advertising is forthcoming. They are both relatively new.

The third category I call the "It's Your Shop" venue. Here there is no jury process and anyone can sign up to sell their work. This is the case where you definitely have to have time. You do everything from category 2 plus all of your own marketing and advertising. They usually cost little to nothing to list merchandise and then take a small fee once something sells. Some have said that these venues are primarily for less expensive work but I have seen some high end artists do well on these sites. The key is know your customer and market like crazy to that market segment. Etsy, Shop Handmade, iCraft, Artfire and 1000 markets fall into this category. Etsy is the largest vendor of the group.

I don't claim to be the all knowing writer so I hope folks chime in and give me their perspective on things.

Part 3 will discuss how to write a business plan or what I affectionately call, "Where do you want to go and what are you willing to do to get there?"

Earrings by Emanuela Aureli

Blue Nile Vs. the World

Jeweler's around the world are rejoicing because Blue Nile's growth appears to have reached a plateau at least according to Jewelry Network an online industry newsletter. Blue Nile sales during 4Q 08 decreased 26.8% while brick and mortar stores only decreased 16.2%. I guess if I owned a store this would appear to be good news but I think this is a grim forecast for anyone in the industry. My feeling is that I want everyone to do well. What an awful perspective to think that your success depends on someone else's failure. Moving forward I would like to see everyone in the jewelry industry prosper...there's room for all of us!

Image is a reclaimed mink ring by Gayle Friedman.

Etsy Tips

I am a relative newcomer to Etsy, but I have recently found 2 tools that I love. Etsy offers Google Analytics on their site. The tool is found on the "your Etsy shop" page along the left hand column and is titled "web analytics". The instructions were relatively simple and easy to follow. This tool allows you to track visitors, source of visitors, number of visits, number of page views etc. Since I installed this tool I have found that I have about 1500 visitors to my Etsy shop per week. I never expected that number! The second tool comes from Etsyhacks.com. You can go to Firefox and add on the greasemonkey software on to your Firefox browser. Then when you want to relist an item or list a similar items go to the item's product page and you will see an icon directly under "report this item" that is called "copy this item". Click on the icon and voila your listing is copied. You need only add the image. Wow what a timesaver!


"Bells of the Ball" a Lampwork Pendant by Eloise Cotton