Internet businesses for small craft businesses

Some businesses seems to do very well on the internet but it is not always the case. I have been reasonably successful in selling my bead weaving pattern in the internet but totally unsuccessful at selling physical jewellery and other goods. Here are a few advantages of an internet business: 1. It is great for people who are shy and battle to market directly. 2. It is ideally suited for e-ware such as downloadable patterns. 3. You could have a very broad client base. Some disadvantages of an internet business: 1. You are competing with the whole world. If you key in jewellery on e-bay for example, there are almost 4, 000, 000 items. If you look at the best selling jewellery on Amazon, you will notice everything are factory produced jewellery. There are no handcrafted jewellery. 2. Your clients could live very far away which make delivery of goods difficult. Delivery could be time consuming and expensive. 3. You need to know a bit about internet marketing to get a search engine like Google to prioritise your web page. My own web pages have been unsuccessful in generating money. One of them cost me quite a bit of money without generating a cent. 4. If you are not careful you could become the victim of fraudsters. My conclusion: If you are starting up a business selling beaded objects like jewellery or crafts, the internet is not a good place to start. If you want to sell jewellery, rather sell at crafts markets. If the market is a bit expensive, try to team up with someone else and share a table. Where I have also been very successful, has been to make photo-albums of my jewellery and give it to family and friends to take to work. I made quite a few sales that way. Some of these clients buy regularly from me. The internet do lend itself quite well to selling patterns but then I recommend that you sell via an established company like www.bead-patterns.com . They take their cut but it is still worthwhile.