How to Sell Jewelry on Etsy
Etsy.com is a popular, growing site that sells hand-made items from third-party sellers. The sellers create the items and list them for sale through the site. The buyer then purchases the items through the site and the seller ships them directly to the seller. The site is similar to eBay, but all of the items for sale are handmade, and many are one of a kind.
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Instructions
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Sign up for an Etsy account (see Resources). Etsy accounts are free and require a valid email address, a user ID name, a password and a credit card number. The credit card is to verify your identity and to protect against buyers being defrauded by sellers who don’t ship items. Confirm your email address by responding to the confirmation email sent to the address you provided to the site.
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Set up your free Etsy shop with a few customized features. The site allows the easy creation of a banner that will decorate your shop page. It also allows each seller to write up a bio about themselves or their business. Both of these options will make your shop more memorable and create an Etsy presence for your items.
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Photograph your jewelry items with the macro setting on your digital camera. Most digital cameras have this setting, but if yours doesn’t, simply stand back a few steps from the jewelry item and zoom in with the zoom feature. This will keep reflections from the flash from obscuring the picture. If you take the picture in bright light, you may be able to get a good picture without a flash, but some of the smaller details of the piece may not show up in the photos.
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Create a listing for the item. This includes writing a detailed description of the item. In your description, be sure to detail what types of materials the items are made of. Plastic sometimes looks like metal when photographed, and a buyer can become angry if he feels he was mislead by your listing. It’s especially important for earrings, as many people are allergic to nickel and other metals commonly found in earrings.
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Decide which types of payments you will accept. Many Etsy sellers use PayPal, but checks and money orders are also options.
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Choose a category and keywords for your item. The categories are simple, broad categories of jewelry types. The keywords you choose should be the best descriptive words you can think of that accurately describe the item. Use the type of item, the materials that went into it and the color as keywords to bring in the most buyers. If the jewelry is in an interesting shape, such as a moon, cat or cloud, be sure to use that as a keyword as well.
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Decide on a price for your item. This should be high enough to reflect that amount of time and care you put into it as well as the cost of materials. It should not, however, be so high that no one will buy it. Look through the site for the prices of similar items if you aren’t sure what to charge.
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