10 Things I Wish I'd Known Before Starting a Handmade Business

so this month I am celebrating 10 years fully self-employed which is super exciting I've been running my hand my business for 12 years and so I thought what I would do today was share with you 10 things I wish I'd known when I started my own handmade business 12 years ago which I then went full-time in in 2010 if you don't know who I am my name is Jess Vanden and I run a jewelry business called ethereal and as I said I started that in 2008 as a hobby business and worked full-time with it in 2010 I've been running it ever since I also employ my husband and I also run create and thrive where I share videos podcasts courses and my membership community the thriver circle and my aim with all of that is to help other makers like myself make that transition and work out how to take your handmade hobby and turn it into a thriving and profitable business okay the first thing I wish I had known when I started is that it does get easier after the first few years so the first couple of years are the hardest part and the hardest time part running a handmade business because you are figuring out your product line you're figuring out how to sell you're working out how to market you're doing a lot of Education a lot of learning I love experimenting a lot of failing which is not only normal but necessary and it just is a lot of work in the first few years to get everything off the ground it's like starting anything new you know you have to learn about it in the beginning as well as learn how to do it and it takes time to build skills and it takes time to build mastery but once you've been doing it for a couple of years not only have you learned a lot you've got systems in place which makes things more streamlined and everything's a bit faster and it gets easier that's not to say it ever gets like so simple you don't need to think about it anymore because you always want to be learning and developing and keeping up with things as they change but if you are in those four two years rest assured it definitely gets easier and it's you know it'll take you less time to work on the business side of things further down the track okay the second thing I wish I'd known before I started or just when I started my hair my business was you need an itch and even more specifically a micro niche why does this matter basically because you want to be known as the person who makes X Y Zed 1 2 3 you don't want to just be like oh I make jewelry oh I want to make candles oh I make clothes tell us a little bit more become more specific so a niche would be I make sterling silver jewelry as do hundreds of thousands of other people in the world even smaller I make recycled sterling silver jewelry even smaller than that I make minimalist recycled sterling silver jewelry and even smaller I make oxidized recycled minimalist selling silver jewelry you can see that I've really reached down over and over and over again to find that very specific micro niche that the majority of my stuff is like half of my shop is oxidized minimalist sterling silver jewelry and the other half is not oxidized so that didn't just happen overnight and it wasn't even a deliberate decision it was something that evolved over time as I grew my business as I tried lots of different things I always did sterling silver jewelry well actually that's a lie I started off with beaded jewelry and segue into stealing so jewelry within the first year but basically I just kept following you know what people were buying what people were commenting on what was popular what I enjoyed making and over time that just sort of narrowed down into this little micro niche which I love and has been really really successful for me and the same thing goes for lots of other people you know you become the person who's known for making a very specific type of thing and that is when you know word of mouth starts happening and your and it sells to spread far and wide so it's a really powerful way of making sure that you stand out from the crowd and from the competition and don't feel that it's going to constrain your creativity one you can always make other stuff that you don't sell and two I actually find having limits and constraints around my creativity incredibly powerful you know I actually make something like 50 something of my products from the exact same base material a four inch length of one millimeter sterling silver wire and I sit down and go what else can I make with the same base material and it's amazing what you can come up with when you have some sort of container around your creativity it makes you think outside the box it makes you dig a little deeper and try new things that you might have just glossed over before handing number three photos are everything and this goes for whether you just sell online even if you sell wholesale even if you sell it by markets you know if you're getting the word out there about your products it probably is online or via a flyer or some other visual medium we're really visual creatures and the photo is the thing that's going to convince somebody to click or not click if you don't have excellent photos stop wasting your time on posting to Instagram or sending out email newsletters or writing better descriptions or trying to get better SEO focus on the photos make them as good as they can possibly be and then work on that other stuff because the photo is the thing it's the thing that people will click on and it's the thing that will convince them to buy from you I can't overstate how important this is it is really really vital there are so many images coming at us now every day you know a lot of devices around us that we really need to make sure that ours are standing out from the crowd if you need some help with this I have an e-book called the creighton