Ultimate Guide on How to Sell Jewelry from Home

If you can’t get through a day without those dangling earrings, or have a flair for designing and creating necklaces, or are just looking to monetise this passion to accessorise, then this post on how to sell jewelry from home is written for you.

Jewelry is an evergreen niche. As long as there are women on Earth, there will be a demand for jewelry. So it is a smart move to be monetising on this.

On the down side, it also means there is high competition. Apart from the big merchants selling jewelry and accessories, you have the MLM (multilevel marketing) companies like Paparazzi, and not forgetting the thousands of small businesses and home entrepreneurs.

That is not to say you will not succeed. In fact, there are several proven paths to do this. What you need to do is study each model, find the one that you will be willing to follow through, then take action and stick with it until you see results.

Here in this article, I will be covering 3 main methods. They are:

1. Sell jewelry on existing platforms
2. Set up your own eCommerce store
3. Set up your own website to do affiliate marketing

My personal favourite is method 3: affiliate marketing, so do read till the end before you make a decision, do not close any door prematurely on yourself.

Your own jewelry

The first two methods involve already owning, or creating, or sourcing for your own products.

For instance, you may have a large wardrobe of jewelry and accessories that you wish to sell away.

Or you may have made a hobby out of creating your own jewelry pieces.

Or you may know of some wholesale suppliers from whom you can bulk purchase products at a low cost.

In such cases, you can either make use of method 1 or method 2, which I will go through briefly before discussing their pros and cons.

Method 1: Sell jewelry on existing platforms

There are many existing buy-and-sell platforms that you can leverage on. Some examples include:
Amazon
eBay
Etsy
Zibbet
Art Fire
Bonanza

Study fee structure, terms and conditions

In choosing a platform to sell your jewelry, you have to study its fee structure, and of course its terms and policies, to understand what you are signing up for.

One thing to note is that the bigger and established platforms tend to protect buyers’ rights more than the sellers’. So if you are unfortunate to run into some unreasonable customers, the odds would likely be against you.

Can start earning quickly

The advantage of this method is that there are lots of existing potential buyers on the platform, so you do not have to worry about getting traffic.

Once you set up an account on the platform, post your items, along with some photographs and their prices, you can usually start seeing some sales pretty quickly.

Pricing is important

What you do need to take care of is the pricing of your products. It has to be low enough to get people interested, yet high enough to be profitable for you.

Studying the market, and how other sellers price their jewelry that is in the same genre as what you are selling is pivotal to the success of this model.

Labour intensive

It is not the end of the story after a sales is made. It is in fact the start of the product delivery – packaging, bringing it to the post office to get it sent to your customer, tracking the item, dealing with any subsequent issues like delays, damaged goods, request for refunds, etc.

These are the realities that you have to consider when deciding whether or not to go down this path.

Additional tips

• Take great pictures – It is worthwhile to invest some effort into taking good pictures of your jewelry pieces, ensuring good lighting, focus, and composition, to keep up the professionalism.

• Request for feedback from happy customers – Make sure you ask your satisfied customers to leave some words or star rating for you on the platform, as it will have a great impact on your business.

Method 2: Set up your own eCommerce store

This is often a service that you subscribe to, that allows you to build an online store with eCommerce features that allow high security of your customers’ information, as well as secure payment, and inventory system.

Basically your customers land on your virtual storefront, make the order, pay for it, and you then process the order and see through the delivery.

Good for branding

If you have crafted your own jewelry, or are reselling the entire wardrobe of used jewelry, this is a good model to use, as having your own store gives you the opportunity to create your own brand.

If your products are unique and can stand out among the crowd, your customers will likely return to your store the next time they need another pair of earrings.

Finding traffic to your store

If you are going down this route, you have to know that traffic will be a big issue you need to deal with.

You can have your store done up very nicely, but if no one lands on your site, the business is not going to take off.

No traffic = no sales.

It is as simple as that.

As a new eCommerce store, your site will not appear in search engines when potential buyers are looking for necklaces to buy.

If you have a blog section where you can consistently create new content, then over time you will find your site gaining visibility in search results.

But until then, you would likely have to pay for advertising, to bring targeted traffic onto your online store. This is a high risk investment, especially if you do not have any experience with paid traffic.

The learning curve is steep, and it is something no textbook can teach you fully.

Depending on the platform you choose to run your ads, whether it is through Google ads, Facebook, Youtube, or any other channel, you need to actually sink in the funds to run the campaigns, analyse the results, tweak some parameters, rinse and repeat until you know your customers on the platform really well.

I’m not trying to be discouraging, but rather to present the whole picture, so that you are well prepared, both mentally and financially, no matter which option you eventually choose.

Monthly cost to run an eCommerce store

ECommerce features are costly to run, but they are necessary if you want your own online store.

Although when you first sign up for an eCommerce subscription, it can be rather cheap at the start.

But as you scale up your business, you can expect the monthly fees to go up into the hundreds, depending on the provider you engage, as well as the extent of the subscription plan.

