If you are just starting up a handmade jewelry business, you are probably feeling a bit overwhelmed and maybe are wondering how you will make your jewelry shop stand out from all the other handmade jewelry shops on Etsy.
At first glance, it seems like there are SO many handmade jewelry makers – and you wonder how you can ever compete (and be successful!!) against so many other sellers?
Well the good news is that you can compete, and you absolutely can be successful.
So, ready? Let’s dive in.
Now before we start going through the topics in this article, I want you to know that I have all sorts of articles to get you started, not just this jewelry one.
Most of the articles and videos that I have on Tizzit.co apply to opening a jewelry business— because they cover all of the things that you need to know to sell any handmade products – including handmade jewelry!
So you will want to read those articles to learn how to build your business – from setting it up to branding to marketing – and read this one to get additional information pertaining specifically to jewelry.
This article focuses on the small details that make selling handmade jewelry a little different and that you really want to be aware of and focus on if you sell jewelry versus anything else.
The first thing I recommend you do before anything else is download the free Maker’s Roadmap guide. It will take you from picking a business model to pricing your jewelry, show you how to create successful product collections and launch your shop, and everything after that such as marketing and growing your business.
DOWNLOAD THE MAKERS ROADMAP!
Once you have your strategy all mapped out, this article will help you dial in on the particularities of selling JEWELRY! In addition to my advice, you will also hear some great advice from some of our HQ members who are successful jewelry makers and sellers.
OK – Let’s start with a really common question I hear:
My short answer is, yes and no.
What I mean by this is yes -there are a lot of other sellers, but no – because it’s still possible to stand out.
I actually have an article about this called How To Make Your Shop Stand Out From The Handmade Or Etsy Crowd that will guide you through the details so you are aware of all the ways you can help your shop stand out.
And if you are really worried about competition, you can read How to stop worrying about your HANDMADE BUSINESS COMPETITION (so you can grow your shop instead).
What you really need to remember about competition is that it really comes down to not doing what everyone else is doing. . .
. . . so my next bit of advice would be to create jewelry with your own unique style!
Actually, Bree, Tizzit HQ member and the owner of Two Silver Moons – which has had over 5,000 sales! – says it well:
“The next bit of advice would be to do unique work. It is really difficult to compete by selling items similar to those sold by many other stores. Competing by price is pretty much impossible on Etsy.”
Which actually brings us to our first tip, which is:
Before we dive in your jewelry design style and aesthetics, I want to quickly mention one somewhat obvious – but often missed – piece of advice, which is:
Bree of Two Silver Moons also emphasized this very important point:
I would suggest getting a really good foundation in jewelry making skills. I have seen a lot of badly made jewelry on Etsy and those stores do not survive long. And talking about surviving – I have seen people do some scary stuff that is dangerous to their health. So, especially for metalsmiths, getting a good foundation is important for safety as well.
Great points!
When you sell handmade jewelry, you want to offer a consistent look/style across your products and collections.
It’s okay to experiment with different looks behind the scenes, and it’s okay to change your style and pivot your shop style if you want to focus on a different niche. But you want to avoid having your shop be a display of all the different styles you have experimented with – you want to find your style and build your business around it.
Even if you’re selling one of a kind jewelry, you want it to all be linked together by the same style or theme.
For example, let’s say you sold a certain style of jewelry for a little while and then you discover that you have a different style that’s emerging and you want to move your shop in that direction.
That is OK – you never want to stop being creative!
But when you are trying out this new style, you don’t want to have your shop be a display of all of your old jewelry and random pieces of this new style that you’re trying out.
Figure out your new design aesthetic before switching your shop over.
Here is a great example of a shop moving to a new style over time from Tania, creator and owner of You Make My Clay.
Tanya is a Tizzit HQ member who started her business making clay floral jewelry. But over time she found herself getting creatively stuck, and was losing her enthusiasm for her shop.
Tania told me that when she first started her handmade business, she researched different options and chose something she thought others were looking for and would like – elegant, vintage, and nature-inspired jewelry.
The opening of her business went well, but when it came time to design her next collection, she struggled to come up with ideas.
Then she started an Instagram account, and she would sit and struggle to come up with captions because the jewelry she was making was something that others loved, but not something she really connected with!
Her enthusiasm started to ebb away, and Tania knew from the little alarm bells going off in her head that something needed to change.
In the meantime, Tania had been making cute, tiny jewelry pieces with a focus on animals as gifts for her family and friends. People started asking her if she sold them, and this gave her an idea:
She opened a second shop to try selling them, just to see what would happen.
Well, a LOT happened! She opened her new business, Make My Clay, and soon it had quadrupled the sales of her original business!
