Marketing, Branding and Promotion for Metal Clay Teachers and Jewelers

On this page you’ll find information about marketing and branding your metal clay business. You’ll also find useful information about selling at art and craft fairs and promoting yourself on the internet. Updated June 2020.

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10 Tips For Artists and Makers to Attract Web Traffic to Your Site

Your website works for you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,  365 days a year — but some websites are rather lazy and ineffective, while others are really smart and productive. The same goes in regard to specific pages on your site.  The goal, of course, is that every page can be effective at gaining visibility. This article has some useful tips to increase your web traffic.

Art Fair Source Book

The Definitive Guide to the Best Juried Art and Craft Fairs in the United States. This site also includes a Virtual Jury Service. This service allows you to submit your work and have an experienced juror evaluate it and give you feedback. They say, “We’ve employed a panel of 12 experienced jurors who are ready to give you a detailed evaluation of your jury images, along with specific recommendations on how you can increase your chances of success with your very next application.” The service isn’t free but if you’re serious about getting your work into juried shows, this may be a very good investment.

Artist Statement Writing Part One…..Part Two

These two blog posts explore the issues of writing an artist statement to support applications for shows etc.

Best Free Fonts

If you’re on the hunt for free fonts for your business needs, you’ve probably hit some roadblocks along the way. Many design websites suggest a plethora of “free” fonts, only for the fine print to hit you hard: “free for personal use only.” Or you find fonts that are free to use, but you have to pay a monthly fee to access the download websites. This page has 70+ fonts with free licences for commercial and personal use in your work.

Blogging for Business Marketing Kit

This free marketing kit from Hubspot has videos and an ebook to help you develop a marketing plan using your business blog.

Branded Gifts

Promotional ideas and personalised gifts available online from Get Yourself Noticed. Full promotional product range to meet promotional ideas and marketing needs.

Canva

Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. It is available on web and mobile, and integrates millions of images, fonts, templates and illustrations.

Constant Contact

Email marketing and newsletter solutions. Create newsletters using their templates or upload your own. Also has online polling software. Essential if you’re building email lists from a website or planning to email large numbers of people.

Craft and Design Magazine – Selling at Craft Fairs part 1

Useful article for UK based artists written by Angie Boyer.

Craft and Design Magazine – Selling at Craft Fairs part 2

Second part of the article for UK based artists written by Angie Boyer.

Craftmaster News

Looking for Art Shows, Craft Shows, Street Fairs, Home and Garden Shows, Trade Shows, Farmers Markets, Craft Boutiques, and more? This is the publication for you. They’ve been publishing festival and event information for over 25 years now and have become recognized as the Bible in the industry. Covers the Western US states.

Create Your Online Portfolio

Crevado is an online tool which makes it easy for Artists, Illustrators, Photographers and other creatives to create an online portfolio so they can showcase their work online. With Crevado, it’s also possible to sell your work online – our paypal integration makes it a cinch to receive payments online.

Customize your design to suit your own preferences to create an online portfolio which is truly unique. Preview changes instantly without affecting your live site and without writing any code.

Create Your Online Portfolio

Pixpa’s easy, drag-and-drop website builder enables you to create your own beautiful portfolio website without any coding experience. Choose from fully customisable, stunning website themes to showcase your work. Your mobile-ready, online portfolio website comes with all the features and tools you need to grow your creative business.

David Weiman – Video’s for Selling Your Jewelry

Great set of You Tube video’s from business psychologist, David Weiman. Titles include Why Jewelry Makers Should Charge Higher Prices, Selling Jewelry in a Tough Economy, The Five Keys to Selling Handcrafted Jewelry, Artisan Jewelry Market Competition and Selling More Handcrafted Jewelry. Well worth watching for tips and hints from this marketing expert.

David Weiman – Marketing Articles

This page has a large number of free articles about marketing issues. They are all written by business psychologist David Weiman. They include:-

The Art of Upselling Artisan Jewelry
What you don’t know (how to handle customer complaints)
Five steps for Handling Indecisive Customers 
How to Learn more about your Handcrafted Jewelry Buyers
Time to Rhyme
Give it Away (It Comes Back)

Email Marketing

There are thousands of marketing tools available today to help you communicate with your prospects and customers, but email marketing consistently delivers the highest ROI of them all.

Festival Network

The ultimate online source for music festivals, art and craft shows, home and garden shows, and specialty events in the USA and Canada. Providing extensive show details since 1996.

