You’ve created beautiful pieces and now you’re thinking about selling your handmade jewelry. The only problem is, you’re new to the entire world of selling. Or maybe you’ve made some gorgeous works of art, attempted to sell and it didn’t go so well.

You’re thinking of throwing in the towel. Before you get started or give up, there are some key strategies you need to know. For the sake of convenience, we’ll talk about strategies for online jewelry markets where you can have repeated sales.

Key strategy #1: Don’t stick with one online market place. The daddy of all market places is eBay. It’s become a household name and millions of people flock to it every day in an effort to win the bidding war against others to get the object of their wants.

Yet, you’ll hear stories of a steady income and ones where people didn’t make much if anything at all. What made the difference? A plan. Think of online market places as your virtual shop and yourself as a virtual shop owner.

On eBay, you want to present your goods in your store. These are items that you will not auction but that people can buy at any time. You do want to auction some of your products to raise awareness about your store.

Key Strategy #2: Get started selling your handmade jewelry on Etsy. Similar to eBay except there are no battles in an auction and you can set up a store here without a cost. When you do sell a piece of your jewelry, that’s when you’ll be charged a small, reasonable fee. But you can set up photographs of your items as with your eBay store and promote both through articles through directories that allow users to do so.

Key Strategy #3: Think not only about the beginning, where and how to sell, think about the ending of the transaction. How are you going to get paid? What about customer service?

What’s the best way to get the product to the customer? To get paid, you want a secure link. PayPal is the best for that. Since you can’t be online 24/7, promise customers a guarantee-say something like you’ll get back to them within 48 hours to answer any questions. Set up an account with a shipping company to get your product to the customer.

Key Strategy #4: Selling your handmade jewelry is actually the easy part. What most budding business owners miss is that the profits must go back into the business until you can afford to pay yourself. The struggles in the first year or two will pay off in the long run if you stick to your business plan.