December 11, 2007
Selling Jewelry Online - Storefront Options
For selling jewelry online, you'll need three things:
- a website or blog
- a storefront or shopping cart
- an online payment processor.
To accomplish this, you have four options:
Some web hosts offer all three of these things (website, shopping cart, payment processing) in one package - for example:
With these all-in-one systems, everything is built into your website.
Typically you just choose (and/or customize) one of their templates for your site; put your text and images into the pre-created spaces; enter your products (including title, images, quantity available, and description) into the shopping cart system . . . and you're in business.
Your Own Website Plus
a Combined Shopping Cart &
Payment Processing System
Some payment processors also offer a shopping cart, so that all you need to do is provide your own website or blog. These include:
You simply enter your products into their online shopping cart system, then copy and paste the resulting product-coded "buy now" buttons into the appropriate places on your own website or blog.
Put Together Your Own Online Storefront
Alternatively, you can get each of your three services (website, shopping cart, payment processing) separately. That means you'll:
- set up your own website or blog,
- then choose one of the dozens of online shopping cart options that plug into your site,
- then plug in your own choice of payment processing.
However, remember that the more individual services you patch together, the greater the likelihood that you'll occasionally run into tech issues that can be tricky (and extremely time-consuming) to solve.
Problems are especially likely to come up when one of your programs is upgraded to a new version - which often makes it incompatible with the rest of the parts you've pieced together.
Having your site inaccessible because of tech issues can make you lose customers.
Third-Party Ecommerce Services
If you decide not to handle the whole process on your own site, you have lots of third-party options that make it easy to set up your own web store.
Some examples:
For selling physical products (such as jewelry, beads, displays, jewelry-making supplies, gift items, etc.):
For selling downloadable products (such as tutorials, ebooks, ecourses, audio, video, etc.):
These ready-made storefronts make it easy to sign up, set up your account, enter your products, and start selling.
In exchange for handling your transactions for you, these third-party "web shop" sites charge a fee or percentage of each sale you make through their systems.
On some of these storefronts, you'll have to provide your own payment processing account such as PayPal, and the storefront provider handles everything else.
On others, you don't have to set up any payment processing or handle the financial end of your sales, because they have those systems in place already. If they accept and process payments from your customers, then on a regular schedule (usually once or twice a month) they pay you your cut of the profits, after their fees / percentages are subtracted.
The ease of using these third-party ecommerce services can make them very attractive.
Instead of spending a lot of your time fussing with shopping carts and other technical issues on your own, you can leave the techy stuff in the hands of experts - and spend more time creating and marketing your products.
Comments
December 15, 2007
Beth Millner said:
I was wondering how you create a tutorial to sell online? Being that I have never purchased one, I have no idea how they are made… So, do people usually make a PDF or are they usually videos?
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I Totally Agree=
"Instead of spending a lot of your time fussing with shopping carts and other technical issues on your own, you can leave the techy stuff in the hands of experts - and spend more time creating and marketing your products."
December 16, 2007
Rena Klingenberg said:
Hi Beth,
I've purchased fantastic jewelry tutorials in both PDF and video (DVD) formats.
Examples of artists who create jewelry tutorials in PDF format: Eni Oken and Delia Stone.
Examples of artists who create jewelry tutorials in video/DVD format: Janice Abarbanel and Matthew Nix.
Christine Ritchey wrote an article on how she and her partner create and sell PDF jewelry tutorials.
Also, I have a quick list of tips for creating your own jewelry tutorials.
If you sell your tutorials in hard-copy format (a physical book or DVD), you can't use ClickBank or PayLoadz at this time - they're only for downloadable products.
Instead, your best bet for selling hard-copy tutorials would be to use an "on-demand" publisher like LuLu.com, which prints a copy of the book or burns a copy of the DVD whenever someone orders it, and handles order fulfillment for you.
I use LuLu for printing and selling the hard copies of my books, and I'm extremely happy with the quality of their printing, order fulfillment, and shipping.
December 29, 2007
Mark said:
As an owner of an online fashion jewelry store, I can tell from experience that its almost imperative to seek out a good graphic designer before you begin your online store. Internet website, for search engine purposes and customers alike, prefer your page to be updated often to keep it fresh and interesting. This would include sales and holiday events involving some considerable time invested by the graphic designer. My point being is that if you want to eventually take your online jewelry store to the next level, be sure to invest enough time either learning HTML or finding someone reasonable and more importantly talented to help you. The costs can really add up.
To see an example of a Holiday banner check out my website at http://www.levitaonline.com. Feedback is always welcome.
Rena Klingenberg said:
Mark,
That's an excellent point - thank you.
To anyone who isn't conversant in creating professional looking graphics:
You can easily hire a graphics specialist, on a per-project basis, from places like eLance and ScriptLance.
Actually, you can usually hire techie freelancers to do nearly anything to your website you'd like, for a very reasonable fee, via these online services.
The more professional your jewelry site looks, the more comfortable people will feel about shopping online there.
Rena