I have, for several years now, wanted to sell my hand made cards but less for income (although that is nice of course!) but so that my ‘art’ can be shared and bring people happiness like most artists. And to have my creations utilised as they should be but most families dont have 400 birthdays a year to send to!
And also, we, too have a message to send on behalf of others, yes, but also our own about hobbies turned business, fun and relaxation, finding your creative side and expressions of who we are and what we love too, which is so important!
Perhaps you have a speciality skill or love of topics and topper types, or a certain populous you want to focus on (men, children, celebrations), or get inspired and motivated by many events and situations – or small bits and pieces as most of us ‘crafters’ and ‘makers’ do!
Finding time to grow
Under lockdown I had time again to both make cards and learn how to sell them. This timed perfectly when I saw on Facebook a post from a business group I’m part of that mentioned the new ‘Facebook shops’ – so I investigated!
I have now set up shop on Facebook through trial and error but I like to play at IT too, and then realised as I was also picking up my business marketing again – working on my business not just in it as I had in 2019 – that I had already set up another website here on WordPress* (I do love this platform I’ve been using for many years now, as it’s easy to use – once you know how, I know – and naturally markets itself out for you with it’s world-wide net – pun intended!)
I have uploaded to date more than 200 cards to Facebook page set up as a shop and working on adding them here too now, along with the payment plugin sort of familiar on my business website (my business page is less shop but a service at present but that might change too) – set up in categories, each with its title and description, cost and then linking to this website for sales (only US business shops can currently sell directly from US Facebook). I am now working on adding the other 200+ cards made between 2007-2019 that I haven’t yet sold or used…
Still, that is how I found this site and am developing it further, always learning new business and IT skills as well as card-making skills!
Facebook shop guidelines here and then look up other advice on the internet too. It has been rushed though for lockdown support and their own business opportunity for advertising, of course, so may improve in time.
The process
It is quite arduous on my laptop as my machine is so slow and laborious but here goes the overview of the process:
1. Open you Facebook page on your personal profile with the listings at the top right of the task bar near Help.
2.Locate my picture folder on my laptop and halve the page view
3. Open the Facebook shop to drag to upload the photo of my card to the shop page. Add title details, cost and if you like a descriptions ( I can add to that as I go) then Save it.
4. I added a card, created a category and then added more to each category to begin the content build. You may wish, as I did, to navigate the page planner (“add collections” under categories list at the bottom) so you can move the current category your uploading to at the top for easier access using the up and down arrows.
This way you also create the menu of shop categories in the order you want them showing up on the customer page when you finish the uploads or create a new category.
The other way to create category content is to create the category and then find the pictures and add them (but my titles are haphazardly entitled)
5. To view the shop page as your potential customer would, click on the ‘page task bar’ located bottom left near your picture header and the three dots to the dropdown menu.
The finished page is worth it – until y0o find you can’t sell directly like I did, and hence I am hopefully saving you some insights here!
WordPress guidance for a new website is found here and again titbits on the net too!
*Aside: And do you know that Manchester and maybe other areas too have a WordPress Meet Up group with one of the founders, Richard, running it? This group too helped me in getting otherwise unaffordable support from tech experts to help with small parts of my business website – well, not that small actually as it was the marketing software plugin I got free help with! Amazing. I host four sites on here now – this one paid, two free for now as I build them into e-commerce sites, and my business domain too!
Clear Cards 