Artist Promotion Tools: How to Start a Jewelry Business
Every artist needs certain artist promotion tools if building a business or even making side money is your goal. If you like to make jewelry, whether beaded, soldered or twisted with wire, you need the right artist promotion tools to get there. In this article you will learn the basics of what you need to start your very own jewelry business. 1. Products. You can’t sell jewelry if you don’t have any made. Before you are ready to make a business out of your hobby, you need a large supply of products to sell. Make lots of jewelry as inexpensively as possible; the lower your initial costs, the higher profit margin you will have. If you spend $30 to buy beads for a necklace, you’ll need to sell it for $40-$50 to make a decent profit, and unless your designs are absolutely amazing, most people will be turned off at that price. Buy supplies on sale, with coupons, and make use of recycled jewelry from thrift stores and flea markets. Don’t use all your expensive beads in one necklace; pick a few highlight beads that look (and probably are) more expensive, then fill in with less expensive materials.
2. Have a place to sell your products. This can be an actual store location in a mall or farmer’s market, or an online store. One of the best artist promotion tools you will ever have is an online store. Even if you have a physical location, you can greatly increase your sales by selling online too. Freewebstore.org lets you list up to 15 items for free, and only takes a small fee if the item sells, so there are no up front costs. If it works, you can get a subscription and increase your listings. There are other websites that offer similar services, so look around and see which one works best for you. 3. Advertising! This is absolutely vital to your business- it is the most important of your artist promotion tools. Unless you advertise, you won’t get business- people won’t know you have anything to sell. For a local location, get your name listed in local business listings as a jewelry designer. Make a Kijiji.com ad, put up flyers and set out business cards where allowed, etc. Then you need to start connecting with social media; make a Facebook business page and upload pictures of your products. Add a link to your online store, invite your friends to like your store, and make frequent updates so your store is always on the forefront of people’s minds. Learn about search engine optimization so your online content will get noticed by search engines.
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