We recently posted a couple of comprehensive guides about jewelry making here on the site, Learn to Make Jewelry, and our Free Beginner’s Guide to Wire Wrapping.’

In the first guide, we teach you about different techniques for making jewelry and how you can use them to set your gemstones for wear.’Our wire-wrapping guide delves in-depth into one age-old technique for making jewelry which is becoming increasingly popular again today.

Once you actually start making jewelry, though, what do you do with it? You will probably have far more than you can possibly wear or gift away if you really get into jewelry making. Jewelry making is fun and addicting, and before long, you will have heaps of jewelry around the house that you cannot keep.

To that end, it is a good idea to learn how to sell your jewelry. Selling jewelry also allows you to share your creativity with the world, and maybe even make some money on the side. It isn’t easy to sell jewelry, and the odds that you can turn it into a primary occupation are pretty low. But a lot of people can at least offset the cost of their gemstones and supplies, and many can turn a small profit. If you work at it and have luck on your side, you may do even better than that.

How to Sell Jewelry: Introduction

To get started, you will need to know where to sell your jewelry and what kinds of opportunities are out there for artisans. If you have money to put into advertising and sales, that can open a lot of doors. I will tell you about places you can promote for free as well as paid opportunities. You also need to have solid business practices to succeed at selling anything, and jewelry is no exception.

If you have never operated a business, you need to become familiar with the basics. In particular, you need to think through the terms and conditions you want to set for your own shop, and then set up your shipping and returns policies. You will also have to decide on a pricing setup.

In this series, you will learn:

• Where to sell your jewelry
• How to create an airtight shipping and returns policy
• How to price your jewelry
• Best general business practices
• How to handle commissions
• How to start promoting your jewelry online and offline

This will only get you started. As you will quickly discover, selling jewelry online or offline is a very involved process. In particular, promotion is an extremely complex topic, one which could probably generate an entire series on its own.

Volumes have been written on marketing, and you may want to pick up a few if you are serious about selling. You will need to learn all that you can in order to become successful. It is a competitive world, and there are thousands of other artisans trying to get attention and sales, just like you.