You can learn to sell on Etsy by taking tips from someone who is already a pro at it.

I’ve known about Etsy for a while but I haven’t taken the big step towards starting to list my jewelry items there.

I’ve heard that there are thousands of different jewelry items listed on Etsy so I’ve been a little reluctant to jump in to such a big crowd.

But now that I’m thinking about taking the dive, I want to know how to stand out from the crowd.

Fortunately, on Rena Klingenburg’s Home Jewelry Business Success Tips Blog there are two great articles which give tips on how to increase your chances for success on Etsy.

If you are interested in listing your products on Etsy I highly recommend that you click on the links below and read these two articles carefully.

How to Get Your Jewelry Seen on Etsy – Part 1

How to Get Your Jewelry Seed on Etsy – Part 2

This is the time of year when people start shopping for cute Holiday themed jewelry like Christmas pins and the like.

Handcrafted Christmas Tree Earrings are another jewelry piece that is becoming more popular.

During the craft show I participated in last week, by far my best seller was the Christmas Tree Earrings design.

People just immediately gravitate toward these earrings with the “those are so cute!” expressions.

The nice thing about this design is that they are very easy to make, and you can make a lot of them in a short period of time. All you need is basic pinwork skills. 

Here is a preview of the video class I created for this design:

Jewelry Making Video: Christmas Tree Earrings

I had a booth at a local craft show this past weekend, and one of the most popular items I sold was a pair of Christmas earrings.

As I was preparing my stock of Christmas earrings for the show I of course had to do a lot of pinwork in a very short time.

I’ve been doing is so long now that I could probably do it with my eyes closed, but I see a lot of handcrafted jewelry where the pinwork is not done very carefully.

Most consumers may not notice the difference, but I think you should make your pinwork as nice looking as you possibly can.

Here’s a video tutorial that shows you the basics of how to correctly make a loop when you use head pins and eye pins.

I found a great “how-to” article on pricing your jewelry. I sold jewelry at a local craft show this past weekend so I am always wondering if I priced my jewelry correctly.

This article gives great tips for how to price your jewelry.

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Figuring out how to price your designs is one of the least glamorous parts of running a successful jewelry design business. Pricing your designs can be tricky, especially if you design one of a kind pieces, but it is an essential step you must take to turn your hobby into a profitable business. Once you understand the costs of your business, and what you expect to profit from your work, creating a formula to price your designs is a simple process.

Keep a “recipe book” to record exactly what was spent to create each design. You will basically need to price each item used in your designs. For example, if you pay $1.50 for a dozen sterling crimp beads, and you used 2 crimps beads in your design, you would divide $1.50 by 12 (12.5¢ per crimp bead), and multiply by 2, totalling 25¢ for the crimp beads in this design. This makes it much easier to calculate the exact cost of each design. The more meticulous you are about calculating expenses, the better your pricing will be. Even the packing materials you use for the design and the shipping costs of the supplies should be accounted for. Keep receipts — this will also come in handy during tax time, if you want to deduct business expenses. Remember that materials cost is only one aspect of the costs involved in your designs.

Record your time spent on each design. How quickly can you design and complete your jewelry? Second to quality, speed is a key factor in profitability. If it takes you 30 minutes to recreate a design, you would charge differently than a design that takes 4-5 hours to create. Write your time spent in your recipe book. Decide how much you would need to pay a worker to do your job, and pay yourself at that rate. This is a vital aspect of the costs involved in your designs; don’t ignore it! Sooner than you think, you may decide to hire a friend to help you prepare for a show or party. The hourly wage paid to a worker, whether that person is you, or someone you hire, must be built into your price scheme, or you will not be able to remain in business. If you begin by charging $10/hr for your work, and a necklace takes you 2 hours to make, you will add $20 to the materials cost of your necklace for your time. As you become more experienced, you will charge more for your skill and expertise.

