Find Handmade Advice

Handmade Marketing Strategies for Artisans

Handmade Small Business

Finding the right business advice can be a real challenge when you are starting out with your own handmade creations. 

Motivation, Inspiration and Real Life Action
to Build Your Creative Enterprise

Are you living the creative life - as a maker, creator, designer or artisan - and have you decided to step up your own production, your creation and your brand so that you can really make a go of it and grow?

Hi - I'm Brendan Murphy and I have been working with my own handmade creations since 2007.  Admittedly - I'll tell you straight up - my handmade creations are Gourmet Hampers and Fruit Baskets - and I've been making them and selling them online since2007. 

And I have made coming up to $2million in sales - so I have experienced the whole spectrum of what can happen in small business and the highs and lows of selling online.

My own start in business was not very auspicious - I was working shifts and not really liking it -I actually HATED it everyday - BUT I told myself this is what people do when they become grown ups - they do something they hate everyday for the rest of their lives....  Then I thought to myself - that can't be right!  So I went out and did some research and instead of renovating the house or getting a new kitchen (I have to thank my wife for her patience on this one) we bought a business.

Content Marketing for Find Handmade

Back then the business was completely different - it was a wholesale promtions supplier to clubs and hotels up and down the coast.  So I was driving around delivering to  clubs and meeting with marketing managers and doing accounts and stuff...  And then the GFC hit and it was pretty much over.  The whole segment of the industry virtually closed down - smoking bans and responsible gaming meant the clubs and hotels shrunk and my orders dried up.

So I had to think fast and reinvent the business.  That's when we went online and so began my wonderful journey learning the real world of internet marketing, online shopping and e-commerce. It has been an amazing journey - I've gone from months where I barely made  single sale to months where we do over $200k - in a single month!  Being online also gives me the freedom to work from home - as I write this my 18 month old is bumbling around under my desk - my four year old is out on the deck and my seven year old is reading (I hope not on minecraft?) in her room. Working from home, selling products online and knowing I have the freedom and flexibility to pretty much work my own schedule.

That is what you can achieve - whether you want more freedom or more flexibility - it's there for you.

But le's get back to what this is all about.  I've met many people through my years in business, and the most passionate and creative individuals all tend to have a brilliant start up concept and product just that they stall at the stage of going to the next step.

 And too often the main reason they say they can't go any further is because they don't have any money.  "I'll do it when I get some cash behind me" they all say, and resign themselves to struggling to with zero cashflow or near enough to zero.  It doesn't have to be this way.

Handmade Markets Sydney

Find Handmade Creative Artisan Websites

Find Handmade Markets - Online Shopping

 
I write for FindHandmade to specifically give creative artisan entrepreneurs like you the best resources to sell your products online – by sharing the best advice from

• Local Australians and successful makers in my personal interviews
• Authority Bloggers – re-purposed to meet our specific Australian niche
• Online Marketing Experts – cutting through the spin for easy-to-implement methods
• Unique Tutorials and How to Guides so you can actually do it yourself
• One on One Mentoring and Complete Marketing Audits for targeted results
• My own real-life successful online selling experience

Selling Stallholder Ideas

 

The reality for many people I meet at the markets and interview as stallholders for findhandmade.com.au is that they are selling face to face at the markets and maybe getting a trickle of sales through their facebook page. 

No website, no overall marketing strategy, and a hit and miss approach to repeat customers or out of area sales.

Now this is all fine to continue a hand to mouth existence, but to really make an impact and generate enough sales for you to spend less time going to and from markets and give you the freedom to follow your passion – making your handmade projects – you need to be selling online.

I am not about keeping secret knowledge so I can keep invoicing you – my business model is for you to refer me on to your network and I gain new business that way, not by keeping you a prisoner of your own ignorance. 

Plus, it’s just good karma to share the knowledge! 

I’ve seen people like you sign up with a corporate website development firm and watched as their business faltered and withered under the burden of high price quotes for small changes. 

Or being told that an edit is not possible – and then the business is stuck in limbo, with the business owner not wanting to pay for website changes, and just leaving the site to go stale and perform poorly.

My name is Brendan Murphy, welcome to Findhandmade.com.au I have been in small business since 2006, selling gourmet food online in a very successful business, and now I am sharing my online expertise and training with people I admire, connect with and simply want to work with – handmade artisans.

The whole idea of handmade is exactly what I am about.  I want to work with passionate, enthusiastic people backing themselves to build a business and a brand online.

Split Testing

Split testing is a measurable way of keeping tabs on your website and proving whether certain approaches to marketing and promotions are effective.  At Newcastle Digital, we like to test your site so it does not become a “Billboard in the Desert” with a single lost traveller stumbling by each week – which is nice and pretty but not much use in raking in extra turnover.  You want visitors, converted into customers so each morning when you check your email you have a few nice paypal payments and some orders to ship.

Promoting Internal Pages

Promoting Internal Pages and Deep Links

A well designed home page of your website should intuitively lead visitors towards where they want to go within the site.  Over time, visitors will prefer certain internal pages to others, with the dominant deep links becoming search result worthy standalone.  This is where the internal pages of your site also become destinations in their own right. 

Give Visitors what they expect - to drill down into the content to find sub-niches, topics of interest and other relevant content that is worth investigating – including outbound links to authority sites.

Submit your site in the best website directory for free!
This business is listed under Australia Directory
By spending your limited online marketing budget reaching out to like minded individuals who value the content you have surrounded your website with (like blogs, social media, domain name match sites). 

Capturing the attention of the online reader is important when too many articles are awash with meaningless drivel.  This means there is a genuine opportunity for fresh content-driven copy writing for niche specific articles.  Newcastle Digital offers a comprehensive hand written article service.

The effort saved by targeting your search engine optimisation efforts to three or twelve key article topics, and then promoting them across the web as stand alone pages of interest, will generate a handsome legacy of linkjuice for your primary site.  SEO can be done in two week campaigns for $1000 – this gets you one the front page for your keywords.

For many enthused creatives, SEO starts a lifelong journey of research, entrepreneurship and personal development.  For others it is a drudge.  I love it and will deliver on what I offer.