Are Crafts Copyrighted?

    Can I sell stuff I make from a tutorial or kit?  The simple answer is no.  When I first started crafting and thinking about  selling what I made, I thought that I could sell anything I made, even if it was an item made from a magazine or a book.  I'm not sure where I read it but a few years ago I learned that selling other people's designs, even if they are made by my hand, is a copyright infringement.  That concept made me nervous about what I could sell and what I could give away.  What is the point of making stuff I can't sell?  The obvious answer is that I need to make things I can learn from before I can start selling things.  I like the idea of trying a technique and selling that attempt instead of leaving it sitting around my place taking up room.  The reality is that my first attempt at a technique is rarely good enough to be sold, despite how proud I am to have made the item.  I just need to accept that everything I make is not amazing.  That is why the term "learning curve" exists.  I need to take time to perfect a technique so it doesn't look like an amateur made it before I try to sell it.  There are some markets that like the look of a fun item made by amateurs, but that is the point of funky and colorful items. I can think of many clay necklaces I think look like they were made by children as an example.  Just like putting in the time to research the market before starting you Etsy shop, artisans need to take time to perfect techniques before they can sell their products.  Trying to sell beadwoven necklaces with gaps and thread showing is unprofessional and will get bad reviews.  Selling jewelry that has wires poking the wearer is just bad business.  That is why designers create magazine or YouTube tutorials or sell classes.  They give us a template to practice a technique, not a step by step of how to create a new line for someone's store. 

     I was looking through my old magazines and found an article on designer copyrights in the February 2013 issue of Bead & Button.  It explains that designers who create books or make tutorials for magazines often make their living from selling tutorials or teaching classes on their special designs as well as possibly selling their design at their store.  Selling a product from their tutorial puts you in direct competition with them, possibly denying them the income they need as their livelihood. The people reading the tutorial are welcome to create the item for ourselves or as gifts to friends or family but are not allowed to make money from their designs.  One of the artists said that trying to sell other people's designs as our own not only hurts the designer who spent hours figuring out the perfect combination of techniques and color but also the seller.  Not only can it cause you to get your Etsy shop shut down, it also stunts you as an artisan.  If you spend all your time creating other people's designs, you will never learn to create your own designs and style.  The entire point of being an artist is to find your own voice and make art that is inside you.  Copying designs that other people created is a great place to start but eventually everyone needs to try their own wings to create their own voice.  I'm still in the learning phase but I can't wait until I can combine my knowledge and preferences to create gorgeous art that shows the world who I am (and to make money doing it!).

     Etsy says that any items properly reported as copyright infringement will be taken down.  Too many infringement accusations and they may close your store.  (Here is their legal jargon that says how they react to infringement but are very vague on what is infringement in art.)   Here is an article in their site as to what is copyright but it too is mainly jargon that defines a copyright and how it can apply to art but is hard to prove.  Again, this article is not very useful to me since I am a very literal person.  The magazine article was more useful than the Etsy article.  To be fair, Etsy has to deal with items as diverse as t-shirts to craft supplies to chairs while the Bead & Button magazine is specifically for jewelry makers.  I did find an article in Etsy's Seller's Handbook blog that has an example and a few FAQs about copyright infringement that was more helpful.  Like the magazine article, this handbook blog post highly recommends that a seller use their own images and ideas on their products and it will improve their sales.

     Lisa Pavelka, a well-known polymer clay artist who also has an amazing line of tools for polymer clay creators, wrote this article about her take on inspiration versus copying.  She basically says that no idea is new, that something or a group of somethings always inspires everything.  She says that that she thinks it is pointless for teachers to teach, or sell tutorials, of techniques the students are not allowed to reproduce.  The point of every creator should be to take what they learned and do it a different way, to change the technique or design into a unique and original product or technique.  I may be paraphrasing her to the point of misquoting her, but it was a really interesting article I suggest you read.


In Summary
     If you watch or read a tutorial or use a kit, you are not supposed to recreate and sell the item described there.  You can reproduce an item for your own jewelry collection or as a gift, but you cannot make money from a design created by someone else.  Anything you sell must be your own design or you can be forced to remove it and pay a fine, depending on who you copied.