thrive guide to product photography wait don't go and buy it yet wait till the end of the video because I'm going to give you a little tip about how you can get a live a discount in the not-too-distant future so the credence regarded product photography was written by a professional photographer specifically for makers who have beginner or intermediate photographers so that is there it's not too expensive and it's very very helpful but you know if you don't want to buy anything that's cool there's heaps of videos out there there's heaps of podcast and blog posts out there that will help you but really spend the time and invest the time in having great photos are you learning how to take them or hiring somebody to do it for you it will make a lot of difference and Pat fact oh maybe all of the difference between whether you succeed or not number four thing I wish I'd known before I started is you're never finished marketing ever ever ever ever it's something that's always evolving it's something you're always working on it's something that you can't neglect it's just has to become a system I have it's something you do on a regular basis if you want your business to grow and succeed you have to just be willing to keep working on it always trying new things keeping up with the changes in technology the changes in software the changes in customer and consumer behavior all of these things have changed heaps since I started in 2008 you know my business was built off the back of blogging and Twitter and I barely do either of those at all anymore my marketing has completely changed so you know be aware of what's happening in the greater kind of marketplace of ideas and what's happening in the math means fear because it will really help you to be successful if you're keeping on top of things and keeping consistent you know it's it's not about doing something once and walking away from it as in everything with business it's about taking little steps every day making little actions every day whether that's you know researching a new email marketing email service provider whether that's you know spending a few minutes putting some things on Pinterest whether it's using Instagram whether it's working on your SEO all of these things are little steps you can take every single day to improve your marketing savvy and also just to get your name out there because something you can never stop doing I mean think about the biggest companies in the world Apple Coke McDonald's how often do you see their ads around a lot right you know they still spend a lot of money and time on advertising them even though they're everywhere because advertising puts you in front of people's minds like top of mine people if they see you every nerve again I'm more likely to buy from you so marketing is ever-evolving and never finished number five the fifth thing I wish I'd known is how powerful SEO is you don't know what it is since the search engine optimization and it's basically working out how you can get more people to find what you make via search engines like Google or Etsy search honestly the vast majority of my customers come in to my business via SEO it has been the best game-changer working out how that works making sure you have the right keywords around your business the right titles the right tags and if you're selling them you're using Google or write descriptions because that is how people will find you they will type into the search bar what they're looking for and you want to make sure that you either resolve the turns up so invest your time in working out the right keywords that reflect the products you make step away from fluffy words that don't describe what your products are put yourself in the mind of a customer and make sure that you are using those words if you need some help with this I have some workshops in my membership to you the thriver circle but I also have a free workshop on this channel just to let search back it's for Etsy search engine optimization or Etsy SEO it's a huge long workshop that I actually did in cooperation with their to themselves and I give you a whole bunch of really important tips about how to maximize your SEO over on Etsy and a lot of those tips work for Google as well so go check out that video after this one if you haven't watched it already you'll get heaps of really good tips okay the sixth thing I wish I had known before I started or when I was getting started is that I would spend so much of my time not actually making anything because I was spending like 80 percent of my time learning how to run a business because I had no I yeah you're gonna find the same thing you know if you've been spending 100% of your you know crafty time making stuff and enjoying that it will completely shift when you start a business and you'll find like ten or twenty percent of the time you're making stuff and the rest of the time you are learning stuff and doing other stuff to do with your business how many times can I say stuff in this one segment ah so just be aware of that that it's normal that it's okay in fact it's necessary you know unless you're a business genius already and you run other businesses and you know all about marketing and photographer product photography and your ideal customer and branding and website development and social media if you know how to do all that stuff already you'll be fine but if you don't which is most of us you're gonna need to spend a lot of time learning it so just accept that for the first few years you've got to spend an awful lot of time not making when you're working on your business and that that is okay and normal the seventh thing I wish I'd known is that energy and passion wax and wane sokka cycles I call it the creative cycle don't think I cleaned that but it's what I've been calling it for years now and basically