Etsy Seller Tips With Muyinmolly--Finding Your Niche

[Peachy Nest ring by Muyinmolly]

The following article was originally posted on muyinmolly's blog on May 27,2008.In this article Molly shares with us how she found her "niche" through selling online.You can also find more Etsy seller tips on her blog.
Visit Molly's Etsy shop for gorgeous wire wrapped pearl and gemstone jewelry.She has tons of colorful rings!

Selling on Etsy is hard work.It takes more than your love for crafts to stand out from the crowd. Apart from great photos, clear descriptions and frequent listings, you need to have something different to offer. There needs to be a reason for shoppers to buy from your shop instead of others'.
I have always understood the importance of artistic styles. I am not sure if this is because I received formal art trainings in different media -- especially in fine art, writing and classical music. When I started selling jewelry on Ebay two years ago, I had just started making wired jewelry for two years.I had this passion for working with wire, even though I did not know what I wanted to create with it. I read many tutorials and books on wire working.I liked both modern wire wrapping and traditional wire sculpture. I liked so many things I saw but I didn't know what I liked the most. I decided to try my luck by selling some basic earrings made with very simple wire work on Ebay,and here are one of the very first designs that I introduced --



I had great luck.For some reasons I did not even know, these earrings sold very well on Ebay, so I started making variations of them.
then I learned to make wire wrapped rings.I did not know if they would sell, but I just loved making those rings (For some reason it felt so good to wrap the wire around a mandrel.Wierd, huh?) and it felt so natural to me. I did not like the design I learned from the tutorial, so I modified it to highlight a center pearl.Here you can see one of the very first wire wrapped rings I listed in my Ebay store in August, 2006--



I was lucky again. People seemed to like my wire wrapped rings, for reasons I didn't know, so I listed more rings in my Ebay store.Very soon I had an Ebay store full of wire wrapped rings and more people started to buy rings from me. The same pearl ring design is still available in my Etsy store.



If you take a look at the pictures of this same design, you will find that after making hundreds of rings and taking thousands of photos, my wire wrapping and photography skill have improved a lot.

If you asked me two years ago what my niche was, I would not be able to tell you. But now I can confidently say I offer wire wrapped rings, and I have a simplistic and colorful style. I was fortunate enough to notice what customers wanted from me from the very beginning, and I developed my skills and expanded my designs accordingly. Then I started to find my own style, and people started to notice me more, and I started to sell more.

If you have just started selling on Etsy, or if you have just started making your crafts and don't know what your niche is, give it time and ask yourself consciously as often as possible when you make your craft,and you will know what your style is someday.