With the success of places like Etsy, it seems like more and more online marketplaces are starting for those who are interested in art and handcrafted items. One of the places I have recently come across is a site called ArtFire. It’s still currently on beta, but there are already items for sale.

One of the biggest perks for sellers is that they have a FREE Basic account available. This means that you don’t have to pay them for opening a store, listing your items, and not even if someone buys your goods. Yes, no commissions! This is great if you simply want to test the waters of selling your products, or you have a low-volume sales expectation.

For those who wish to expand their online store for handcrafted goods, you can upgrade to the Premium Account for $15.95/month (limited time, as they plan on increasing this to $20/month, according to the site at the time of this writing). With a premium account, you get more selling features such as the ability to offer coupons, participate in seller councils, etc.

Art Fire also offers avenues for community on their site. They also have some very useful resources for buyers and sellers. One interesting resource that you might want to check out is the Business Tips section from Handmade News.

If you’re an Art Fire seller, or if you’ve ever bought anything from ArtFire, do give us some feedback. We’d love to hear about your experiences.

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Art Fire: Artisan Marketplace

If you love to make and create things, then Etsy is a great place for you to make money online. It’s where plenty of creative folks do business. And, from what I heard from satisfied users, it’s a really great place to buy and sell handmade stuff – from jewellery to paintings.

As a seller, setting up your own Etsy shop is free. However, listing an item (whether it sells or not) costs 20 cents per quantity. So, say even if you come up with 1 listing of a handmade necklace and you have 5 to sell, you will pay $1.00 for that listing. If an item sells, you pay an extra 3.5% of the sale price.  Read more about Etsy fees. You will need a valid credit card to sell at Etsy, as that’s the card they will charge for your seller’s fees. I’m not sure if it’s actually possible, but it didn’t say on their site, but I wish there was a way to pay seller’s fees by Paypal instead of a credit card.

Personally, I hate using credit cards for my online transactions. I very rarely use mine. I tend to stick to Paypal. In fact, many sellers have lost my business because they simply refuse to accept Paypal. But, that’s a different blog post altogether for you.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share with artsy / craftsy folks about a place where you can make money online doing something that you love to do.

Technorati Tags: etsy, make money with crafts, make money with art

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Etsy: Online Store for Arts and Crafts

If you’re looking for a place to sell your products online, eCrater might be something you’ll be interested in. It’s free to start a web store and it’s a marketplace too. It won’t cost you anything to run a store. However, if you wish for your listings to be advertised/highlighted in their marketplace, then you will pay extra fees.

I think eCrater is a good solution if:

• You wish to have a web store but you don’t want to purchase and install software in your own web host. If you have your own domain name, you can even point it to your eCrater store.
• You don’t want to pay monthly fees in another third party service to make money online from a web store. eBay, for example, charges monthly store fees + listing fees.
• You want to tap in to an existing marketplace. The problem with running an independent store in your own website is that it doesn’t usually come with a built-in customer base. That’s why eBay is an attractive place for online sellers. It’s a massive marketplace. But, if you want something in-between, then a service like eCrater might be a good place to check out.

Read eCrater’s FAQ for more information.

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eCrater: Make Money with a Free Online Store

There seems to be something about eBay, auctions and online advertising nowadays. First, I wrote about BidVertiser offering eBay Ads. Then, today, I received an email from TextLinkAds* alerting me to this ad programme called AuctionAds*.

What is it? Well, it’s basically an ad programme that lets you run ads of eBay auction listings. You can put in keywords to run the types of auction ads that you want. You put in the code on your blog or site. And, you can earn money from these auction ad links if a user clicks on a link and take action on eBay.

Auction Ads even recently introduced the URL converter where you can turn any eBay link to an affiliate link. So, if you’re talking about anything on eBay (a search term, a funny or weird auction, something you wish to buy, etc.), you can turn them in to affiliate links. I tried to use this by making an example converted link in my blog post about Stella McCartney.

You can run Auction Ads with contextual ads like Google AdSense. And, they have several familiar ad formats.

The payment threshold is US$10 and it’s payable via PayPal every first of the month.

And yes, they have an affiliate programme too. Here’s their spiel on this –

There is no need to sign up for our affiliate program because our affiliate program is built right into the ads you display! If a user clicks on the “Ads by AuctionAds” that is displayed and signs up for our service you earn a bonus 2% of all revenue generated by that user for the 6 months.

