I work with the lists of top ten Crafting or craft topics all the time, but thought that you might be curious.

I decided to show you the exact numbers of searches and the topics or items that are being searched for in relation to crafting and crafts.

Initially I was going to only find you the craft items that were unique, but then card making, papercraft and paper craft are essentially the same right? But if I skipped those then you would not have seen how powerful some of those specific topics or keywords really are.

I work constantly with these sorts of numbers when I develop websites for crafters, but realised that I had never shown the top 10 before.

So I hope you enjoy my list.

The top 10 craft related searches are…

• scrapbooking

• decoupage

• papercraft

• sewing patterns

• woodcraft

• quilling

• sewing

• card making

• paper

• patterns

Make a graph

The runners up were

Are you a crafter and are looking for some craft ideas that might be profitable?

Just being crafty and being experienced at crafts is not enough to turn your craft skills into a nice business.

There are a few things that you need to know to get past doing a few small orders a week, into that zone where your prices are very profitable and your order book is so full that you need to employ all the crafters from your town just to keep up.

Just for fun this morning I decided to do a quick bit of research into a business that is craft related and will definitely work and be profitable within 6 months – (three is more likely but just in case)

I set myself a craft ideas business goal.

The business idea that I found would need to fit a crafter, be able to be run from home, and must be orientated to what people are looking for, be in high demand, but must not be such a competitive niche that it will take forever to get a foothold.

What I tried in the beginning

I started off by doing keyword research into “crafts” and saw that the most popular craft ideas item was clearly very easy to do on a big scale and it was “gift baskets”

So I looked deeper into that niche and after about 30 minutes saw that it will be too competitive to give you here as a good idea – I needed another niche.

Now this level of competition is fine – if you are serious about going into a certain niche, as there are a lot of ways to get into a competitive niche through back doors etc, but unless you have your heart set on this one – I would try another.

I found a perfect niche for an all-round crafter – someone who is capable of a lot of ideas and skilled at many different crafting styles.

The craft ideas niche that I found was “HANDMADE GIFTS”

This was a lot less competitive, had a potential of about 30 000 to 40 000 international visitors a month, and about 12000 potential visitors a month in the USA.

Naturally every country would have a different level of searches. I am South African and would only get about 300 search visitors a month, but then the original niche that I looked at in this test, the gift basket idea, is one that is probably easy to compete in here in South Africa, so naturally it woul be different for me.

The type of visitor that you will attract

Remember that anyone who searches for handmade gifts is going to fall into three main categories.

1. Someone who is just looking for a great idea to make a handmade gift themselves. Help those people anyway, it cannot hurt you, they were never likely to buy anything from you anyway, BUT if they stay a long time on your website reading a how-to-make-a-widget-as-a-gift post, Google will see that your website is interesting (because people will linger on your site) and give you big credit for this.

2. Other crafters looking for ideas for their businesses. Be nice to these visitors too – even if they are “pinching” ideas from your website. Remember we all do that anyway, as it is one of the best ways to get inspired.

Not only that other crafters are a fantastic way to network, and if you can get a group of 50 other crafters to “like” every post that you write it will be a MASSIVE boost to your websites rankings, so be nice to them, and be the one to set up a “like” club.

Please invite me when you have achieved this feat!

3. Someone who is actually looking to buy a gift that is handmade.

These are your potential clients, so your website needs to be very clear for them when they arrive at your site.

Remember that this buyer is your primary goal, so put banners etc very clearly at all the hot spots.

So here is the framework for that craft ideas mission I set out to find

This is your primary keyword

Handmade gifts

These are the keywords that you will use to set as your new websites 10 primary pages

• handmade gifts
• handmade Christmas gifts
• handmade baby gifts
• handmade gifts for boyfriend
• handmade birthday gifts
• handmade gifts for men
• gifts handmade
• handmade gifts ideas
• handmade valentine gifts
• easy handmade gifts

Then I found you a list of perfect keywords – around 78 of them – to use as your posts.