Flickr – Promote your work by displaying your photos online

Sign up for a free account with Flickr and upload your photos. This photo sharing site is a great place to display your work, especially if you don’t have a website of your own.

Ganoksin – Marketing Plan Checklist

Useful resource to check out your marketing plan. It’s also useful if you don’t yet have a plan to help you put one together.

Ganoksin – Advertise Your Website

The Ganoksin project provides a variety of quality services for the gem and jewelry community. They work hard to maintain the high standards of their services for the benefit of their visitors.

As the first and most active jewelry trade social network in the industry, Ganoksin offers you the opportunity to build brand awareness, trust and loyalty, achieve visibility to thousands of jewelry makers and drive qualified traffic to your business.

Holly G Studios

Holly G Studios offers every would-be video star an all-access pass to learn how the pros create not just videos, but Business Cinema™. That’s video with a plan, a purpose, a system & a strategy. Not just creating video for the sake of creating video. 

How to Have a Successful Blog

Blogging has evolved over the last decade and the Internet now hosts hundreds of millions of blogs across the world. There is a stack of information online about how to write a blog and if you do a search just for information on blogs then you’ll have enough reading to last you at least the rest of this year! So we’ve taken a look at the best advice out there and written the basic top 10 tips to help you get started.

How to Improve Facebook Reach

Nicola Wood from Crafted Chic asks:

“Due to recent changes in Facebook, my post reach is abysmal! Out of 1000+ followers, only 100 on average see my posts! What do you suggest to improve this reach? Is it worth paying to boost posts/advertise page? Thank you in advance”

Watch the video to see Nicola Smith from A Handcrafted Business answer.

 

How to Market a Jewelry Business on the Internet

Do you make jewelry but are not sure about how to go about selling it? Selling your work on the web is a good way to get started. This article will tell you how.

Instagram

Photo sharing website which allows you to show your work.

Logo Design Team

‘Logo Design Team’, a Team of 90+ Professional Graphic Designers are well-equipped in Talent, Expertise, Experience and Infrastructure to serve the Custom Logo Design, Creative Graphic Design, Web Design and Print Media Design requirement of Startups, Small Businesses and Big Corporate Houses. Fixed rate of $149 for five logo designs, delivered within two days and with unlimited revisions until you’re happy.

Moo

Moo is a UK based printing company who supply great business cards, postcards etc. The card stock is really good quality and they will provide short print runs. You can print lots of different images in the same business card pack so you can have a variety of different business cards, showing the range of your work. Although this company are UK based, they deliver anywhere in the world. Everything can be done online.

Online Business Marketing

My Business First provide quality articles and information for promoting your business in Australia.  

Pitch a Story Idea to a Journalist

Pitching is a key PR skill for small businesses. Janet Murray offers her tips on how to make your story idea stand out in this article from The Guardian.

Red Website Design Blog

This website has lots of useful articles about marketing including simple ways to use social networking to drive traffic to your website.

School of Everything

Great free site where you can list your classes. Allows students to search for you.

Seller How To: Craft Fair Tips

Useful Etsy guide to selling your jewelry at craft fairs.

Taglines – how to write one

Useful article on the basics of writing a tagline for your business.

Video Sharing

There are several places to put video or your work or tutorials, both of which help to build your web presence, drive traffic to your website and get you noticed. Seriously consider these:-

YouTube – Most popular and highly populated video sharing site. Video is compressed, so you loose some clarity and the limit on the length of videos is 10 minutes. Easy to upload and get yourself on the web. Lots of metal clay videos already so you can benefit from people browsing the subject.

Vimeo – Video sharing site using higher definition than YouTube. You get 500 megabites of space per week to store your video. If you have work that would benefit from more clarity than YouTube can give you, Vimeo may be worth looking at. Take care to read the guidelines for advertising your products or services – Vimeo doesn’t allow overt promotion or advertising. Simply showing your work or creating a tutorial without specific ads should be fine.

Software to create a photo movie – this photo to movie software by LQ Graphics. Photo to Movie creates slide shows with motion effects, music, and captions. Burn your movies to DVD or publish to the web. Free trial, works with MAC or PC and costs $50 to buy. If you don’t want to use video, this would showcase your metal clay work using your existing photos.

What’s your sales pitch – should you market your work as PMC or fine silver?

Though provoking article by Suzanne Wade from the Ganoksin website.