Add Overhead and Profit. *Everyone has a different method of calculating their overhead costs, but there is ALWAYS some overhead. What is overhead? Overhead covers a myriad of “hidden costs” and ignoring it is a fast way to underprice yourself out of business. When you first begin, overhead includes the shipping costs you pay to have your beads shipped to you, the investment you make every time you purchase a new pair of pliers, a work table, storage boxes, or price tags. Overhead includes every bead that rolled under the couch or down the street, and every item dropped in the grass during packing, or (sad, but it happens occassionally) stolen from your booth or table. It covers the cost of gas and insurance when you pick up tools and materials, and it covers all of the materials that get “used up” in the creation of your product, such as glue, solder, string, wire, coatings/finishes, etc. It covers the time and cost of advertising, whether you spend time emailing your customers, or printing and mailing glossy postcards. It covers office expenses like business cards, computer paper and ink, packing slips, receipts, brochures, inventories, and more. Later on, overhead covers more expensive outlay of capital, such as rent, phone, computers, electric, heat, torches, gas, solder, flux, chemicals, and more expensive equipment to build your studio and your business. Profit is what you add to your price to help your business grow. Profit is NOT the same as what you pay for labor. You may own your business and pay someone else to make all of the jewelry. They are paid for their labor, but the business still needs to make a profit, or it can’t grow. Profit allows you to lay out the money for 3 strands of beads this week, when you could only afford two last week. Some calculations for profit and overhead can be complicated, but a quick and simple starting point is given below.

Calculate the price. Using a formula will give you a starting point, and you can tweak the price with the steps that follow. Which formula you use, however, will depend on whether you’re selling retail (directly to customers) or wholesale (to stores, for example).

• Wholesale – Take the total cost of your supplies plus your time, multiply by 1.5 (some people multiply by 2). Multiplying by 1.5 – 2 covers your overhead and profit to start with. You may adjust down if you are just starting, and expenses are minimal, or up if you are actively building a larger business. For example, if I am just starting and have low overhead, I may charge $8/hr and take 1 hour to make a bracelet using $5 in materials; my price will be $5(mater.) + $8(time) = $13(cost) x 1.5 (overhd/profit) = $19.50 wholesale price. With more expensive equipment, more experience, and a product that requires a higher level of skill, I may charge $5 + 15/hr, x 2 = $40 wholesale. You can charge less for your jewelry if you’re selling wholesale because you spend less time marketing to individual customers (advertising, processing orders, maintaining a shopping cart website, maintaining a store, etc.) and more time actually making jewelry. You should verify that your market can afford a mark-up, using the next few steps. A wholesale operation will be selling your piece for around twice as much as you sell it to them. Many jewelry designers find that selling wholesale allows them to achieve business growth and profitability. When you use the 1.5 factor, you are allowing room for shop owners to sell your designs and even offer sales and discounts on your designs, if a certain design doesn’t sell quickly enough. This may sound like a lot, but make sure that you consider the amount of time and labor you put into developing and creating your pieces as well as the boutique owner’s expenses.

• Retail – Take the total cost of your supplies plus your time, multiply it times 3 (or 4), and there’s your retail price. This is the same as wholesale x 2. A spreadsheet is perfect for this step. Simply set up a table of products used, your time, and then a formula to calculate the pricing using the 3 or other multiple. Ex: for the first example given above, I would simply multiply $19.50 (wholesale price) x 2, for a $39 retail price. In the second case, retail might be $40 x 2 + $80. There is a lot of room for adjustment here. If your business has a physical storefront, you have to take into consideration that there are additional costs. Rent, employee pay, utilities, displays and fixtures, and property taxes all need to be considered in your pricing strategy. Even if you sell at a booth at a crafts market, you need to consider your transportation to and from the market, your time spent at the market, and all the supplies involved (tent, tables, food, signs, displays, bags, receipts, etc.). You may find that in your market, you need to price at 3 to 5 times your cost of materials plus time. This price allows you to cover the cost of buying your materials, paying (yourself or someone else) to make the pieces, selling them at wholesale with minimal overhead and profit covered (x 1.5 – 2), and then selling at retail yourself (2x wholesale), where a weekend booth at a moderately high end show may cost $500-$700.

Adjust for the cost of your labor. *The difference between a hobby and a business is whether you get a paycheck, so decide how much you want to make per hour, and make sure that your labor is accounted for in the price. Treat yourself as an employee who doesn’t work for free. If you have employees, consider the cost of paying them in addition to your own salary. Let’s say, for example, the cost of supplies for your design is $10. If you want to pay yourself $10 per hour and you spent 2 hours on this design, then you really need to be charging at least $60 for the piece ($10 supplies, $20 labor, $30 approximate overhead and profit, depending on wholesale or retail). There may be additional costs to consider, such as your storefront, or time spent marketing (e.g. creating a brochure).

