Feb 02 2009
Make Your Own …and Sell It!
With another seven thousand jobs going away , the employment market is getting flooded. Too many people are already looking for too few jobs, and too many more people liable to join their ranks. Embarking upon some sort of endeavor to establish even a small second income if you are still employed would be a good hedge against becoming unemployed. If you are already “at liberty” then turning a hobby you’re comfortable with into some ready cash would be an excellent way to spend those extra hours now on your calendar.
While eBay has been a mainstay of online selling for years now, the recent changes in their policies have left them considerably less popular. For handmade items, perhaps the primary market has become a site called Etsy . Signing up to become a seller for Etsy does require a credit card “for verification purposes”, so it may not be an option for everyone. I, for example, hold no plastic and have every intention of keeping it that way. They also want twenty cents to list an item, and a 3.5% commission when it sells. They have gotten pretty large, and there is some contention that things listed there tend to get lost in the plethora of available items. The advantage to Etsy would be that they are fairly well known and gaining ground, so, like eBay, are more likely to come up on a search engine for specific items when people are shopping.
There are new comers to the field, and in and effort to differentiate themselves or corner underserved markets, each one has a particular slant to their marketing. Some offer listing for free; there is also other enticement for sellers to list with them instead of their competitors, such as saving the rainforest. Buyers are encouraged to patronize them to support local artists and to become proud owners of one-of-a-kind items.
