Shop Handmade - Rewarding Creativity

Things To Know

See the steps to listing an item. It's like other systems such as eBay. Take advantage of sponsorships and sell your items fee-free!

Galleries

Showcasing your items in the Galleries is a great way to increase sales.

Promotions

Take advantage of promotional opportunities to accelerate your sales.

Environment

We "carbon mitigate" all items you sell on ShopHandmade. Learn why this is good for the environment.

Questions & Answers

Here are many answers to questions about selling on ShopHandmade.

More Help Information…

More information is available in the main Help area. Legal, Policy, and Fees are covered here.

ShopHandmade is a wise choice…
ShopHandmade is a simple, safe, great marketplace. Learn about our competition…
Cost: 35¢ per month per item plus 12% of sales.
eBay's 12% commission is the highest anywhere, making it an expensive place to sell. Because this venue sells everything from televisions to handmade items to condoms it is not a place that people seeking arts and crafts would normally visit. eBay is known to sellers to be a price-sensitive commodity-driven marketplace.
Cost: 20¢ per item plus 3.5% of sales
This market has grown so large that each of its 200,000 sellers quickly get buried. List an item and within a day it will typically be on page 100. The remedy is to pay another 20¢ listing fee on each item bring it back to the top of the haystack for another day; but the cost of that is $6 a month per item, making this venue more costly than even eBay. It almost seems that this venue intentionally buries items to force 20¢ relistings with their limited searching and difficult page switching features. 40% of all items listed will remain unsold after 4 months, according to their own statistics.
Cost: ~~$20~~ ~~Absolutely Free~~ ~~$70~~ $7 per month
This new venue is still trying to find itself. According to Quantcast market research "This site attracts a less affluent audience"*.
Many of the claims of this site lack credibility:
They claim to be "absolutely free." This is true only if you ignore the monthly and other fees or get your friends to sign up for $70 a month in non-free services.

They tout their massive advertising program, but in truth it seems to have little reality; they hype their 2-million ad views but this has a value under $800 which is hardly much at all. While they "plan" on a $7 Million to $10 Million advertising campeign they don't actually seem to have the funding or the advertising contracts for it. In short, this site has a significant "reality distortion field" in operation. That is, the truth seems to be more than the typical distance from the claims.
*ShopHandmade attracts "an affluent audience" according to Quantcast.

What is a Gallery?
Galleries are a way of showcasing handmade goods. Galleries are limited to only a few of the best items, hand picked by the shop owners themselves. The contents of each gallery are changed regularly so that they are fresh and interesting.
How much does it cost?
Featuring a product in a gallery costs as little as 10¢ per day. The price is whatever you wish to pay--you set the price. When a Gallery slot becomes available it is automatically filled with the item that has the highest Gallery bid price. On very popular days the price may raise, but if you are interested in Gallery you can set a low bid price (starting at just 10¢) and wait for an opening.

How long are items listed?
Once admitted to the Gallery, items will be displayed for 24 hours or until the item becomes sold out. (If there is a quantity of the item then it is sold out after the last one has been sold.)
Items are admitted to the Gallery throughout the day as items sell, so it is not a midnight-to-midnight type of arrangement.
The number of items allowed into each Gallery is limited so that each one gets excellent exposure. The number of slots in each Gallery may vary from day to day and from one Gallery to another. Galleries sometimes are seasonal so new Galleries are added occasionally.

Do I need to use Galleries, really?
No. Most items are sold through the regular listings without ever being featured in a Gallery. Galleries are intended only for your best, most special items. Galleries are a nice way of promoting your items and your store and they can be a very cost effective form of advertising. But you want to use your judgment of whether it makes sense to be featured in a Gallery. We certainly do not want to push you into paying anything to sell your items when you really can list and sell your items for free! A Gallery will just help you sell more items more quickly.

How can my products be featured in a Gallery?
To list your item in a gallery:

Go to your store Inventory Management Center.
Click on the item that you would like to list in a Gallery.
Click on the "Galleries" tab at the top of the page.
Choose the galleries you wish to be listed in and enter a bid price.

Promoting your goods is the fun part of ShopHandmade.
It's important your crafts get seen. And publicity is what it's about. Make no mistake, visibility is key to selling your wares.

