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.

Finding a Stallholder at Local Markets

 Stallholder at Your Local Markets?

Detailed conversations with the handmade stallholders, #MarketsDirectory

 There's so much to consider when you are weighing up becoming a stallholder with your own handmade artisan arts and crafts in Australia.  We are out every weekend interviewing established existing stallholders and finding exactly what makes their story successful when so many others have tried in the past.

For regular updates and insider hints and tips on getting the best result for you online presence in the digital space as a stallholder, stay tuned and follow this blog.

Find Handmade Australia Big Cartel

Find Handmade Australia on Big Cartel

It's exciting to announce our first bigcartel store for Find Handmade Australia - we are diversifying our presence across multiple formats to give the greatest end user satisfaction.  We have seen the positive reviews for Big Cartel and love how they have a big cartel handmade section.

There are advantages Etsy sellers have using their own website that BigCartel seems designed for.  And if you are a markets stallholder in Australia, BigCartel could be the perfect website builder for you.

So here is Find Handmade Australia on Big Cartel 

Getting Your Stall at the Markets

Almost every weekend I meet people at the markets with a stall and a website who are not really getting full value from the website simply because it is not optimised and working effectively as an online shop.

This means your site isn't easily found when people search Google.

This means your site is not getting traffic.

This means you may have lost momentum - or that you don't know what to do next.

Sure, you may have ticked the box for an online shop, but it isn’t actually doing much for you.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU?

And you wouldn't dare ask the web guy to edit the site because all that leads to is another $800 invoice. So you do nothing, and the sites ages, and the missed opportunities stagnate and the whole project stutters and stumbles to a halt.

That’s when you call me – I can get you unstuck and things moving again!  See what I do at find handmade and read about what |I offer at organic digital media agency.

Selling Handmade Stallholder

I’m at the markets somewhere, most weekends

I travel to markets each weekend to meet and interview emerging and established stallholders and keep abreast of the ‘word on the street’ so I know what you’re going through and where you want to be. 

Plus, I pay my mortgage and support my wife and three kids solely through my own websites – so I know what it takes to get an online up and running and busy with customers and web traffic.

In our travels working our own online businesses and as web creatives we have met plenty of enthusiastic passionate people with emerging artisan businesses who are perhaps not quite where they want to be when it comes to selling online.

Yes, it is hard work, but getting your handmade products and services out there so you can easily found online in search engines is as simple as a $10 listing in the handmadebyme.info directory.  Meeting like-minded passionate people who share your vision and appreciate the freedom and flexibility on offer of working from home is something to treasure.

Just imagine, setting yourself free from exhausting commuting hours, of sitting through mindless team meetings, of sitting surrounded by beige cubicles with staff eating noodles from styrofoam cups.  Yes, it is possible and yes, you are almost there simply by having a realistic dream and some honest talent.

Learning to be assertive and setting your own limits and goals is all a part of being in command of your own business.  Once your handmade enterprise escalates beyond word of mouth and attending weekend markets, you will appreciate how dynamically you will value your time.  It is literally like achieving a lifelong goal to finally gain some work life balance to appreciate the simple freedom of choosing when you work and which job offers you choose to act upon.  Join handmadebyme.info now for $10.

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.

Weekend Markets Guide

Markets Farmers Expansion

Like all markets, growing your production is a steady process.
Seasonal Conditions alone each year impacts heavily on both amount produced as well as overall vintage, that affects horticulture, aquaculture, across all farmers markets and local weekend business.  No matter how good your practices and procedures, a poor quality harvest will severly limit your product potential.