     So work hard at perfecting your techniques and use examples to learn on but only sell the items you've designed yourself!

The Realities of Selling on Etsy

Wow, I just have to post this video.  Heather Wells explains why she decided to close her Etsy store and it was an eye opener.  She closed her store in the middle of 2015 and goes through the numbers for us.  She had made over $56,000 dollars in the five years she was open and when she closed her Etsy shop she was in the top 3rd of the top 1% of Etsy sellers.  That sounds impressive but think about those numbers.  Most years she made around or under $11,000 a year.  $40,000 a year is considered poverty level in the U.S.  She sold charms which averaged $8 a sale but she averaged everything out and she made roughly $24 a day in the five years she was on the site.  She admits that if she had tried harder she could have sold more in 2013 and 2014 but she got upset at some changes made to the site and stopped trying for a while.  If you look at the numbers, she looks like a success and she says that she is proud of what she did but could you live off less than $1000 a month?  I'm in college and can support myself on roughly that each month but I rent a small apartment and that is after taxes and with no tuition costs or car problems.  I can't imagine supporting a family or life emergencies on that income.  Luckily there are other ways to make money online with your craft now a days, such as selling tutorials or blog advertising, and you should also sell at craft fairs and some crafts can be sold at consignment shops.  It is possible to make a living wage from your crafts but selling online should not be your only line of income unless you are fully established and already making a lot of money from your store before quitting your main job.  Heather averaged the numbers on the Etsy website for 2014 and found out that on average an Etsy store made $1,200 that year.  I averaged the numbers on the Etsy website today for 2015 and 1.6 million sellers today made $2.39 billion dollars in 2015 that means $1,494 per seller last year.  I had my crafts up for maybe six months a few years ago and got no sales.  Granted, I put the pictures up, probably had bad descriptions, and only had six items in my store.  I didn't add new items of figure out SEO or how to use social media to get viewers who would buy but I'm guessing I'm not the only person who got no sales.  That means a lot of people got under $1500 in 2015 and a lot of sellers got over $1500 in 2015.  I just want to be sure you understand the realities of selling crafts online.  It is possible to make a full-time income on a home craft business but you should not expect to merely put your products on Etsy and expect to suddenly sell them (as I expected all those years ago).  You have to work hard to make a full-time income of a craft business and use more than one income stream.  She ended her video with some simple but often overlooked tips on how she got over a thousand dollars every year her store was open.  One of the ones she mentioned was that an Etsy store needs a lot of items in it to look established.  She said that she didn't get regular sales until she had over 200 charms in her store.  I'm not sure how that progresses with other larger items, such as necklaces or OOAK figurines, but I have noticed that most stores seem to have more than one page of items.  I recommend you take a look at her video for an honest idea of what it takes to be "successful" on Etsy.

My Reboot with YouTube Video Reviews

It's been a few years since I started this blog and I apologize for stopping it with so little information.  I got busy with a major move then started college so I used those changes as excuses to stop my crafting and therefore my ability to stock an Etsy store.  Now I'm back at crafting and have learned a few new techniques.  These items are my early attempts at understanding polymer clay.  I'm rather proud of those flags at the bottom of the picture which are rather good for my first attempt at a complex cane.  But you aren't here to learn about polymer clay, you are here because you want to learn how to create and build an Etsy store that will hopefully become a full-time job for you or at least help pay for your addiction to creating beautiful things (or scary art if that is your preference).

So, let's get down to today's tips.  While surfing Youtube I found two videos about tips for setting up an Etsy shop.  There are more tip videos, I'm sure, but today I'll just review these two.

Let's start with Melanie Ham's shorter video: Tips for Starting an Etsy Shop.  Her video is a little less than 8 minutes and has some good basic tips such as to put a good price on your items so you can actually make a profit instead of under selling, tips on taking good pictures, and the reminder that writing a detailed description can save you time.  She also gives a great reminder to put thought into how you ship items and to respond quickly to emails.  Customer service is very important and it is easy to lose customers if you are not quick and friendly.  She gives some great tips for shipping from home and ends with a reminder that success takes time and research but is completely possible.  Check out her video for more details on her tips.

