Selling My Crafts

One thing I often get quizzed about by site  members etc. is about how they can sell their finished crafts. Whilst some people are content just to make crafts to give to their families and friends other like to sell them.

• Some people like to sell them just to cover the costs of their materials
• Some people sell them to raise funds for charity.
• Some people like to do at as a part-time of even full time job.

So how easy is it to sell your crafts.

Well obviously it will depend partly on what sort of crafts you make. Whilst some crafts sell in quite large volumes, crafts such as greetings cards and jewellery for which there is a large market, there is equally a lot of competition as many people do those crafts themselves.

My USP

Your USP is your Unique Selling Point... whist for some items the mere fact they are handmade can be its USP, in a crowded market you are going to need more. The fact a greeting card is handmade isn't much of a USP when 1,000 of other people are also selling handmade cards. However is you were making handmade rocking horses, that would be a different matter.

So if you are selling cards or jewellery or some other popular craft then you are going to have to have something which makes your items stand out as unique.


Where Do I sell?

The Internet? Well the are certainly loads of people setting up sites to sell their hand crafted goods on line. How successful they are being is doubtful Again it will depend on what sort of craft you are making and what sort of "off line" following you have.

Again those making common crafts can't expect a large amount of custom from the search engines, there are just too many competing and joining an already saturated market. Those crafters should see their websites as an online brochure, away to service their off line customers and attract repeat custom.

Those selling more unique and expensive crafts can hope to see at least some search engine traffic.

Craft Fairs. Obviously a common way for people to sell crafts and the more common crafts are much more likely to sell at least a few items. Whereas a customer may not go online specifically to buy a birthday card, it may be a spontaneous purchase at a Craft Fair.

Friends and House Parties. This is the way which many people start off, they sell to friends and then friends of friends. Organising a small "event" in their own home where they can invite people to come round and view the items. Selling at church, school or other types of community group.

That was obviously only a really quick run down and I'll look at each of these methods in more detail in future posts!

Newsletter Video

We have been working hard on our newsletter over the last couple of weeks. Firstly we have made it an "online" newsletter this gives us much more scope for showing off all the free papers and linking directly to the downloads. Crafters are on the whole, very "visual people" and we wanted to give more images without clogging up peoples email.

It has also enabled us to do our first Video Newsletter. Again we think a lot of people will prefer to get the information this way. It will also enable us to show people how to do different things on the site. We will include some other information in these videos including info on craft shows and other craft related news.



There is no doubt that the Internet is more and more becoming the place to see information presented in this manor and the quality has increased greatly over the last two years. Try this with the video above. When it starts playing you will see a number (normally 360) on the bottom bar. If you have a fairly fast connection click on this number and change it to HD quality. Then use the botton on the bottom right of the video to view it full page, the quality is really good (if you have a slower connection then you can do the same but after you have changed it to full screen then pause it for a while to give the video a chance to buffer).

I hope you like this video, it includes information on 3 sets of free papers (Cheer Leading, Football and some Easter Decoupage featuring Brewster) as well as giving you glimpses of www.craftcalendar.co.uk and www.freecraftstuff.co.uk

Brewster Cricket Papers and More

As those who have signed up to our paper crafts newsletter will know (and readers of out Facebook Page) this week  Brewster has taken up Cricket, luckily just in time for the Cricket world cup. This time there is a score board which allows you to personalise the papers to meet your exact requirements, we have even thrown in some numbers and the words "Not Out" and "Retired" to help with those special greetings cards.

Each time we do a set of Brewster Papers we try and give you some way of adding a "Personal Touch" to the papers. When he was a teacher there was a blackboard, when he was a newspapers vendor we added an "Aboard", the Sheriff had a wanted poster by him and at Christmas he was carrying a huge Christmas Card.

If you have any ideas what you would like to see Brewster doing next, or in the near future please do let us know either by adding a comment here or by emailing us, we would love to hear your ideas. Remember it would be good if there was something about the design which could be personalised. Obviously we can promise to make every suggestion but those which would appeal to lots of people will stand a good chance. We may even see if we can reward those whose suggestions we use :-)

BREWSTER SETS