Helping Designers and Resellers to Learn Internet Marketing Strategies and Tactics that will Attract Customers and Sell Jewelry Online.

"I trust everyone. But I don't trust the evil in them".

I do not remember the name of the movie where I heard it for the first time but it is very true. Of course I believe that you should trust your friends and that is why we call them so and we expect them to help us out when we are in need. The thing is that not every advice, even one meant for good, is what will make your business better. Why did I say "techie friend"? Well, because I know from experience that techie friends are special. I myself have fallen into that trap.

original photo by David Cornejo
Let us say, for example, that you found a special niche for some extravagant bracelets and came up with several designs. Now you want to put them online to test to see if somebody is interested. You go to that friend of yours who works as a software engineer (or something like that) building sites for an XYZ company and ask "What should I do?" The odds are that you may end up spending a bunch of money and 3 months later you might have an e-commerce website which is able to handle half of the Amazon. You will ask yourself "Do I need all this?" And your techie friend will tell you "Of course. What will you do if you suddenly have a lot of traffic, but that cheap website that you've been asking for simply cannot handle it?" I'd say - party. You'd love to have that kind of trouble - that means that your product works. However, ask yourself should you spend a lot of money and time in advance, while these days you can test your ideas overnight and virtually free? Think about that.

That is the most frequent question that I receive from handcrafted jewelry directory members.

It usually goes like this: "I spent $X,XXX.xx and I have my lovely website/shopping cart up and running for several month by now and this whole online thing DOES NOT work. Nobody bought anything except couple of my close friends. What should I do to make it really work?"

Well, I am not sure that I can answer that in one single post and that was the reason for me to start this blog and talk about strategies and techniques that we can use to sell jewelry online.

The short answer is this "make more friends". Let me stress it little more - make a system, which will help you to make more and more friends. And there is a very simple reason to do that - people do not buy from complete strangers. Not a website nor a shopping cart will make your jewelry business successful but long and lasting relationship with people will.

You may say: "But I do not want do all that marketing stuff - I just like to make jewelry". Well, nothing wrong with that. You simply have a choice. If you just like beading or wiring gemstones then it's wonderful if that makes you happy but it usually called a hobby. If you want to be in business you should be ready to do what's necessary to produce a good product and then put it in front of interested people. And that is going to take time and effort to learn and act. Fortunately it is not that hard, long and complex as you may think.

If you just starting out with a web presence for your jewelry creations I would suggest you to start from building a community of people who likes what you do. And it is so easy nowadays when we have all this easy to use technology in our hands. Build and grow that community. Find a way share your achievements, products, thoughts, expectation and experience regularly to keep and improve that connection. Make it possible for you community to talk back to you and let you know what they think and learn to listen. Thus, you can find out what people want and what they would buy from you. What is also important that once you figure out a right product you will already have a crowd that knows and trusts you.

I see that most of the jewelry sites' owners do it exactly the other way around. They create a product and then they crave for buyers. This `traditional` approach to business, in my opinion, is responsible to the common saying that "9 out of 10 businesses fail". That is because people bet and create products "out of the blue" instead of finding a market first then ask what the market wants and then create just that. This way works every time if have enough guts and patience to follow all the way through.

Well, which way you do it?

Oh yeah. Your really should.

It is not really a marketing tip, but since we are talking about selling jewelry online we should make sure that we do optimize our product web pages for search engines like Google.

For those who are not familiar with what is a page title - it's a text, which you will see at the very top of your browser window when looking at a web page. Inside of the html you will see something like this: <title>My Page Title Here</title>.

The same text Google searchers will see when they will try to find your products. Try this search for yourself jasper bracelet. As you can see in the Google search results it is a really good idea to have for your page with jasper bracelets a title like this: "Jasper Bracelets | Your Site Name Here". Not diving into search engine optimization details too much (btw: let me know if you want me to), you should have a title which is very relevant to the page content and which is really easy to catch while eye-scanning search engine results. Thus you can improve your Google ranking for the page because it will be very easy for Google to find out what is the page about. Remember - title of your page is one of, if not, the most important thing, that can give you a huge improvement in search engine ranking.

I know that all of you spend a great deal of time making sure that you have best possible pictures for you products and of course that is really important. But search engines like Google cannot see how wonderful your photos are. It is absolutely required for you to follow certain rules if you expect Google to send you new clients.

An ideal title should have keywords that describe that particular page best and it should be 70 characters or less. Title longer then 70 characters will be cropped by Google and will look less catchy in the search results. Try to start from the phrase that explains what is on the page and you may add name of your site at the end. "Black Onyx and Moonstone Pendant | Creative Jewelry Designs" may be a good example.

And remember that usually more then 90% of people will not buy at the first visit on a new website. Analyzing sites at handmade jewelry directory I see that majority hope that visitors will come and buy. It is not that simple. Consider having a newsletter subscription. Let your existing customers know about new things regularly, so, that they will have a chance to get back to you and enjoy your products.

It's been a few months now for me resisting the temptation to start this blog. The opportunity knocked my door long ago when I realized that I have more then one friend who sells jewelry online. I find myself answering the same questions again and again. And it happens more often now as handcrafted jewelry directory grows. So, to make it more convenient for my friends at handcraftedjewelrydirectory.com I am going to publish online marketing tips that I hope will help you succeed with you jewelry business online.