You will get paid the first of every month via Paypal. We feature a 30 day cookie on all referrals.

Read more at Auction Ads’ FAQ.

Let me know if you give it a whirl and tell me what you think about it. I already signed up and tried the ads at my ‘test site’, Chrysalis Creativity. I’ll report back as soon as I have anything more to share.

*affiliate links

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Auction Ads

If you’ve got a BidVertiser account and you’re an eBay seller too, then you might be interested to find out that you can now promote your eBay auctions using BidVertiser.

Here’s what the Bidvertiser announcement says:

BidVertiser now allows eBay sellers to automatically create an ad for their eBay items that are now on active auction. The eBay Ad will include the following:
- An updated pricing of the item
- Time left till auction ends
- An image and a description of the item.
- The Ad will link directly to the item’s auction page on eBay.

And best of all – We are so confident that BidVertiser will work well for you also as an advertiser that we will immediately credit your advertiser account with $20 worth of funds, no deposit on your part needed!

Here’s a preview of an eBay ad.

Too bad I’ve got no eBay auctions going or I would’ve tried this out.

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BidVertiser Offers eBay Ads

In a recent SitePoint newsletter, it was announced that the Marketplace has been going through some changes. This is what was said in the announcement:

The new system functions more like a traditional online auction. It replaces the often messy and confusing forum thread-based auctions with a slick, automated, standardized system. Sellers now have much more control over their listings, including the ability to set a starting bid price, BIN (buy it now) price, and hidden reserve. They’re also able to control the length of the auction, and have the ability to moderate comments in their auctions. Additionally, the Trade Your Services and Want To Buy forums have been upgraded with the same template system that the new auction system uses.

If you’re not familiar with SitePoint Marketplace, it is actually a place where you can sell established websites/weblogs, sell turnkey sites, sell domain names, and/or sell templates. There are also forums where people can post job openings, advertise one’s services, and/or offer web hosting deals.

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SitePoint Marketplace

While it’s not exactly news to some parts of the world, it’s still something worth noting how Australians are becoming more Internet-savvy. Matt Sun writes for The Daily Telegraph as follows:

THE IT professionals’ bubble might have burst in the late ’90s – now housewives and retirees are making fortunes setting up shop on the internet.

Surveys found Australians have become more confident about shopping online and finding more and more bargains via the internet.

Gone are the days of the man down the street selling wholesale items out of the spare room – online eBay stores are allowing mum and dad entrepreneurs to set up cheaper home-based businesses with a far greater reach.

Also See: eBay Selling 101

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More Australian “Mom and Dad -preneurs” Are Seeking Wealth Online

eBay * has definitely become a viable business option for many cottage industries. You can sell practically anything on eBay — from secondhand goods and personal services to high-ticket items like cars and houses.

Getting started is easy. You just sign-up, provide relevant details (you need to credit card info in order to sell on eBay), activate your account, and start listing your items.

You can sell your stuff either through auction format (variable day listings) or through buy-it-now sales. If you think you’re going to sell stuff regularly, you might even consider setting up your own store. Stores come with different pricing levels, depending on your preferred features and budget. For most people, basic stores are sufficient.

There are a lot of things you must consider in order to become a successful eBay seller. Unfortunately, I can’t cover them all here (there are loads of books written about these things).

However, some important tips to note are as follows:

1) No matter what people say, there’s no magic formula to eBay. The success possibilities are variable. Usually, it depends on how well you do your listings, how often you sell, how you promote yourself, what kind of things you sell, your pricing levels, etc. But, even though there’s no magic formula, there’s always something to learn from successful eBay sellers.

2) People are always looking for bargains! When you list your stuff, check how much other sellers are charging for similar items up for sale. If you can lower your price to compete with them, do so.

3) If you run an eBay store, consider running some auction items at the same time. Auction items help drive traffic to your store items.

4) When choosing a starting and ending days/dates for your stores and auctions, avoid public holidays. Holidays and ‘big news days’ (e.g., elections, natural disasters, etc.) are usually slow days on eBay.

5) If you wish to sell successfully on eBay, list as often as possible. This way, you develop a following. People will then watch for new things from you regularly.

There are many more tips I know of based on my personal eBay selling experiences and based on other people’s experiences. I’ll try to share them here in the future.

Sell on eBay*

* affiliates

This post is originally from Just Make Money Online. Please respect copyright.

eBay Selling 101