How to sell crafts on eBay

Build your craft business with the eBay marketplace. There are 187 million users on the platform worldwide, which makes it a great place to sell your products.

Although eBay makes the process relatively straightforward, there are a few ways to get the most out of the platform. So it’s helpful to know how you can start strong and get your crafts into customers’ homes.

This guide discusses how to sell crafts on eBay, which includes:

• Setting up your store
• Listing your products
• Promoting your business
• Building relationships with customers
• Managing your finances

Before you sell anything, you’ll need to sign up for an account. So, before you start on how to sell crafts on eBay, it requires you to provide an email address.

You can create an email address with Gmail, which is an inbox that you access with a Google account. Since you’re likely to use the search platform anyway, it may be the most convenient address for your business.

With your email ready, you can set up a business account on the eBay registration page. It will ask you for more details, which include your business’ name and address.

Once you register your account, the eBay platform may ask you to verify your account through email. After that process, you’re ready to list products.

When it comes to how to sell crafts on eBay, you can list products on a desktop or your phone. But before you do, there are a few essential fees to understand.

• You can list 1,000 products for free a month before you are charged 35p per additional one. 
• eBay gets 12.8% of the total sale amount when you sell on the platform. 
• There’s a fixed 30p charge when someone orders your goods.
• To add a “buy it now option” (customers can pay a set price and not wait for bidding to end) it costs 50p. 
• For your listing to stand out in the marketplace, you can also add a subtitle (another line of text) for £2.

Once you create your listing, it doesn’t guarantee that someone will buy it. You need to get your product in front of likely customers, so you can avoid it sitting among the other thousands on eBay.

You can use social media marketing to promote your store and direct people to it. If you engage a customer on a social platform through your content or advertising, they are more likely to click on your link to buy from you.

Find its USP (unique selling point), which is something about your crafts that people can’t get elsewhere. If you know what’s special about your goods, you can centre your social posts on that.

It’s also crucial to know who’s likely to buy your crafts, because it might change the way you get across your message. That means you should find your target audience for your business.

You can look at your competition with other shops who sell similar things and see how they market their products. Perhaps look at the people who leave reviews on their sales and find similarities between them.

With ideas about your ideal audience, you can use the social media platforms they’d be likely to use and speak to them in a way they understand.

For example, to target young adults you can use TikTok and take advantage of viral challenges to show off your crafts.

When you get your first few sales, don’t forget that you want to build a long-term business on eBay. That means it’s essential to develop an ongoing relationship with customers.

Let customers see you as the craft maker, and use that personal touch to your advantage. When you communicate with them, you can speak in a relatable way that stands out from the larger companies.

Take your authenticity further and create a story for your business that people will remember. That can be a narrative about yourself (the owner), your unique craft process or perhaps an objective you have for the shop.

For example, your business can specialise in Ukraine themed jewellery. Your story could be to help children through a war and you can donate a percentage of each sale to a related charity.

Your brand is how the public and your customers view your business, so there are a few things that can play a role in the way you build trust.

Branding can include your:

• Name — be known as something that represents what you offer.
• Logo — have an icon to add credibility to your shop.
• Colours — use the same two or three colours in your marketing.
• Tone of voice — speak to customers in one way across your marketing (e.g. conversational).

With all of those elements together, it’s easy for people to remember who you are and hopefully decide to visit your eBay store.

Aside from eBay fees, you also want to make sure your prices can account for costs to your overall business. If you keep on top of how much you spend on each area, you can find it challenging to know what to charge.

With sound financial management, you can understand what you spend. It’s easy to look at the money from a sale and forget about what went into the process of your crafts.

If you create a separate business account, you won’t spend anything from your personal finances and build a business that starts to generate profits.

Countingup is a business account with built-in accounting software, and it’s an app that allows you to manage your money seamlessly. 

The cash flow insights feature means that you can see how much comes in and out of your business, so you can cover costs and pay yourself.

Get started for free.

For more information, see:

• How to succeed with bookkeeping for a handmade crafts business
• Do I need a business licence to sell crafts
• 5 fun and easy Christmas crafts to sell