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Mrs750 wants a website/shop for her art. So she wants to be able to show her work , sell it and let people book on the courses she offers
I have no idea where to start and who to use
I see shopify charge £19 a month for this but I can't see the prices for other providers like squarespace.
Does anyone have anything similar and who do you use
or should she just use Etsy and do the booking elsewhere?
Get a domain name
Some hosting.
Wordpress and modern block theme.
WooCommerce for the booking.
Seems to work for my partness.
🙂
https://www.jomcallister.co.uk/
ps Old theme, going through a change soon.
Following as my wife has been using Etsy for a few years and wants to stop having to pay all their fees. Think she's looking at shopify, squarespace and wix?
Following as my wife has been using Etsy for a few years and wants to stop having to pay all their fees. Think she's looking at shopify, squarespace and wix?
Going solo with your own website can be good but bear in mind what mrmonkfinger said. How will you get customers in the first place, without paying Google 10x what you were paying in Etsy fees?
My wife uses Folksy. It's similar (ish) to Etsy but is UK based and focused solely on art and craft with far less resold temu tat than Etsy.
Following as my wife has been using Etsy for a few years and wants to stop having to pay all their fees. Think she's looking at shopify, squarespace and wix?
I tried something similar for my hobby business. I got zero sales in a year. I usually sell through eBay and that has been pretty steady. Yes, awful fees, but better than low fees and no sales.
You need to drive the traffic yourself via social media and I really couldn't be bothered with that. Maybe your wife can.
WooCommerce for the booking.
Seems to work for my partness.
Nice prints - reminds me a bit of Norman Ackroyd.
With regards to the Etsy/Ebay vs your own site. The benefit of the former is the marketplace / audience is global. A very, very small proportion of the population are ever going to buy art so the wider the net is cast the more likely you'll reach 'art buyers' and the smaller subset of those that would buy art like yours.
That kind of site is limited to a certain kind of art at a certain price point though as theres not many people who would confidently buy art or craft from a picture on a screen rather than encountering it in the flesh.
However if you're also offering courses then (unless they're zoom classes or residential courses that people would travel to) your audience is really very local so the broad reach of Etsy is sort of moot.
If you are exhibiting locally then your work on show can be the signpost that directs people to your site to book courses or buy art - but you have to be mindful of the relationship with whoever is exhibiting your work if you are then cutting them out of sales.
In 2018 set up a Shopify online store selling my own designs of produce that I the printed onto mugs, coasters, bags etc aimed at a very specific niche. Also set up an Etsy store as well as doing festivals and markets. Closed it for about 18 months during COVID whilst we moved in 2020/1. Finally closed that business at the end of last year as it had only just broken even after 6 years / paid back what money we’d put in, but not taken any salary etc. I have my own printing workshop to make and store stuff.
A few years ago we started producing products that we sell at local markets, as well as selling to local gift shops. We also produce merchandise for other businesses. We still have an Etsy store and sell on another platform but sales are only a few hundred quid out of £20k turnover. This is a part-time business as I have another part-time job.
Things that I’ve learnt over the years:
SEO through Google and trying to promote your business on social media are increasingly more difficult - you will simply get blown out by the scale of spend by others, plus influencers are all fighting for attention. Google and the social businesses are always changing their algorithm so you need to keep working at it. Facebook and X increasingly irrelevant - it’s all about video content on Tic-Tok and IG. Building an audience from scratch takes a lot of effort. If you use email you will get spammed remorselessly and unsolicited mail gets trapped by spam filters.
For micro-businesses it’s about generating and developing your niche. For me, it’s about my location which has a high influx of tourism and being locally designed and made. If you can’t develop a niche then you’ll probably disappear in a sea of me-toos.
Whilst Etsy does give you access to a bigger, international marketplace the extra hassles, particularly since Brexit are no longer worth it - the extra paperwork, customs declarations means it often still gets refused/lost and you end up out of pocket. I know local artists here who no longer ship abroad because of the cost and hassle. Etsy search is useless - I know I could be the only person selling a particular product on there, but my listing would still be hidden by pages of irrelevant stuff - you need to direct your audience to Etsy, not rely on search.
If I was starting again, I’d say focus on your target audience and how you can reach/build it - probably through socials and video content. Maybe start selling on Etsy first rather than building a web store yourself - use socials to drive people to your listings store/site. As a very crude measure is that conversion rate from viewing to a sale is 2 to 3% - so to generate 10 sales you need about 300 visits. For booking courses there are probably pre-built solutions you can use.
Also, get to know your competitors and potential allies - see what they do/use if they are successful. Try to create a network of similar type businesses and promote each other where there are benefits if that can help reach a bigger audience than simply doing it on your own. Also learn to be hyper-critical of your own work, learn to accept rejection and be prepared to switch/pivot as needed.
Good luck!
Thanks for all the replies. Some good points have been made
I think etsy would be a good start and see where she can go from there