Here is a small sampling of them

• handmade wedding gifts
• handmade mothers day gifts
• unique handmade gifts

Let me show you some images that I collected while doing the research

I will do short explanations as I go along…

The first image shows you how competitive the Traffic Travis keyword tool tells you the keyword is, and I can see that I could get onto page one within 90 days easily.

This image shows all the keywords search numbers that relate to this particular keyword.

You can see the Global search numbers on the left hand side, and the USA searches in the right hand column.

The keyword tool was set for “phrase”This image shows that the keyword “handmade wedding gifts” will be easy to rank for.

Now a keyword like this could get you orders for the entire wedding reception – and your handmade wedding things will be on every single table, and eventually go home with 200 different ladies who will then have your logo (somehow – you need to think about that yourself)

Same as above this keyword, handmade Christmas gifts relatively easy to rank for.

This next one is some close ups of the keyword search numbers and some great keywords to chase for orders.

With this one – Look at how many Google ad-sense adverts there are, it tells you that people want to rank for this page – and it is quite easy to do so.

Finally this image shows you how the Traffic Travis keyword tools tells you that the chance of getting onto page one for this keyword is “relatively easy”

I have ranked very fast for keywords like this in the past, so believe then when they say easy!

To summarise this craft ideas test for today

I have shown you that within an hour I can find a craft related keyword that not only will get you a lot of searches, but is still a keyword that could get bigger bulk orders or corporate orders.

Now how you use this information is up to you.

I admit that I have over three years full time internet marketing experience, and it really is easy for me.

However I can show you how to do theses steps easily, even if you have no internet experience at all.

The methods that work are not some difficult computer coding, just about as hard as opening a new email account, or adding videos and images onto your facebook profile.

Seriously – that easy. It is knowing what to do that is important, and the little tricks on how to implement it that gets your website to page one.

I am not going to go into the lessons that you need to find here in this post, if you want to know more – somply pop me an email and I will tell you how to do it. Use this websites contact page to get hold of me.

If you liked what you read here please would you go down below and click like etc to shaore this post of mine on your face book and twitter profiles – I would really appreciate it, and naturally you are welcome to leave a comment.

Thank you for reading this post here on Craft ideas.

All about marketing and sales funnels for craft ideas and business online.

I was busy doing marketing, and found a keyword that I wanted to promote, and on the spur of the moment decided to do a web 2.0 property.

Naturally the entire point of adding Web 2.0 properties is to get back-links, and an extra chain in the traffic that comes to my website.

Marketing craft businesses is the same as any small business online, you need to have free reports, email marketing, web 2.0 properties, video and things like slide share, all designed for back-linking and fresh traffic.

The idea here was for me to add a Squidoo lens – which is really just a sort of free blog online, but is popular with crafters, and remember it is you crafting business types that I am looking for.

So I went to squidoo, made a lens, linked it to everywhere like a maniac, and then made a video for it.

I have a suspicion that the video is a little vague, and not likely to be an award winner, and hopefully is still good enough to get someone interested enough to come here and read this post.

Equally I would be very happy if they went to squidoo and read my Craft Ideas for Profit lens. Click that link yourself if you would like to see the lens that I put up earlier.

From a marketing point of view these web 2.- properties, linked to videos and promoted and linked to via Facebook and Twitter is exactly one of the easier ways to get a constant flow of traffic to your website.

If you set up enough of these your website will get busier and busier.

Here is the video that I made for the squidoo lens.

Tell me in the comments below what your thoughts are, did I make any sense at all?

LOL

Thanks for reading this quick post on marketing craft businesses.

It does go a shambling route around ways to get your buisnes noticed online.

Please click like and tweet for me below if you liked what I have written here. Thank You.

Popular craft topics can be profitable

Keyword research will help you know which craft niche to target for your business

If your business is crafting and you are not just doing your craft work for fun, but also for a profit – then you need to be fully aware of the latest crafting trends.

