Why You're Jewelry Isn't Selling on Ebay

Do you sell your handmade jewelry on Ebay? I've spoken with several jewelry designers who are frustrated with the lack of sales they've received from the world's largest online marketplace. I know this can be frustrating especially when sales slow down during the summer months. Believe it not, Ebay is still quite a viable market for artisan, handmade jewelry. If you MARKET it correctly. There's that all important word again! MARKETING.

So how do you successfully market your handmade jewelry on Ebay? Here are some ideas:

1. Use your "About Me" page as a serious marketing tool.

Your "About Me" page gives you the opportunity to tell the world relevant information about your jewelry line. It's a chance for you to educate and explain the benefits your jewelry offers to your potential customer. If you're not including relevant information here, you've lost a valuable opportunity to connect with your customer. Your "About Me' page also gives you the opportunity to advertise your website address. Ebay doesn't allow links to your website in ad listings, but doesn't prohibit it on your "About Me" page.  In  my next article I'm going to talk about how to construct an effective "About Me" page so stay tuned.

2. Set up an Ebay store.

If you're only using Ebay auctions, you're missing out on a valuable opportunity to sell more jewelry. It's less expensive to sell your jewelry through an Ebay store since listing fees are so much lower, plus items can set until the right buyer comes along. There's no time pressure to get an item sold during a set period of time as there is with auctions. Plus, you can use auctions to drive traffic to your Ebay store. Ebay reports that sellers who open an Ebay store see a 25% increase in traffic within the first 3 months. Plus, your Ebay store gives you a permanent site where customers can return to make repeat purchases. This not only results in more sales but, also, increases your credibility.

3. Learn how to take professional photographs.

Jewelry is one of the hardest products to photograph well. It's worth your time to learn how to take top notch auction photos. Try to use a digital camera that has at least 5 megapixels and allows you to make manual adjustments. You'll also need a light tent and a tripod to get truly effective jewelry photos. I'll be going more into this aspect of ebay selling in future articles.

4. Accept multiple payment options.

There are many jewelry designers who don't like the idea of accepting Paypal. Unfortunately, some sources say NOT accepting Paypal can reduce your number of sales by up to 50%. Can you really afford to lose that many sales? If you want to read more about accepting Paypal, click here.

5. List your item in the best category.

Many jewelry designers list their items in a general jewelry category when a more specific or niche oriented category would be better. For example, if you're selling jewelry with a cat theme, you may be best listing your jewelry in the Collectible-Animals-Cat category. It's worth your time to experiment with different categories to see where your jewelry sells best. Generally, the more targeted and specific you can be with your category, the bette your sales will be.

6. Use effective keywords.

Most Ebayers seach for an item by title, so it's important that your keywords are listed there. Think about what keywords your buyer would use to search for one of your jewelry pieces. Make a list and then try to fluidly incorporate those keywords into your title. Don't waste space with superfluous keywords such as good, great, look etc. People don't search using those terms. If you need a good keyword tool, use the free trial of Wordtracker.

7. Use Ebay to develop a mailing list.

One of the most critical mistakes I see are Ebay sellers not developing a mailing list of customers. Each time a customer orders a piece of jewelry from you, you should ask if you can add them to your mailing list. If you have an Ebay store, Ebay has made it quick and easy for customers to add themselves to your mailing list. They also provide templates you can use to create a mailing list of your customers.

8. Learn to do effective auction descriptions.

Your auction description should include all of the relevant information a person would need to make a decision about buying jewelry. You should include information on sizes and dimensions, materials used, color. In addition, you may want to give some suggestions on how a particular piece of jewelry might be worn. People love inspiring ideas on how they can use a piece of handmade jewelry to give their wardrobe a new look.

Make sure your descriptions aren't too cut and dry. It's important to include the relevant information, but it's good to add some personality to your descriptions. People want to see that you're a real person, not a company overseas that mass produces jewelry. Be sure to run include white space between paragraphs and keep your paragraphs no more than a few sentences to make the description easier to read. Be sure to run spell check. Nothing looks more unprofessional than misspelled words.

9. Study what works.

It's easy to do searches on Ebay on completed auctions and how much they sold for. Spend a few hours looking up handmade jewelry by keyword and see what the final bids were. Study the listings of successful sellers and see if you can determine why they were successful. A few hours spent doing this can pay off with big rewards.

I'll be doing lots more articles on selling jewelry on Ebay on and off over the next few weeks. One resource that has specific information on selling jewelry on Ebay is this inexpensive book. There's loads of useful information for anyone who sells jewelry through online auctions. It's really hard to find good information that specifically focuses on jewelry selling in the context of online auctions.

Hope this helps. I'll be following up every few days with more Ebay selling articles. :-)