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I personally think that taking good photos is more difficult than making our handmade jewelry! Everything has to be perfect to do justice to your handcrafted artisan jewelry. A picture is worth a thousand words if you’re a writer; a picture is priceless if you are trying to market your jewelry and unique gifts online!

Handmade jewelry photography is too important to leave to chance. Waiting for the sun to be exactly right is okay if you don’t have anything better to do but time is money and both are in short supply! You don’t have to wait for the cloud to pass or the direct sun to be on the left. Actually most of our pictures have been taken in the wee hours of the morning, once you get everything right it’s like you just can’t stop! If you are serious about taking great pictures you need a studio set-up. It’s not difficult and not too expensive considering the online marketing advantages.

We made our own light tent by making a cube and covering it with white rip-stop nylon fabric, cost about $20 to make. Let me know if you need instructions. We use  three 5200′K spotlights (daylight) about $35 each. We use studio stands (kinda costly) but swing arm lamps work too, just less adjustable. We bought a professional digital camera with a great macro lens, it hooks up directly to the computer and you just press enter so no shaky out of focus shots. The photos come up on the monitor so you can adjust the coloring, etc. You just set up the first item getting it just right, then replace it with the next item so photo shoots go quickly. Touch ups are at a minimum if the photos are taken well. There will always be those really shiny pieces that when zoomed in at 5000 times the actual size you will see yourself taking the picture. Smudging tools work well in those cases!

Take your time to learn about your camera and all the features, it will make your life much easier. Experiment with background colors but we have found that nothing shows our handmade jewelry as well as a white background. Make sure your designs stand out emphasizing the unique features of each piece. It is all about experimenting and finding the perfect settings for each photograph.

This maybe is extreme for someone just starting out but we have been making handcrafted jewelry and unique gifts for over 23 years and we have over 3,000 items! Photos are extremely important especially when marketing online and well worth the investment.

If you have any special tips or tricks that help to take great photos, I’d love to hear from you! We all need all the help we can get!

Best of Luck to everyone, Jenn

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When starting out in the handmade jewelry business or any business for that matter, look to the future by making sure to dot your i’s and cross all your t’s. There is no business that is immune to taxes so make sure all your books are in order from the start.

The best way to ensure that all the tax rules and regulations are being followed is to get your business a chartered accountant. They are more knowledgeable on tax matters and the required government paperwork. Although chartered accountants can be quite expensive it is an investment in a happy future.

Purchase a business accounting program. Everything may be easy to keep track of now but when your business grows it is too easy to forget important dates and information. We used to spend many hours every month trying to input invoices and amounts. With accounting programs everything is kept up to date and reminders such as due dates just pop up in front of you. This is a time saver and well worth the small investment.

Get a bookkeeper! Right from the start is much easier as there won’t be a backlog of transactions to input. Make sure to go with the accounting program that your bookkeeper is familiar with, just to lessen any learning curve. Everything will be input in the proper account and all bills and receipts will be reconciled at the end of every month.

Make sure your accounting is up to date. Make all payments and returns ready early, missed payments or late payments are red flags to the tax people. They see these as your inability to keep track of important information. If the tax people are continually seeing your business name next to red flags it won’t be long before they pay you a visit. No one is ever happy to see them at their door.

The tax people are becoming more diligent in tracking down home-based small business. Sometimes I think we all have a big bull’s eye on our forehead. It seems everyone you talk to has had a run in with the government, though few readily admit it. It feels like it’s only a matter of time. Make sure you are ready, better safe than sorry.

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If you make handmade jewelry or have a retail store that sells handcrafted artisan jewelry you need to be online! With millions of handmade jewelry websites how do you get your product seen online? It’s not going to be easy and it takes a lot of hard work, not to mention time. If you pay someone to get you to the first page it’s going to cost you. If you do it yourself it will take time, effort and a lot of reading, but it will be worth it and its kind of fun. Even though the competition is fierce, there is still room at the top if you want to play the online marketing game. Let’s play!

So where do you start? The first thing you will need to do is take great pictures of your handmade jewelry. “A picture is worth a thousand words” or not. Make sure the photos are in focus clearly showing your design. Don’t put jewelry on a rock or a hunk of wood, although it is very natural and artsy, it is too hard for people to make out in the seconds you have to catch their attention online. Your handmade jewelry should be on a plain background so it stands out clearly.

Now you need a website, if you’re just starting there are lots of free blogs out there. I prefer the WordPress.com, mostly because it’s easy and has lots of plug-ins to do all the SEO work for you. Once you are up and running you can invest more into the site but we are trying to save some money and do it all for free, for now.

Read, read and read more; you can never have too much information. The web is filled with great information; every time you see something new do a search until you understand what it means. SEO is the most important part of getting good search engine rankings. Make sure to have meta title, description and keywords tags. Don’t forget image alt attributes as well. Do your keyword research and write it into your content.

Off-site SEO factors means links to your site. This is probably the hardest and most time consuming because you need to get related sites to link to you. Make sure your site is ready and has good content that other sites will want to link to. Stick with it and bit by bit links will come. Check other related sites link pages to get more links. Make sure you have your target keywords in you link information.

Do all these things then continually read and update your site as you go; this is a continuing process always needing to be tweaked. Check your statistics to see what is working and what isn’t. Change the things that aren’t working.

Time is also an important factor. Everything takes time so try not to get frustrated when things don’t happen overnight. Patience is a necessary virtue in wholesale handmade jewelry and online marketing. Good luck to you in all your online marketing efforts!

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