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crafts fairs is the directcontact you will have with your marketplace. You can use a fair as a market research area to test new products, designs, price changes, and booth displays. If your work doesn’t sell, you will have immediate marketplace data to help you hone your products.
    You can do one or two events and walk away with a minimum of expense of time and money, or you can do shows every month and take up the craft-fair lifestyle, making it the mainstay of your business.
    As opposed to selling through an Internet site, when you sell to the public you keep the entire amount of the sales, minus expenses. Most of the craft shows are held on weekends, so selling in this way would not interfere with any other job you might have or your time for creating new products.
    You can find out about shows through several resources. One source, an online resource called Art & Craft Show Yellow Pages is at www.artscraftsshowbusiness.com . It lists show listings, articles, and links. Other resources can be found by searching for “craft show locations” on the Internet. And finally, another source of art and craft shows will be your state arts council.
    When you apply to a show, there is generally a booth fee associated with the application. To ensure you are not wasting your money, before you apply, you should visit a show, read reviews in the show guides, and talk to other crafters who have participated at the show. Some important information to gather is the size of the show (the larger the show, the larger the crowds), the facility provided (whether it is an indoor or outdoor show), the amount of promotion and how the show is advertised, the security arrangements, and the kinds of craft exhibited. The last point is very important, because if your crafts are high-end sculptures and the other crafts are crocheted toilet-roll covers, you are not going to find buyers interested in spending the kind of money that will make your time at the show worthwhile.
    When selecting shows, be sure to choose the kind of event that will attract your kind of buyers. Shows vary greatly, from fine arts shows that might accept jewelry, but may not allow craft items, to juried art and crafts fairs.
    A juried show is often the type that reaps the most benefit for you, because all entrants’ work is submitted to be judged by a jury committee, which then selects the best products from the hundreds of entries. Because items are judged, the crafts displayed tend to be better quality and higher priced. Buyers realize they will be paying for premium quality work and therefore will pay top dollar.
    Country craft fairs are on the other end of the spectrum. The crafts exhibited at these fair are moderately priced—from $2 to $50. These shows encompass things like local Christmas bazaars; they feature small, inexpensive gift items. You should try to find a local craft guild in your area to learn more about the local shows and to network with other crafters.
    Online Store
    When trying to sell products or services, you are no longer limited by geographic locale. The Internet provides a myriad of opportunities for you to showcase and sell your products. Creating your own website is a great idea if you have experience in web design and search engine optimization, or if you have the ability to pay someone who has those talents. Because the Internet is vast and many hosting services are providing websites either free or nearly free, new sites are popping up all over the place. Unfortunately, if you have a poorly designed website or a site that looks like an amateur created it, it will reflect badly on the products you are offering.

Use social networking to help you sell! In a study conducted by social networking site myYearbook.com , 81 percent of respondents said they’d received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74 percent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision.
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