Knowing what the craft world is up to, and what people are searching for online gives your business a head start as far as supplying them with what they need.

Keyword research online, and then the analysis of that research can go a very long way towards keeping your stock, and ideas fresh and profitable.

I do keyword research almost all day, and without it my online businesses would die.

Let me give you an broad example – the top keywords that are searched for online if you ask Google to tell you using craft, crafting and crafter as a seed keyword, I will list below. They give you a very good idea as to where to start to find profitable keywords to use to gain exposure for your skills online.

It does not matter if you only have a blogger blog (but obviously a real domain would be 1000% better – if you are serious about business) but as long as you keep using keywords that relate to your product you will get noticed online.

Google and the other search engines WANT to give real and fresh high quality information to the people that are searching for specific terms, so if you do it correctly, your site and pages will get seen.

Here is the list of the busiest keywords

michaels, scrapbooking, hobbycraft, michaels crafts, transporter, decoupage, craft, papercraft, caddy,  styrofoam, crafting, arts and crafts, hobby craft, crafts for kids, craft supplies, quilling, craft ideas, scrapbooking supplies, craft stores

Now if you analyze these keywords some will be obvious, like Michaels is a store with over 1000 stores in the USA so you would expect to find a lot of searches for them.

Equally you will find brand name products in the searches, but ultimately you can see that scrapbooking, decoupage, papercraft and quilling are the most popular by far.

How to take advantage of keyword research for your business?

Firstly you need to be aware that there are different types of keywords and targeting the wrong ones will not necessarily make you any money.

There are “buyer” keywords and “information” keywords and you need to give a bit of thought to the difference. You really want to have buyer people on your site, rather than a ton of other crafters who are just going to be happy to read your “how-to” post and never buy from you.

Don’t get me wrong, networking and sharing with other crafters is great, as crafters are generally friendly people and are happy to share, but if you are doing this for a profit, you need to target buyer keywords.

Let me give you some examples here.

Let me say that you are a specialist in sequins…

The keywords that are searched for the most are…

sequins
sequins dresses
sequins dress
loose sequins
sequins and beads
beads and sequins
sequins wholesale

Now, sequins alone is too general, the next two are definite possibilities to use to find buyers, then the next four are very likely to be other sequin designers looking for stock etc.

So you would take those two and look deeper…

OK, so the image is a little small, but this list is almost all for things like prom sequin dresses and things like derss with sequins.

Now these are potential buyers, as they are looking for a keyword that tells you that they are actually seriously interested in a “white dress with gold sequins”.

Now if your business was able to give that searcher a lot of information relating to what they are looking for, and get you a possible order – then you have targeted your buying market correctly.

I have added some of the keywords here if this is not clear on the image…

sequins dresses
sequins dress
dress sequins
gold sequins dress
dresses with sequins
sequins prom dresses
black sequins dress

Now if you took those keywords and turned each one into a 1500 word page with a lot of informatitive facts and images, then you made a post with a slightly different title, and still included a lot of information and images – you will get noticed.

There are a ton of ways to get business online, and 95% of them all revolve around correct keyword research in the first place. Without your keyword base you cannot even start to market online.

In fact even if you never do anything online, your craft market will be a lot more profitable, if you still used keyword research to see what is popular, and applied that to your business. Try it, it can be very revealing.

I have added a banner here on this website – the great big green banner – that is a free keyword tool that you can go and get and use for your research.

It comes with free keyword training and a lot more. Enjoy – my gift to you.

I have also done a lot of keyword videos that could help you, search around this site for some answers.

OK, Enough for today – I just go so excited looking into the stats for my own websites, and realized that I check and cross refer a lot of information everyday with the sole purpose of getting better exposure online.

I hope that you have enjoyed this post of mine, and if you have please share it with your friends below through the “sharing is caring” buttons. Thank you I really appreciate it.

