Creative, frugal minds should share their skills and lifestyle choices – from making a thank you card to building a chicken run, and sharing budget-friendly or healthy advice.
Most Life with Heidi readers know that a handmade gift speaks more than volumes when compared with something found quickly on the average supermarket shelf. Creating something unique shows that you have dedicated time and energy rather than coins and notes – and that’s special.
This blog shows you how to share your skills with others and make a little profit at the same time. You’ll discover how to find the right selling platforms and get noticed (Etsy SEO), how to set up a website and get targeted traffic to land on it, and the different ways to boost traffic – website visitors – that want to buy or commission gifts, books and helpful services.
Sell Your Skills
Whatever you’re best at – whether it’s designing rooms, making kites, DIY or carving soap to look like your pet – there’s a market for it. Sadly, today’s society means many people don’t have the time to learn creative skills. They depend on the internet to purchase gifts, read helpful information and buy things ready-made.
If you have taken the time to learn a creative skill and are good at it, you can be sure thousands of people out there will be interested.
Start off simply. Think of two or three items you are good at making. If you know a lot about gardening on a small plot and have a knack for writing, write an ebook about one aspect of this, like the best vegetables to grow and how to care for them. If doll’s clothes are your forte, design a unique collection.
Research how much each item costs to make or produce, how much time it takes and how much it costs to ship (if you make huge granite sculptures, you don’t want to offer free shipping to the other side of the world!). Include costs for electricity, tools, website hosting and postage. Never undersell your unique skills!
Set Up Your Website
With so many website design services available that only require you to fill in simple templates with text and pictures, there’s no reason why you can’t set yourself up as a legitimate, attractive business. You’ll find plenty of free website building tools – only the servers that host your website require payment. Start small, pick a colour scheme that suits your business and get designing. You can even find free logo design sites online.
It’s also worth remembering that if you are looking to get further than other people who are selling items on sites like Etsy, you may want to turn your website into a fully-fledged business. In this instance, you may need to get more of an understanding of how to make your business go further, but also be aware of the practicalities that come with a new business. For example, ecommerce insurance would be essential when you are dealing with a wide range of customers. Many people are more than happy to start small, and there’s a lot to be said for starting with the basics, so you become more confident. You can certainly turn your business into something bigger, but only when you are ready to do so.
Every item you make should be described in detail – as a creator of unique items, you too are unique – sell who you are. An About page can tell your visitors all about your creative process. Don’t publish your website straight away – keep adjusting it until you’re happy with the result. Your creativity and style should always be mirrored in your online presence.
If you’re selling an ebook, you don’t even need a website – Kindle books on Amazon are quite simple to format. If you’re not ready for a website, try opening a store on Etsy. Use specialist marketing agencies like Etsy Geeks to push your new store high up in the search results – all you have to do is make sure the photographs of your items are attractive and the descriptions interesting.
Attract Your Public
Any visitors to an Amazon, Shopify or Etsy store, social media profile or website are referred to as ‘traffic’. Online traffic is a term used by digital marketers and most of their marketing strategies focus on increasing web traffic – website visitors – in groups that are likely to convert. For the online sellers of creative masterpieces, a visitor’s conversion means a sale.
Marketing can take years to get right, but you already have an advantage – what you make is unique to you. Even so, you need to try to get people interested in your creations to arrive on your website. You need targeted traffic.
The best way to get interested visitors to view your website is search engine optimization. We all use search engines like Google and Bing to find the answers to our questions. Search engine optimization (SEO) means making sure a link to your website is at the top of the first results page.
To be visible in the search engine results pages (SERPs), your website will need to contain keywords. If you make doll’s house furniture and want to sell to people in the US, you’ll need to put keywords in your website text like ‘dolls house furniture New Jersey, doll’s house Texas, handcrafted dolls house furniture for sale’ … every time someone wants to add a special piece to their own doll’s house, they’ll use these search terms to find a supplier. The goal of SEO is to make that person find your website.
Blogs are another way of getting more targeted traffic to your website and they also form a part of SEO. Blogs give you the opportunity to use even more keywords and gather an interested public. As you publish more blogs, you create a following. You can ask them to sign up to email newsletters and so advertise on a more personal level over a longer period.
If you’re just starting up, it’s a good idea to buy targeted traffic for a few months. This is because SEO can take time to bring in targeted traffic. Paid web traffic gives you the opportunity to test different target groups and locations, too. Perhaps your particular creations are more interesting to overseas customers – you might want to translate your website into different languages to attract them.
Sharing Is Caring
From commissioned art to a frugal living recipe book, your skills and knowledge have worth. You may not be able to retire on the proceeds but an extra couple of hundred in the bank account every month can make life so much easier. Anyone with a little time on their hands and a creative skill can sell based upon uniqueness – how much happier would you be to receive a beautifully designed, handcrafted gift than an item picked off the shelf of a generic megastore?
By selling our creations, we encourage appreciation of human time, thought and energy. Personalised, one-off items are skyrocketing in popularity as people become bored of the everyday.
By selling our advice and expertise, we share it, helping others to understand the importance (and common sense) of frugal living and healthy eating, of sustainable lifestyles and improving our local and global environments.
And if you can make a little money while sharing and caring, so much the better!
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