The next video is longer and posted by Sarah Mock.  It's nearly 32 minutes and part of a weekly series where Sarah interviews experts on blogs, social media, and how to save, or get, more money.  In this episode she talks to Hayley Croom about her soap store on Etsy.  Although there is a lot of chit chat, it is inspiring how Hayley started her business with a built in audience and grew it to a full-time income.  Her biggest tip and the thing she kept coming back to was to view your store as a business from the very beginning.  Starting you Etsy store as a hobby that you update occasionally when you feel like it is no way to start a business.  Even if it is merely a way for you to fund your crafting addiction and you don't plan to make your career out of your Etsy shop, you never know what the future holds.  Keep an eye on your emails and keep your shop up to date.  You never know when you may need returning customers or need to get a new job.  View your business as a job from the start, work consistently on it, and have set hours for work.  You can keep your shop down to something you deal with one hour a week or build it into something you work on 40 hours a week or 100 hours a week.  It is up to you how big you grow your business.  Both Hayley and Sarah agreed that it is very easy for self-employed people to work well beyond the normal working hours or for them to allow days to go by without getting any work done.  Creating a schedule and keeping to it is essential for self-employed people to be successful.  I could continue to badger this subject because consistency and time management are my worst qualities but it is time to move on.  Hayley also gave great tips for getting found on Etsy through tags and product titles as well as her inexpensive way to create great photos using a simple camera, natural light, and Flickr.  The photo can make or break a sale online and it is easy to find great ways to create great photos without spending a lot of money.  The two of them talked about how user friendly Etsy is and how helpful other sellers can be.  The forums on Etsy are very helpful and the website itself has great step by step tips to help sellers succeed on Etsy.

Etsy Tool

I'm still having trouble with the next part of my journey to creating an Etsy business. I need to describe what I offer, as in pricing and products. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to sell. My problem will be figuring out what to price my products at. Most artists, most small business owners in fact, underprice many of their products due to under confidence and a poor understanding of demand. That way they may have more products sold, but they also get less profit so they have less money to grow the business by marketing or trying new products. People who price their products under the best price, that sweet spot where people will still buy but you get a good profit, often get stuck in a rut or burn out. I'm probably going to price my products too low since I have trouble thinking people will ever buy something handmade by me. To avoid that I decided to figure out where I want to be in my market and who my direct and indirect competitors are on Etsy. I found a few lovely shops selling stone jewelry and a few selling jewelry aimed at the healing power of stone jewelry but I learned something new when I did a search on Google.

I was looking for tools to analyze competitors on Etsy and stumbled upon this interesting tool designed into Etsy. Once you type keywords into Etsy, the site brings up lots of links to items near that phrase. However, if you look directly below the search box, in the upper right corner of the search listings is a set of three small square icons. If you click on the chart icon, a new search will come up while a chart of how many listings fit (by percent) in what price range as well as gives three or four examples you can click to see what items in that category may look like. I believe you have to be logged in to see the chart icon, but that is rarely a problem for sellers on Etsy. Although this tool is not very good for seeing who your competition is or where you fit in the market you are thinking of entering, it is a good quick gauge of what prices are common in your market and how detailed your product should be to sell in a high price range or that other are selling less detailed work at that price range. Nothing beats good market research when researching competition but this tool is a quick chart for Etsy sellers to use when deciding if you are pricing your item too low or too high. It can't be your only pricing aid, but I will go into specific pricing techniques in a much later post. At this stage I am merely using the tool to decide if I would rather sell $20 necklaces or $100 necklaces in my store. I think that my store will focus on a nice place in between for now. As I get comfortable and better at techniques I can add a few more expensive pieces to see how it goes. For now I have a good round number to put in my branding statement. I just need to decide some more things about my market before I start getting into the specifics of my store and brand. I can't have merely a general idea of my store when I start deciding on plans so it is back to market research for me.