• When deciding how much to pay yourself hourly, consider your experience. How long have you been designing jewelry? If you have a long track record, vast expertise, and a portfolio of unique designs, you may find that you can charge more. You may have particular advantages, including contacts, unique designs, high level skills, or ability to work with uncommon materials that allow you to charge more.

• To repeat–just because you enjoy doing the work doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get paid for it! Make sure you’re getting at least minimum wage. If not, you may quickly decide that your time “just isn’t worth it”.

Perform market research. Now that you have an idea of what you want to charge for a design, it’s time to dip your toes in the market and see if the piece can be profitable. Generally, it’s a good idea to start off with the highest price you think the market will bear, because you can always bring it down. Have you visited craft shows, jewelry parties, and researched the web to see what work similar to yours is selling for?

• Have people offered to buy any of your jewelry designs? This is a good indication of the marketability of your designs. If your coworkers fight over a necklace you made, that may be a good sign that there is a market for your design. Friends and coworkers are also good sounding boards for prices. Ask them how much they think your design is worth, and what they would pay for it.

• Examine past success. Have you already sold any of your jewelry? This is important too in that it gives you concrete information on how much you can sell a design for. You may hear from friends of coworkers that they would pay $XX for a design, but an actual sale is real, concrete evidence.

• Has an experienced designer evaluated your work? Having the opinion of another designer can be valuable in determining the level of quality of your work, and what you can expect to get for it.

Re-evaluate the design. If you encountered feedback in the previous step which indicates that the price you arrived at isn’t going to fly, you have some thinking to do about this design.

• If you do not find interest for a particular design, you may want to think of changing the design.

• Assess your materials. Do you design using sterling findings and semi-precious beads, or less expensive beads? Higher quality materials will always command a higher price in the market. You may want to consider making designs with both high quality materials, and less expensive materials. This will allow you to attract business from both the high end buyer, and the more budget minded buyer.

• Don’t cut yourself short just to “break in” to the market (e.g. selling to customers at wholesale prices). This will only get people used to cheap prices, and it’ll be difficult to raise them later on, jeopardizing your chances of ever making your business profitable. It’s better to redesign or reject pieces that don’t cover their costs as described above. People are often suspicious of products sold at unusually low prices; most of us have internalized the idea that ‘you get what you pay for’. Cheap prices are often interpreted as cheap materials and workmanship. If your pieces aren’t selling well, try raising your prices. It goes against our intuition, but you may be surprised at the results!

Tips

• As you become more experienced, you’ll find which prices cover your unique costs while still generating sales. For example, if you’re doing a lot of beadwork and wirework where the supply cost is low but the time spent is high, and you’re selling retail only through a website, the following could be a better formula:[1]

• (cost of materials x 2) + (time spent on piece x hourly rate)

• calculate 30% of the previous figure and add it to the previous figure to account for overhead

• multiply the figure by 2 to get the retail price

Sources and Citations

• HHHenterprises.com – Source of information.
• Erayo.com – Source of information.

1. ↑ http://jewelrymaking.allinfoabout.com/features/pricing.html
2. ↑ http://jewelrymaking.allinfoabout.com/features/pricing.html

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Price Your Jewelry Designs. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

I am so excited that The Bead Jewelry Making Blog posted a review of our jewlery making video on demand membership service!

I just introduced this service recently and am very excited that our new subscribers are reporting that they are very happy with the service.

Here’s a link to the review:

Review of Jewelry Making Professor Membership Service by The Bead Jewelry Making Blog

If you are intersted in learning more about this service you can get detailed information here:

Jewelry Making Professor Video on Demand Membership Service

As a mother of three older kids, breast feeding is a distant memory for me.

However, when I saw these baby friendly beads I thought what an incredibly great idea!

This jewelry artist came up with the idea of creating baby friendly beads to solve the problem of her son pulling her hair while she was breast feeding him.

The necklace idea she came up with consists of beads on a cord so that they slide back and forth easily which entertains the baby, and then a larger pendant so the baby can grab hold of it.

Great ideas for keeping the baby entertained and away from your hair!

The necklace is a great idea, but she didn’t stop there.

