Rumor has it that eBay is getting ready to change their listing fees again.

This time though, supposedly, listing fees will not go up. They will go away. Final value fees, however, will go up. How might I know this? For more on this subject, check out Ina Steiner, at AuctionBytes.

What does this mean for any of us crafters who are selling on eBay or are considering selling on eBay?

There are some sellers who think eliminating listing fees would be a great thing. I fall in that camp.

There are others who think it will just overrun the marketplace with redundant stuff. Why use store listings if the auction or fixed price listing are free? And initially, it could be overwhelming. But in case you’ve never listed anything (on eBay or Etsy), it is time-consuming and I think a dramatic increase in listings would eventually fall off.

For me, this would be fantastic. My products are unique because they are handmade by me, and I don’t have all that much competition. Not that I want to pay higher final value fees, but if I could list as much as I wanted for free, I could sell more…and then I wouldn’t mind those final value fees so much. You might be thinking the market is already saturated for what you are selling. But if you craft your keywords carefully, you can carve out your own eBay niche, where the competition will not be as much of a hindrance.

I’ve always looked at eBay as a marketing tool, a place for customers to find me. Once they’ve found me, I don’t encourage them to buy from me again on eBay. I encourage them to come to me directly through my website or email, or through my Etsy store.

So fee changes may have already started. According to this article, eBay Motors Fees are being eliminated for the first four cars listed…..a test? http://auctionbytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y08/m08/i14/s02

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In this third part of how to take advantage of slow online summer sales and get ready for the holiday selling season, it’s all about getting your name out there.

On Etsy, on eBay, everywhere you find crafters and artisans selling their wares, you also hear grumbling about copycats or too many jewelry people at a show or not enough traffic to a site or a show. This is the time of year to take these matters into your own hands and promote your business, be it for local shows or your online store. Get your business brand out there as the best in your field. That way, if someone tries to copy your work, most people will know you and come to you anyway.

On the homefront, if you do local craft fairs, consider placing a small ad or two in local papers or on Craig’s list to let people know where you’ll be (offer a discount if they mention that they found you through one of your advertising venues). If you have a website, post a show schedule so people can easily find where you’ll be. Have kids? Pass out business cards (with your web address) and talk up  your upcoming shows with other moms at the pool, picking up kids from camp or daycare, wherever moms meet!

Offer to throw a home party where the hostess gets a hefty discount based on sales from your showing. Hey, it works for Pampered Chef and Candlelite! It’s a captive audience and a good show can net you some tidy profit in an otherwise slow selling environment.

Participate in local charity events, offering coupons for gift bags, your items as auctions or prizes.

For your website or online stores: Promote Now!!

Start blogging and talking about new items you are showcasing. Add pictures of your work! Or scope out blogs where you’d like your products and company featured. Comment on other people’s blogs where your work might get exposure. Check out Mommy bloggers who review products and ask if they’d like to review yours. Keep in mind, you’ll have to send free samples, but well worth it if you land on a blog with tons of traffic.

Issue press releases on PR Web. Join Facebook and flickr and upload new photos of your work. Join smaller social networks either related to your craft or with folks that might buy your craft like poshmama.com. Create an email list of past customers and start emailing them once every week or so now to promote new creations and give discounts. Stay front and center, so when customers are buying again, they come straight to you. Do these things now, and your holiday season will rock!

Last but not least, have faith. We all go through ups and downs. Before you know it, the weather will turn crisp, and sales will pick up. In the meantime, leverage whatever holidays/events there are. Sell jewelry specific for weddings. Create cards for baby occasions, cause those are always coming up. Get those bags and clothes ready for back-to-school season. And be ready for the rush of orders because they will come in!

So yesterday, I decided it was time to get this blog rolling but I didn’t want to use just the regular headers that were available from wordpress. Not that they aren’t great, they are. And wordpress makes this process so turnkey, it’s amazing. But when I was tooling around the designs, I realized that some of the headers could be customized, so I decided to play a bit. And I was pretty proud of what I came up with considering the graphics tools I have to work with. It may not be perfect, but it is definitely more branded to me than what else was available.

I was so impressed with myself, I went ahead and redid my etsy store header too. You can check that one out here: irisandlily.etsy.com.

The neat thing here is how I made my header. It was really easy. I used images I had, Microsoft office Powerpoint (believe it or not…it’s a decent graphics tool in a pinch) and Snagit to capture my header, resize it and turn it into a jpg. You can find out more about Snagit here. I think they even give you a free two-week trial.

WordPress gives you the size you need (size varies depending on the design you choose) for your header image. For Etsy it’s 760 x 100 pixels, and here’s what you do. I had logo image already and some pretty graphics from an old site I used to have, plus a picture of one of the albums that I make. On a blank slide, I created a box in powerpoint and inserted the images, moving them around until I had them the way I wanted them. (Not that they are so awesome….but believe me, graphic design is way out of my league). The trickiest part was getting the little images to sit in front of the bigger images….here’s how you do that on Powerpoint. In the bottom left corner of the tool palette there is a DRAW function. Click on that and the top selection is Order. Click on that and it gives you the “Move to Back,” Move to Front commands. It only took me like 3 months to figure that out.

When I had this the way I wanted, I used Snagit to take a screen capture of just the part I wanted to turn into a header, resized and cropped it in that program and voila…..turned it into a header image that fit perfectly. So fun.

If you don’t have a logo, Powerpoint has a WordArt program that gives you the capability to turn plain words into…well, art. You can create a logo there too. I did that for an eBay store I had for a little while, see….. I created the logo with wordart, added the little bee guy (isn’t he cute?) and turned it into a jpg. Easy. I think you might be able to even do this in word too.

There are lots of you sellers on eBay who have opened stores. Even if you use eBay’s templates for your store design, you can really make your store your own with a simple logo like this, created with tools almost everyone has on their computers.

So on this blog, I’ll be talking about some of the ways I’ve sold my crafts online, even though I’m kinda a non-techy type. What’s so amazing about selling online is all the cool things you get to learn and have fun with. I’m off to Facebook next to create a page. I’ll let you know how that goes. If you’re a Facebook fan, watch for my IrisandLily page, coming soon!!

If you stumble across this post and you are wondering who the heck I am, check out my About page…. my craft is bookbinding.