you know you'll have times when you're really super passionate and full of energy and really excited about your work and there'll be times where you're not and that's normal as well and just being aware that that happens I think is important because if you know if it happens to you for the first time you'll might freak out this is what happen to me I freaked out and thought oh my god I've run out of ideas I'm my business is gonna fail I'm never gonna figure it out and I kind of had a bit of panic thinking that I'd never get my inspiration back again and I did and it's happened that many times over the last 12 years so if it happens to you just be aware the dad's normal and it's okay and it shares is that it will come back if you ever come to a point where it just never comes back up in that might be because there's a biggie yes out there and something else you want to do more but stick with it if you're having one of these creative roles just ride with it do the things you need to do give yourself a bit of downtime and chances are you'll find an upswing in that passionate energy again somewhere in the future the eighth thing I wish I'd known is that you cannot compete on price you are not a commodity you're not oil or wheat or livestock or whatever those million and one commodities are out there you can't you know you have no market limit on your prices and you can't compete on price you are making something creative and unique and you need to charge what it's worth to you and to your customer so you need to be doing your mouth doing your pricing again I have workshops on this in my membership community to thrive a circle link to that is in the description I call it a two-part process you price with the head which is doing the maths then you price with the heart which is doing the other stuff that's where you look at the marketplace you look at where you want to position yourself in that marketplace where your brand sets what you feel is a you know the right price to charge for this thing because you might find the maths comes out it you know thirty dollars but you can afford to charge fifty because you want to position yourself as top of the marketplace or in the top of the marketplace and that's absolutely fine like think of the companies out in the world you can go to Kmart or Target and buy a dress for twenty dollars or even less ah you can go - I don't know Burberry and buy one for a couple of thousand dollars is there really much difference they're probably both made in the same Chinese factory by the same people it's nothing to do with the materials it's nothing to do with the time that goes into it this is what everybody gets stuck on when they're doing their pricing you know all my materials as long as you cover your materials your time your overhead etc the rest of the pricing comes down to other factors emotional factors and you cannot price yourself to compete and be the bottom of the marketplace if you go out and look at people making similar stuff to you you'll find people much cheaper and probably people much more expensive than you and that's fine and that's normal don't try to compete on price by dropping your price because it does not make for a sustainable business and even more so man if we all do it we all lose so if we're all you know do the math stick to our guns and have higher prices then the customers will start to learn that that's the real value of the work that they're buying so don't underpriced yourself remember you're not a commodity you're a brand the ninth thing I wish I'd known when I started is that when you turn your hobby into a business you need to find a new hobby seriously your relationship with your craft will completely change when you stop just making it for yourself and you start making it further people and you it won't necessarily be the escape and the relaxation that it was it will turn into a job and that's not necessarily a bad thing because don't we all want a job that we love doing but just be aware that you probably kind of want to find something new to do that has nothing to do with your business that you can just do for enjoyment whether it's another craft or another activity altogether and know that that's going to happen and you're that relationship change with your craft is normal and natural and if you're afraid of that maybe starting a business is not actually the right thing to do with this particular craft because you might just want to keep it to yourself and for yourself and the 10th thing I wish I'd known from the beginning is how important your story is and how important it is to share with your customers so you want to be a real human being this is the power of handmade this is a power of having this sort of business you're a real person talking to a real person you're you know your power your emotional connection is your power it's a super power here it's something that big corporations even though they try to have it don't really have because at the end of the day you're the maker and the communicator especially if you're a one-person show this was a game-changer in my business so I read a book many years ago by Bernadette G bar I think it was the fortune cookie principle and she talked about how important your story is it could have been one of her other books I've read a couple but it's this idea of being really open and honest and being vulnerable and and opening your heart to your customers and they sounded it worried but let me give you a concrete example of what I'm talking so whenever I make a jewelry sale I send each customer a manual email thank you email which used to be one paragraph saying thanks for your order it'll be you know we'll make it within the next seven days it'll take you it'll take this long to ship to you if you have any questions like that you know thanks Jess okay