Long story short – she closed up her original shop and switched to making and selling products she enjoys and is passionate about, she is never at a loss for product ideas or post captions, they just flow!
I just LOVE this story because it showcases how important it is to let your business change and grow over time, and to listen to your creative gut.
Tania experimented with her idea on the side, saw it was very well received, and transitioned her handmade business to this new theme.
And she is a wonderful example of having a handmade business that you feel a real connection with.
Unless you are only going to be manufacturing your pieces whilst someone else handles all the marketing and promotion, I can’t stress enough how important it is to really know your style and stick to it. I went from drawing a blank every time I tried to come up with a new design to being able to create a huge list of ideas for future collections – that looks like a shopping list for a wedding banquet!
Where my knowledge of vintage fashion was very limited and I’d sweat bucketloads over a blank Instagram image description, I could go on for days about the extraordinary talents of a seemingly lackluster animal or be enthused and inspired by the eagerness of an owner talking about a beloved pet.
And while I don’t discourage anyone from checking out trends (I myself benefited from the sloth boom) make sure it’s something you won’t tire of or struggle to understand.
You will need that love when you’re in the middle of the Christmas rush season and you’re making the same pair of your best seller earrings for the 100th time. You will also need the enthusiasm when you’re creating regular content for your Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest account. Fake it till you make it won’t work for the long term commitment that is a small business.
This is beautiful advice, thank you Tania for sharing your story!
Now, once you choose the style and aesthetic you want to focus on, you will also want to define your “niche,” which is point #2:
Everyone talks about niching down . . . but what does it really mean?
It’s similar to style, but a bit different.
Let’s look at our jewelry market as an example. When you niche down in this market, you are finding your niche inside of the jewelry market – because the jewelry market is huge so niching down is the way you stand out.
It is also the way you avoid competition – you reduce the competition by selling to a sub-market inside of the jewelry niche.
So your niche becomes an important way in which you can actually stand out.
This is more important than in any other craft niche because jewelry is such a broad term and has such a high amount of competition.
Let me show you a few examples:
First let’s take a look at these pictures from a shop called Buckaroo Bling, created by Tizzit HQ member Jelena.
When you look on Jelena’s website, you can see that she’s very clear on who she’s selling jewelry for: if you are shopping and see her pictures you’ll know right away if her jewelry is your style because she has created a niche selling these absolutely lovely western jewelry styles with a cowgirl flair.
And the thing is – contrary to what you might think, niching down and being very specific about what you are selling and for WHO you create your products doesn’t actually push people who don’t perfectly fit that description away..
… Seriously, for example… I look at that jewelry and I want to go buy myself one of those hats and outfits so that I can buy her jewelry and dress like the women in the pictures!
Niching down doesn’t push customers away – it attracts more!
Now let’s look at a completely different jewelry business, check out these pictures from Tania’s You Make My Clay Shop.
These are so darn cute, as I scroll down the product page I keep thinking “Oh my gosh I want that one and wait that one too!” You literally can feel how much fun she has making these products.
Now both Tania and Jelena are handmade jewelry shop owners, but can you see that they don’t compete with each other, not even one bit?
Because they each niched down – Tania is selling animal clay jewelry and Jelena is selling cowgirl jewelry – so they each appeal to a very distinct and very different buyer.
When I asked Jelena what her advice would be to jewelry shop owners that were just starting out, she said exactly what we’ve just talked about:
“Research and find your niche!”
Jelena knows just how successful you can be if you take the time to do your homework before opening your shop to find the niche that is a good match for your passion and your skills.
I’m going to be introducing you to more Tizzit HQ jewelry shop owners in this article, and you will see that how they also have their own niche – which is a super-important part of their success
The moment you niche down, you attract better customers who are going to be more attracted to your products— so you reduce your competition and increase your sales.
OK let’s move on to our next point, creating collections.
After you niche down, you want to create collections within your niche.
These collections may have different price points, some may be upsells and others may be in a lower price range – but each will still have a cohesive look and style that fits within the niche you are selling in.
I won’t go into detail for this article, but I have an article that walks you through exactly how to. Once you have your product line all planned out, you are ready to think about your branding.
So once you know your niche, and the aesthetic and style that you’re going for, you need to communicate that effectively to the world so that you attract the right customer. And that’s essentially what branding does for you.
Now when you think about branding, you’re going to start thinking about your business name, and you’re going to want to put it on a business card.
And while these two things are important, I want to warn you here that it’s easy to get stuck deciding on a business name . . . and hold up opening your shop because you’re wanting to get the perfect business name decided on before you order your business cards.
Make sure you don’t get caught up in the trap of procrastinating on your name for so long that you don’t open your shop. It’s easy enough to change your name later.
And unless you’re selling at craft fairs you really don’t need business cards right off the bat, you’re going to be fine without them. So I guess I want to encourage you not to worry too much about that.