Homemade Crafts are easy to market if you simply stick to a few easy to apply tricks.

Naturally if you are a crafter then you are not lacking in creative skills, but knowing the correct way to do your marketing is and absolute must.

By being able to do your marketing in a carefully planned out manner and knowing that the systems will work, and will not get you clogged down trying hundreds of different ways to learn how to get a decent website up online and how to rank that website.

You see there are some basic rules – or if you rather facts – that apply to a crafting business.

Homemade crafts Fact number one – High standards

Your craft or product needs to have a very high quality and not look shabby or tatty in any way or form. People will only pay for craft work that is clearly in a league far out of reach from their own personal Capabilities.

Now I am pretty certain that this fact is not a problem to you.

Homemade Crafts Fact Number Two - Correct product choice

Now you might want to fight and argue with me a bit here, but I really need to point out a very important fact here. If you are showing your craft items for sale in any situation – like in a store, or on a craft market – you need to take note of this fact.

If you did a very detailed niche research that went into a lot of detail you will be in a position where you are fully aware of which exact items that you are capable of producing are in the most demand right now.

Just thinking that the craft item that you have loved, been interested in, or have been making for years is a perfect item to sell is not enough.

If you knew exactly what people are looking for you will be in a position to supply that item and will naturally get the most sales.

To see a page that I have written relating to this research on another website of mine – please go to this link – Small Business Ideas for 2012

Bottom line is – find out what people are looking for – and give it to them!

Homemade Crafts Fact Number Three – Go Bigger in your production

Now I hope that I explain this to you correctly, and at the same time get the importance of this point across to you.

But as you are probably well aware as a crafter, it can take a massive amount of effort and time to produce a high quality handmade item, and then when you get to displaying that at a craft market or in a store it becomes impossible to actually charge the realistic price for your trouble. Right?

But think about this. I will use a jewellery box as an example here..

If you made a beautifully crafted jewellery box with a ton of inlaid metalwork and hand painting and ended up with about two days work in that item and all you have is a small shoe box sized item, that you can show and sell.

OR…

You made a small cabinet or trunk that was about ten times the size – but would not have needed a lot more work. That way, you could get ten times the selling price for perhaps only double the work.

Homemade Crafts Fact number Four – Go Bigger with your stock

Now those experienced craft market traders will immediately see that this simple fact can literally get you 10 x more sales at a market by simply taking along a mountain of stock.

For some strange reason people are reluctant to buy from you if you have a few “sample” products on display on your stall.

BUT if you piled up a massive mountain of stock, in all colours and sizes you will get a massive boost to your turnover.

When I was making my hammock chairs (fells like 100 years ago) If I took along 20 items, I would generally sell 5 chairs. But if I took along 50 to the same market I would sell 20. Now I am not lying to you here and 4 x more sales on average to the same crowd seems weird – but it is true.

I tested that fact time and time again with different products and on different markets and it is true.

Homemade Crafts fact Number Five – Have more than one sales outlet

I call this multiple streams of income and it is so important – especially if you rely on your sales to eat and pay your bills.

I used to rely only upon the sales that I did on the craft markets to pay my staff and my accounts and when it rained or whatever, I simply lost 25% of that months income. You see while a good craft ,market could earn you the lions share of your income and hiccup along the way becomes a disaster.

But if you had three agents, kept your stock in five different stores and at the same time ran a busy website – you would have a constant flow of orders and inquiries and not be seriously affected by bad weather days or huge sporting events that happen all the time anyway.

Homemade Craft Fact Number Six – Have a decent website

I am constantly horrified to find very high standard crafters that are actually making money selling their crafts online – but without a website of their own.

If you knew how easy it is to get very targeted traffic to your website and therefore get sales you would be amazed. It only takes a few carefully done and very simple steps to get Google to see that your website relates to your chosen keywords and to start to send you buyers.