Day 2-Starting The Process

   Yesterday I started the blog and told you how long it's been since I touched my store.  Today I pulled out my handy notebook and tried to figure out just what I do or want to do.  I want to make elegant jewelry that a lady would wear for it's beauty and the sentiment behind it.  That means I'm marketing elegant jewelry as gifts.  Hm, marketing directly to a buyer is hard enough.  How do I convince a lady that this necklace is exactly what she's looking to buy her sister, friend, or daughter?  I'm not even thinking of how I'll market to husbands, sons, or boyfriends.  However, I finally managed to get what I think is a basic mission statement, of sorts.  The point of this step was to create an explanation of what I plan to sell to whom and why they should chose me over a competitor.  I know that this part of the branding process will change a few times before I put anything online, but it is a good idea to sit down and think first.  I knew that what I had in the store wasn't what I wanted to work on for a long period of time (I barely lasted a month working on that store).  I also had a basic idea of how I wanted my product received and the basic materials I want to use.  I just had to figure out a basic target audience.  I may have an awesome product but if I'm marketing it to the wrong set of people or trying to market to everyone, the people who are likely to buy my product aren't likely to see the ads.  The lucky sighting resulting in a buy every few months (given my budget and the other steps in the buying process, I'd get lucky with that if marketing to the wrong group), isn't worth skipping the step of figuring out a market likely to buy your product.  I'll go into this more when we get to the Target Market step.  Now I just want a very brief idea of who I'm selling for.  At the moment my target market is a lady looking for a lovely handmade gift for her elegant friend.  I'll add age, hangouts, hobbies, and more later.  For now I can easily say what I do and who should care as well as why they should care.
   Now I'm ready to go to the next step of explaining what my products are, how they're made, what they're priced, and other product descriptions I need in order to feel comfortable with my product plan.  Knowing roughly what price I'll use will help me decide target market, what quality my supplies will be, how much time I should spend on a piece to make a profit, and a few other production costs.  Don't undervalue your time.  If you are on Etsy you are creating one of a kind products others don't have the time or skills to create.  Be proud of what you create and price it accurately.

Tip: the generally accepted pricing guide is to add up the time spent on a design (the actual time spent perfecting a piece or plan may be divided and split out over the whole line instead of putting the design time all in the first piece) along with the materials and add those two up.  Then add some money for overhead (the cost of advertising, web fees, utilities at your studio, maybe rent, and office supplies are spread out throughout all the products) and a small profit.  That should give you what is called the wholesale price.  If you ever sell to a wholesaler, that is the price you give them.  That way you still make a profit but they get it for cheaper than retail.  For the retail price, or what you would sell it on Etsy for, double the wholesale price.  Here is the article from the Etsy Blog explaining it better.

With the first two steps jotted down on paper, it's time to get my notebook next to my computer and figure out who my competition is and how I'm different from them.  I'll explain that more next time.  A very important part of these steps is to have that notebook.  If you want to have a document of the computer or a bunch of post-it notes to write on, that's okay.  The point is that you write down your decisions as you go.  It's true that you will probably rewrite the early decisions a few times during the process, writing down your thoughts clarifies them and helps you remember them in the future.  The more things you have written down, the better your foundation and understanding you will be as you work through the rest of these questions.

My Beginning

Hm, where do I start?  I think I'll start by telling you my theory behind my store right now.  Tomorrow I'll start with the defining of my branding.
   I started my store on the idea that every item would be based off a story or character from history or myth.  That is where my creative block decided to pop up.  So many possibilities, no defined market or parameters.  Needless to say, I put up the items, ones I knew then were merely placeholders until I got better pieces, and haven't touched the Etsy store since.  I used the excuse that I was practicing other techniques to get around the block.  I have tried a few new things but my mind has gotten away from the online store aspect of my business and gotten distracted by the various crafts I can use.
   I'm adjusting the basic idea of the store to a shop online selling elegant wire and stone jewelry but that is all I have so far.  Just minimizing the focus that much has given me ideas but I'm not starting on new product until I know my brand (which I'll explain tomorrow), my target market, and have my business plan finished.  All of that will create a funnel to narrow my focus, removing the dizzying array of possibilities to reveal the best options for going forward.  I might have saved a year of procrastination if I had just taken a month or two when I started to go through these steps.  Oh well, the best thing about business, and life, is that it is never too late to rethink, adjust, and improve things that aren't yet amazing.  Let the process begin!