Labour intensive

Similar to the first method, running your own store means you have to see through the entire delivery process yourself, handling whatever infuriated customers along the way, dealing with refunds and returns, etc.

Potential for high profit margins

Once you manage to overcome all the initial obstacles, and find success with your advertising campaigns such that you are getting high returns on your investment, you will find this model to reap you the greatest profit margin.

Because the ‘manufacturing’ cost is low – either you make the jewelry yourself, or buy in bulk at very discounted prices, or they are just stuff sitting in your room otherwise.

ECommerce has seen entrepreneurs reaping huge success. So if you think you’re up for it, it is worth a try.

Dropshipping

The dropshipping model can be done through your eCommerce website as well, whereby after your customer orders and pays for the jewelry at your store, you pass the order to a supplier whom you have an agreement with, to deliver the product directly to the customer.

This saves you the hassle of shipping, but ultimately you have to answer to your customers if any issue crops up.

Moreover, profit margins will be lower, since your suppliers are the ones making and delivering the goods.

So I will not be going into the details of dropshipping here, as I feel that the position you would be taking is not favourable, and it is not worthwhile.

Additional tips

In the jewelry niche, it is worthwhile to use Pinterest to try and get traffic to your online store, since it is a platform that serves visual pictures very well.

You can also set up a Facebook page or Facebook group, to gather a following for your brand. But do be careful not to appear too spammy by splashing the link to your site all over the place, as it can easily get you banned.

These free social media traffic takes time to build up, though. And if you think you’re in for the long haul for this jewelry business, it would be worthwhile to start your social media marketing efforts early.

Method 3: Set up your own website to do affiliate marketing

We are finally at my favourite method. In fact, this is exactly how I am making my online income, through affiliate marketing.

I don’t deal with the jewelry niche, though. Maybe I should, some time in the future.

The best thing about being an affiliate marketer is you do not have to create or own any product, you can have zero inventory, and yet earn a full time income out of it.

This model leverages on the countless existing products that are available in the market. Simply promote those that you think are good for your customers, and when they click through your affiliate link to buy the product, you earn a commission.

It is as simple as that. Completely hassle-free, because the sales transaction takes place between the customer and the merchant, not you.

No inventories to deal with, no need to decide on pricing, no processing of orders, shipping, or customer complaints and refunds to handle.

I can’t find anything else that works in such a neat manner, hence I can’t recommend affiliate marketing enough.

Ok, so what’s the catch here? I will be completely honest with you. This takes hard work, especially if you do not want to spend a single cent on advertising.

It is time and effort that will pay off big time, and it is so totally worth it.

Free organic traffic

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that once you have your own website, and consistently create content on it that centers around your niche, and adds value to your readers, the search engines will start to trust your authority.

Then your website will begin to appear on page 1 of people’s search results.

(Related: 5 compelling reasons to start your own website)

If you learn how to target the keywords in your content to bring in potential customers with a strong buyer intent, you are going to have your website visitors trusting your recommendations, and going ahead with their purchases through your links.

Lower commissions, but unstoppable free traffic

Yes, with affiliate marketing, the commissions for the jewelry niche typically range from 5% to 15%, which may be lower than if you had created the jewelry yourself.

But don’t forget, with volume in sales, that comes all for free from the search engines, your absolute earnings can be much greater.

Minimal cost to start

You just need a website, with a domain name which typically costs $15 per year, and site hosting that averages less than $5 per month.

In fact, I will be showing you a platform where you can try this out entirely for free for a start. You can then be in a better position to decide if this is the route you want to go.

With everything that I learnt from this training platform, here’s a peek into my earnings on a recent day, from just one income source:

That’s $350 in a day. Nothing to boast about, as it is still far from reaching its full potential. I just wanted to show you the vast possibilities here.

If you’re willing to give this a chance, click the button below to hop over to another post where I explain how the platform can equip you with the knowledge and skills to start and build out your very own affiliate marketing business.

Content ideas for the jewelry niche

As you build out your jewelry website, these are some content ideas that you can populate the site with:

• how to clean the jewelry
• ways to make it last longer
• history of the specific types of jewelry
• matching styles and preferences, and so on.

Some affiliate programs in the jewelry niche

Here are some examples of great affiliate programs you can consider:

• Sugar Bean Jewelry – 15% commission, lifetime cookie
• Kobelli – 8% to 10% commission, 30 days cookie
• SuperJeweler – 8% commission, 120 days cookie

There are so many more, you will be spoiled for choice when it comes to affiliate programs in the jewelry niche.

My #1 recommendation to start your own website

And for reading all the way to the end of the post, I believe you have it in you to make this work. Here is your FREE PDF Guide: 4 Simple Steps to Making Money Online. Fill in your details to claim it:

If you have any concerns or questions regarding selling jewelry online from home, or any experience you would like to share with us, do comment below, and we will start a conversation from there.