Plus the website will be your own, you can send buyers from that website to your Etsy site or wherever you want to send them and get a footprint online that will stand you in good stead for years to come.

To find out how to get started on building your own targeted website go to this link and watch the video I made. Make money from your products starting today

Thank you for reading this post of mine on how to sell your homemade crafts

Hi everyone – for those of you interested in Cake Decorating _ I have a free Cricut Cake thingmy …

OK – LOL – I am not very cake orientated – I am very crafty, and love to eat the cakes that appear all the time in my household, but cake decorating is something that I am a little in the dark about.

So the easiest way to find out what I am talking about  is to click on this link and go and see for yourself.

I think it is only for USA residents – so if you are from elsewhere I am sorry.

Ha Ha – I showed this post to my wife, and all she did was to shake her head at me, and left me grinning, because I Googled this Cricut thingmy, and while I now have a good idea as to what it is and does, I am not that sure I would need one.

I want to just eat the cakes and not do such hard work.

But please do not tell my wife that

However if you are one of those that are serious about your cake decorating (Hi Elsie!) then this is great for you.

If you have a great flea market idea and it is online as a website then read this short post

With Google constantly adding changes to its search engine results algorithm you must pay attention to this very important fact.

One of the most important things that you must do – based on the most recent changes at Google is to have fresh original content added to your website as often as possible.

Now I realise that this can be time consuming – but as an owner of a craft or flea market website – you need to get your website placed highly in the search engine results pages – and to get that result – you must keep your craft or flea market infromation up to date.

Remember that for your readers and for new searchers to find out about your products you must be find-able online.

Crafters and Flea market people often have new products

Take advantage of the opportunity to showcase all your newest lines and items that you have made – and put up regular posts and pages.

Remember that you should also add videos and pictures whenever possible.

Both those items will show off your craft items in a much better way than if you just write a short post about it.

In fact if you really want a post to be read carefully – add good content, describe all the items in detail – using as many as 500 words, and then add a few pictures and finally refer to a page that has even more details and a video on that page.

Google and all your prospective buyers and existing followers will all love you for the extra effort.

Craft fairs, Craft shows, flea markets and trade shows are all listings that are hard to come by if you do not know how.

I have written a detailed page that shows you how to get all the markets and fairs and shows that you want, either to trade on or to visit.

The different research methods are not difficult and if you are just looking to find a market to visit this weekend then some of these would still work.

If you are in that category – just punch in your cities name and markets, fairs or shows and Google should spit out a few for you.

Here is the link to the craft show listings page that I wrote…

craft-show-listings

I am constantly digging for information – and found that homemade crafts for sale is looked for online quite often.

This has prompted me to go and get a bit of information about the topic and I wrote up a new page detailing some interesting ideas.

I have covered both ways of looking at the statement, as Homemade crafts for sale could be someone looking for crafts to buy, and equally Homemade crafts for sale could be someone looking to actually sell their goods.

So, with this in mind – I have written up a page for you. If you are interested please go here – Homemade Crafts for Sale

.

Crafters blogs are something that amuse me a lot – for good reason

I have been a crafter all my life, and a self employed businessman for most of that too.

However whenever I visited the internet I was always amazed at the amount of crafters blogs that there are online.

Then I became involved in the business side of the internet, and found out some amazing facts and hope to point out the flaws and problems relating to 95% of crafters blogs online. There are quite a few different things that crafters online tend to do every time. I do not know if it is because the obvious ways are the easiest things to do, and then crafters just copy what other crafters are doing online.

I suspect that this is actually the main reason, and that crafters that have graduated leave the ordinary crafter type blogs behind and almost allow the blogger versions of the crafters online to remain behind with their online efforts.

I have written a more detailed page showing all the points that I have noticed, some of the pitfalls to avoid and hwta really counts – and that is -How to go about making your blogging and website efforts actually help your crafting business.

Please go here to the page that I have written on crafters blogs