How do I get more visitors for my jewelry website?

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?