Friday, November 7, 2008

Two New On-line Venues to Sell On

This past month, while looking through a beading magazine, I came across a full page ad for a new online artistic selling venue. It was called ArtFire.com. I finally made myself check it out and it looks like an early etsy...Not a lot of sellers yet, it's still in beta, but the developers seem to be very seller friendly and they are concentrating on working out the kinks.

On artfire.com there are two methods of selling. One is totally free, but with limits such as shop size and site accessibility. The other method, is $20/month which seems to provide an unlimited amount of listings and accessibility to some additional forum areas and deals for visibility of your shop. See my shop below. I choose to go with the free method until I see that sales are being made. Although if I take into account the price I pay for listing and final value fees it might be worth paying for a verified account on artfire.com.



The second venue I found while reading the Business Week article that I found through a Google Alert for the term Etsy. This article talked about different venues to sell online for the small business person. Bonanzle.com was not mentioned in the article, but the second commenter to the article mentioned that Bonanzle.com was where she was buying stuff this year. So of course I had to check it out!

What I have found here is no listing fees, unlimited items, importing items from ebay, and some neat add-ons that I haven't seen before. These include notification that you are online, a chat function in each shop, an interesting sale function, local shopping and pick-up options, etc. I have decided to try this venue also.



While I am not going to leave etsy for any length of time, I really think that it is all about building your web-presence. The more places you can be on and have your name and product visible, the higher chance of your items being seen and then purchased.

If you are going to sign-up with bonanzle.com, please feel free to click here to sign up.

I don't get any compensation, but I do get Karma points. And personally I need all the good Karma I can get!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bonanzle is great! The site Management is friendly, responsive, and affable. And, offers great info on strategies for promoting your items that can be applied to a multitude of on-line endeavors.

Oh, and I'm make sales :)

Bridget said...

I've tried others such as feeBay, iCraft & artwanted. I've had success on eBay but the fees are too high. I've not had any success on other sites. Best of luck with your new ventures.

Learning Spanish at 41 said...

Will be looking at Bonanzle soon--thanks for the link and info!

CB said...

Looks like more places to list shops are increasing in numbers every day. My next step is to try my hand at craft shows actually. :)

DZFANTASY said...

Thanks for the info...! It is always good to try new avenues of getting your work out there. You never know what may work!

I will have to check out the sites you mentioned. Again, thanks for sharing.

Over The Top Aprons said...

Thank you for sharing; it is good to be aware of what is "out there and as you say there are more and more selling sites. I am in the process of setting up my website - I realize that the odds of getting past page"200,200 is remote but I like the challenge of doing it. If you would like to surf just one more time, may I invite you to visit my website: www.overthetopaprons.com

Also, another new site for selling that is absolutely charming :
llolishop.com The creator of the site is so creative and imaginetive ... you might enjoy checking it out. I did sign up, just because it is so creative .... it is not actually in full completion.