There is a myth that you need to grow your following and do more marketing in order to make more sales. In today’s post, I’m going to show you how to make more money in your handmade business, without doing more marketing!

Hi, my name is Mei Pak and I help makers, artists and designers make a living from selling their handmade products online.

Your profit is all the sales minus the costs of running your business.

I know from my experience working with small business owners and running a few of my own, it’s really easy to get fixated on doing more and more marketing.

I just need more customers. I just need a larger following and then I’ll make more sales.

But today I’m going to show you that that’s not the only way to make more sales. You can actually work with what you already have in place and get a higher amount of profit for it.

I know setting up another social media account or sending more emails, all that stuff can be exhausting. So let’s go through the 8 tips.

1. Increase Your Conversion Rates

The first, biggest thing that you can do to increase your sales and make more money without doing more marketing is to increase your conversion rates.

What are conversion rates? Let’s say 100 people come to your website, and one of them makes a purchase, your website has a 1% conversion rate.

You can measure these conversion rates over everything. So you can look at what kind of conversion rate you get from social media or what kind of conversion rate your emails have.

And because of technology, it’s getting easier and easier to track these. Back in the day, you had to be a pro at statistics to analyze all of this data.

Bundling

Now we have Google analytics. We have all of the different Shopify statistics, your email provider gives you your click through rates. It’s really just an issue of looking at your numbers to see what percentage are converting and how you can increase this percentage.

Increasing your conversion rates is such a low hanging fruit so it’s really important to work on this sooner rather than later because you could be leaving money on the table right now.

In the website example I gave you, let’s say you make some changes and now you have two people make a purchase for every 100 people who visit. Okay, so you have a 2% conversion rate.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, 2% still sounds small, but what you’ve actually done is double your conversion rate. You used to have 1% and now you have 2%. That’s huge because you’ve essentially doubled your business.

You’ll want to think about how your customer approaches your website or your emails or your social media from a fresh, objective perspective.

You can increase your conversion rates by changing out your product photos with ones that connect with your customer more. Maybe moving things around the website, moving which items are featured, maybe it’s highlighting different things in your email newsletter that will improve your conversion rates back to your website, removing barriers in the checkout process.

If customers are having to click through too many things to get to what they want, that can discourage them from completing the purchase.

So going through how people interact with you and your shop with the goal of increasing your conversion rate to customers who are already coming to you is a really great thing to work on because even a small change can turn your business around.

2. Capitalize On What’s Already Working Well

Your bestsellers are bestsellers for a reason. There’s something about them that really appeals to your ideal customers. So how can you do a spin-off of your bestsellers?

So let’s say you’re a candle seller and you have a scent that’s just selling really well. Well, maybe you can offer it in a different size? You could do a smaller size for people who just want to sample it and they’re not ready to commit to a larger size yet. Or a bigger size for people who already love that scent and just want more.

You’ll need to do a little work to identify what aspects of the best selling thing make it a bestseller, but once you’ve identified that rolling that out into different offerings can allow you to really capitalize on what’s already working.

For me, one of my bestsellers is my waffle necklace that Amy Poehler wore in the TV show Parks and Recreation. This waffle necklace is your standard, circular waffle. And I made a spin-off design where it’s exactly the same, except the shape is a heart shape instead of a circle.

At first I felt like it was a cop-out. Like I was cheating because I wasn’t being very creative. But people love the heart shape variation and it sells well in my shop!

Subscriptions are another great way to take advantage of what’s selling well and keep it going on a recurring basis, and I have a video that talks just about subscription products and how to start one.

3. Upsells

How can you make the average order amount larger? Your average order amount, or AOV, is how much people buy from you in one order, on average.

For me, people usually buy 2-3 necklaces in one order. Of course, we have some outliers who buy just 1 necklace, and some others who buy 5-7 necklaces. But the average is, 2-3 necklaces, which makes my average order amount to be about $40.
How can you increase that $40?

• Can bundle items together into sets?
• Can you make starter sets?
• Can you offer discounts, like a buy two get one half off?
• If there are multiple items ordered, can you include a gift box?
• Can you include a gift card?
• Can you include personalization, customization, especially after someone has ordered a certain amount. Like, free shipping after $75.
• How can you make your average order slightly larger? Because when a customer has already come to you and they’re already adding things to their cart, that’s a great time because they’re primed to buy. They’re much more likely to add in more things with the right encouragement.

Thinking about that part of the purchase and coming up with ways to expand on that is another great way to increase the average order amount and make more money in your business without doing more marketing.