now that's still step above and beyond what a lot of people do which is they don't even do that they just let the automatic stuff do it but I feel like you know I don't get hundreds of orders a day and I get a couple of orders a day and I can afford to spend the time to do this why because I think is an incredibly powerful way to connect with your customer and build a relationship with them now I send the message that's about five or six paragraphs long and I talked about how grateful I am that you know they've chosen to support my little family business that out of all the things they could have boarded the world the billions of things they chose something that I've created that they're supporting my husband my kitty cats that we're going to make their thing with love specifically for them in our solar power at home studio in Queensland Australia we talked about that it you know in the next one to two weeks we're gonna sit down and make it and then we'll wrap it up like a gift and send it to you and the shipping will take you know depending on where you are I always say you know two to four weeks or whatever and then I have a paragraph about you know it one that talking to you is one of my favorite things about being ads and if you need to talk to me any questions no worries I'll get back to you within 24 hours excluding weekend and then I have a little sign off and then I have a PS that tells them how they can get ten percent off their next order by joining my mailing list now you might notice there there was actually a lot of real factual information into woven into the story that I told I told them how long it's going to take where I am for starters because sometimes they don't notice that where I am how long it's gonna take the thing to get made I told them it's coming gift-wrapped already I told them how it's going to take to ship to them I communicated to them what they can expect when it comes to my communication with them I II don't expect me to get back you in an hour expected within 24 hours and I would don't work on weekends so I'm actually weaving a lot of actual useful information that they might have glazed over if I just ended bug bomb but by weaving it into an emotional story I've actually captured their attention and I've made that emotional connection why is that powerful for a couple of reasons one it's really powerful because word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing strategies out there and if you can you know give people really amazing experience that way more likely to tell their friends and then their friends more likely to come and shop with you but number two building that relationship not only is just let's let's put aside the fact it's just really lovely and it's a really enjoyable part of having a handmade business if something goes wrong then your way in a way better position to sort things out with your customer so you know if I've already created that emotional connection oftentimes my customers will email me straight back and go oh that's so lovely and I'm so happy to be supporting your family business I love this coming from Australia I love that you you know they tell me what they like about it they tell me that they love that we work and it's all powered from its own past you do or that you know they love that our jewelry is recycled so I actually get feedback as well but if something was to go wrong like if something was to go missing or some other problem it's way more likely that customer who's already talked to me in a positive way it's just going to message me there hey Jess there's a problem how can we fix it rather than opening a case with it's your paypal or sending me an angry email so it's a really really really powerful way of setting up that great positive emotional connection with your customers which will pay off big time in the long run so if you're not already doing it I strongly recommend you do that and that's it that those are 10 and there's so many more but those are 10 things I wish I had known before I started my own hair my business that I hope will help you with your own handmade business journey now I mentioned earlier in the video a bit when I was talking about the great thrive guide to product photography they're just wait this is that moment I'm celebrating 10 years of self-employment this month and very soon I'm gonna be running a really special ten days of deals promotion where I'm going to be sending out a special every day and basically everything I create it's going to be on special in some way so if you want to get access to that the link is in the description below go sign up for the ten days of deals and you will find yourself getting you a good deal on that Trenton thrive guide product photography if you get yourself in there now if you're watching this after January 2020 I'm sorry you've missed out but hey maybe I'll do another one for my 20th anniversary being self-employed who knows in any case thank you so much for being here and watching this video make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future videos and I'll be back again in a fortnight with another video all about how to take your hem Adobe and turn it into a thriving profitable business bye for now [Music]

Channel: Jess Van Den

Views: 35,308

Keywords: selling on etsy, how to sell your crafts online, sell handmade items online, sell handmade jewelry online, selling online for beginners, selling online for a living, etsy shop, how to sell on etsy for beginners, jess van den, create & thrive, create and thrive, handmade product photography, etsy product photography, etsy mistakes, etsy success, handmade business, handmade business mistakes, 10 things i wish id known, things i wish i'd known before starting a business

Id: eAf9Dq0ncoA

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 07 2020