If you need some help deciding what to name your business, I actually have an article that talks more about choosing a business name called How to Name Your Craft Business or Etsy Shop.
This article will help you choose your name and move on to branding, which is very very important.
When you are ready to work on branding for your business, I have two very important resources for you.
The first is a new article called 8 Steps For Branding Your Handmade Business, which will give you a great overview of how to brand your handmade jewelry business.
And better yet, I have an entire course about How to Create an Irresistible Brand in Tizzit HQ if you prefer to have step by step instructions to guide you through the branding process.
Let’s talk a bit about the importance of branding here.
Branding is much more than your name and the colors of your logo . . .
. . . it is the experience and the emotions that you make someone feel, so much so that they want to purchase your product to keep feeling this way and to bring that feeling into their life.
I want to show you a few Tizzit HQ members that do a wonderful job at this.
First is Prachi, creator and owner of Prachi’s Bohemian Art.
As you can see, Prachi makes these absolutely amazing macramé earrings. But what I want to show you today is not just her beautiful earrings, but something she is doing over on her website.
Prachi also launched a blog, and what she’s selling in this blog is a lifestyle.
In each blog article she’s talking about outfits, and as you can see in the pictures, she has these incredible photos of coordinated outfits complemented by her jewelry in a very lovely flat lay arrangement that makes you want to jump into the picture and put all this on.
These photos help people get to know her brand. And her brand is not just her jewelry, it’s the feeling that women have when they experience her shop and her blog, it’s how they imagine themselves feeling when they wear her pieces, how they can picture themselves in those images. Her whole brand conveys a certain feel to the shopper – not just her color palette and her logo but what she shares, talks about, and communicates to her potential customers. Her brand makes women feel confident and strong, it’s much more than *just* jewelry.
That’s what branding is, it’s this experience that you want to recreate for your potential customers, and it’s so very important, so much more than your name, or the colors in your color palette.
The question you want to ask yourself is: what is the world that I’m building for my customers? And how do I make them feel so that they are wanting to buy my products to keep feeling this way?
Next let’s look at Nilla, creator and owner of Designs by Nilla Webber.
Nilla has made some absolutely amazing videos where she shows behind-the-scenes footage about her business and her process, and she does it in a way where she’s actually highlighting things that customers are interested in knowing.
The shoppers who watch the video get to know her, her shop, and the feel of her shop.
And so again, it’s not about a logo or the color of her website. For Nilla it’s about showing you who she is and how her products are made to inspire women to feel confident – to make a difference.
Now let’s move on to our final point – pricing.
Another really common question people ask about selling handmade jewelry is:
“Is it profitable?”
And the simple answer is: “Yes, if you make it so!”
Of course, if you underprice your product it won’t be. But absolutely yes if you price your product correctly!
There definitely ARE enough people in the world willing to buy your jewelry at a price that would make you a profit and a nice healthy margin so that you can run a successful profitable business.
But if you underprice your product, there is nothing anyone can do to help you.
Jelena of Buckaroo Bling had some good advice about pricing:
“Make sure you price your products properly for both wholesale and retail. You might not want to sell wholesale at the moment, but knowing your cost, calculating the wholesale price, and basing your retail price on that would guarantee you’re not working for peanuts or, even worse, losing money.”
A lot of people skip the wholesale price because they think they’re not going to sell wholesale . . and then they end up selling retail at wholesale prices. That severely undercuts your potential to actually make your business profitable.
Pricing is an extremely important thing to be sure that you do right, and I’ve created a Tizzit HQ course called the Handmade pricing masterclass that walks you through each step of the pricing process (workbooks and all!) to be sure you set your prices to maximize profit and demand.
One final point about pricing:
When it comes to pricing jewelry it’s even more important than in any other niche that you look at perceived value before setting a price for your products.
The perceived value of your products determines who wants to buy your product, and what they are willing to pay for it.
It’s the key to selling MORE jewelry pieces and at higher prices!
You can learn more about perceived value in my article called what are handmade products *really* worth!
I know we have covered a lot of stuff today and your head may be spinning a bit— creating and growing a handmade business involves a LOT of planning and strategy.
If you want step by step help, Tizzit HQ has a course for each of these important points— pricing, branding, collection, and everything else in between, PLUS all you’ll need to GROW your shop and marketing: Etsy SEO, Pinterest & Instagram marketing . . . Tizzit HQ has a course for each and every detail.
Click the link to learn more, we would love to have you join The Tizzit HQ community!
BECOME A TIZZIT HQ MEMBER AND TURN THE HOBBY YOU LOVE INTO INCOME YOU’LL ADORE
Thanks for reading and until next time, aurevoir!
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