Now is the best time to sell
The "beta" startup time is actually the best time to open a shop and to start selling. We have thousands of customers visiting daily. Since many shops haven't opened yet, you have less competition. Your products will get tremendous exposure without any premium advertising. With little competition and high traffic, one reason that there are less products on our site is that customers snap them up!

Galleries
The ShopHandmade Gallery is the perfect place to advertise your goodies. These high exposure spots exist on the Gallery menu and in the Shop page. At ShopHandmade you can have your product be featured in a Gallery Showcase for 24 hours for as little as 10¢. To list an item in a Gallery just choose any item in your Store Inventory and then choose the Gallery options. Here is more information on Galleries.

Have a Sale!
Another way to advertise your goods is to run a sale. You are totally in control of these sales: Go to any item in your Store Inventory and on the "Sale" page just click to put the item on sale. You can choose 5%, 10%, 20%, 33% or 50% sale prices. Your item will then appear in the sale pages and be highlighted. Every large retailer knows the power of running a sale to attract attention to their store. And the power of a sale is in your control.

Top-Up
When an item is first listed it appears at the top of any listing. As new items are added, they move into the top position and existing listings push down in the list. But the speed with shich items move down isn't the same for every item. Our system presents items which are more relevant more towards the top; it uses a number of factors including relivance to try to show each customer the items that are most important to them. It is much the same as how Google decides which articles and ads to display first.
The "Top-Up" feature allows you to bring any item up to the front of the list as if it were a new listing. This also extends the life of your listing. The cost is just 25¢ to Top-Up any item.

Holiday & Rotational Sales
From time to time we'll have Holiday and Rotational sales. You can choose to participate in these. Sign up for our newsletters and be informed of upcoming opportunities.

How do buyers know about ShopHandmade?
We have full page, full color advertisements in numerous national magazines. Tens of millions of people see our advertisements. We buy tens of millions of ads throughout the Internet. ShopHandmade is featured on our corporate sponsor's home page and in their promotions.
More importantly, our sponsors promote ShopHandmade on their web sites and in their newsletters. They have hundreds of thousands of visitors every month. This is tremendous exposure.

Can I sell items that my friends have hand made?
Sure. As long as the items that you are selling are hand made and are not mass produced then you are welcome to sell them. We recognize that sometimes it's more convenient for groups of people to share a cooperative store and we encourage cooperation.

How do I get paid?
Buyers pay you through PayPal. Our system makes it easy. After purchasing an item, Buyers just click a button and PayPal provides a safe, secure payment method. You never give us your password. We never touch your money…it is sent directly from the buyer to you.
To link up your PayPal account, just register with ShopHandmade using the same email address that you have registered with PayPal. Everything happens automatically, even seeing which orders have been paid for in your Shophandmade control panel.
Buyers pay you, we do not get involved nor do we charge you a fee for handling your money.

Do I need to charge Sales Tax or have a busienss license?
Sales tax, business licenses, and similar matters are a governmental matter. You should contact your local government. Sometimes you do not need a business license, but this varies.
If you need to charge sales tax then this is your responsibility. Most sellers build sales tax into their price and pay it out of their gross receipts and don't charge the customer extra. Our system does not have the ability to add sales tax to the purchase amounts.

How does your supplies recycling work?
We encourage the recycling of good, reusable craft supplies. This is good for the environment and an inexpensive way to buy supplies. We all have left over supplies: a half sheet of stickers, a used rubber stamp, an extra left-over bottle of paint. Why not let somebody else enjoy these items?
List these items in the "Supplies" section, not the handmade goods section.

What if I only want to sell to US or Canadian customers?
Simply don't enter any shipping price for the areas you don't want to ship to. Our system will only allow sales to the areas that you supply a shipping price.
But note that if you do not want to ship to a region, leave the price blank. If you enter 0.00 then that means you are willing to ship for free!

Are any types of items prohibited?
Everything must be suitable for all audiences. While we do not market to children or target them in our marketing efforts, we certainly want our web site to be something that is family friendly. So no items which are adult oriented or hateful are allowed.
While this may seem like common sense we'll mention it anyway: What you sell must be legal. So no handmade nuclear bombs, please.

It's Free

Having a store, listing items and selling on ShopHandmade can be free.

Our Sponsors will pay your listing fees so you can list and sell items at no cost. Why? They are the best and largest craft stores on the Internet. They hope you will consider purchasing your supplies from them. There is no obligation or pressure.

Click here to learn more.