She also created reminder bracelets to switch from one wrist to the other so that she knows which breast gets its turn for the next feeding. Brilliant! And so much easier than trying to keep up with a nursing log.

I wish I had thought of these things back (a long time ago!) when I was nursing.

Go have a look at these beautiful (and very useful!) bead jewelry creations:

Baby Friendly Beads

Here is a bead jewelry design that is very easy to make.

I call this ring a Figure 8 design.

It’s not that it looks anything like a figure 8, but the weaving pattern is a figure 8.

I used two different colors of 4mm 5301 bicone crystal beads weaved with 3mm 5301 bicone crystal beads.

I could have stopped there and made a very simple ring, but I decided to add sterling silver round beads to add a little spice to the design.

Here is a preview of the video class I created showing how to make this design.

Jewelry Making Video: Figure 8 Ring

Are you interested in selling more of your jewelry?

With the holiday season starting soon you should already be ramping up for the biggest selling time of the year.

However, if you are serious about selling jewelry than it’s not just about the holiday season for you.

It’s a year round venture, and to get the most out of your efforts you should be constantly looking for advice and tips that will help you sell more.

Dr. David Weiman offers an E-book that gives you 50 ideas for how to improve your jewelry sales.

And the best part is the E-book is free!

Here is a link to his e-Book:

50 Great Jewelry Selling Techniques

I saw a question recently about beaded string concerning how to use use monofilament string and a crimp bead.

The short answer to the question is that you shouldn’t.

The reason why is that monofilament string is not as strong as wire.

You can crimp a crimp beads on even very thin wire and not worry much about the wire breaking, but if you crimp a crimp bead on monofilament string it is likely that the string will break, if not right away then eventually.

That will not be a pretty sight for your beautiful beads.

This is important because if you are doing any kind of intricate bead weaving it’s impossible to do with even the thinnest wire. You should use monofilament string instead.

So what to do?

There is a way around this problem.

What I do is use one seed bead and a clam shell to start and finish both ends of the necklace or bracelet.

It’s easier to show you how I do this rather than tell you, so here is a short jewelry making video tutorial demonstrating how to do this.

I love reading Rena Klingenberg’s “Home Jewelry Business Success Tips” website.

There is a wealth of information there that will help you enjoy greater success selling your handcrafted jewelry.

I have used many of Rena’s techniques and can vouch that they work.

Recently, Rena did something that I think will give you great insight into understanding what in marketing is called the “Voice of the Customer.”

She asked customers who buy handcrafted jewelry the reasons why they do, and asked for their suggestions as well.

The responses are very enlightening and if you are in the business of selling your handmade jewelry then I highly recommend that you head over to Rena’s website and read every response to the survey.

Come to think of it, don’t just read the responses, but take notes about how you can implement some of these customer’s suggestions into your own jewelry selling efforts.

Here is just a sample of some of the terrific insights direct from different buyers of handmade jewelry:

“Handcrafted jewellery is a terrific way to make your own style statement.”

“I like buying from a crafter, but I have a tight budget. I think it is a great idea to have high end items for high end people, but those of us in the lower middle class like nice things, too, and we would like some choices. I’m willing to spend $20-$30 on something nice but beyond that, we’re getting into my grocery money.”

“Also, it is really nice to hear or read the story of a piece of jewelry–how the artist got the idea, what the materials are, where they came from, etc. That becomes part of the artifact as well as the buying experience.”

“I have one suggestion that I think more artists should offer, and that is personalized items. I don’t mean a design that I request. I mean like the artist gives me a survey to fill out about myself, and the artist creates something built on the survey I submitted. That would be very cool. It would show me what the artist thinks of me, and it would be about me.”

“Third, being able to give a gift to friend or loved one, and being able to tell them a personal story of the artisan who made the piece connects to my travels, and I’m able to say, “I thought of you when I saw this piece, and here’s why…”.

“Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of really generic-looking jewelry being passed off at craft fairs, so if you make an effort to have high quality and professional products, display, and packaging, you will stand out and customers will appreciate it.”

“I like that the artists who make these unique pieces of jewelry are doing it for the love of the art. They are not standing at a machine all day, cranking out thousands of the same item. They put part of themselves into their art, and it shows. It makes me proud to wear something of theirs.”

Here is the link to Rena’s article where you can read all of the survey responses in detail:

How to Sell More Handcrafted Jewelry