TopHatter.com Live Auction Site

TopHatter.com is fairly new on the internet. They have grown fairly quickly due mainly to their advertising efforts. If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably seen their ads.

TopHatter is an auction site, but very different than the eBay style auctions. Instead, TopHatter is a live auction site.

Join TopHatter

The quickest way to join, is to find someone you know that’s a member and ask them for an invitation.

If you don’t know anyone that’s already a member, then simply to to TopHatter.com and click the Request Invite link.

Don’t expect an instant response to your invite request, however. It takes a little time before you’re receive an email invitation.

Once you visit their website, you will see the claim that “Every day, buyers and sellers from all over the world gather for live auctions that are fun, fast, and feature fabulous items at exclusive prices.” is 100% true from what I’ve seen. Attending these auctions is very addictive and fun!

You will also read  that “At Tophatter you can sell anything, including original art, one-of-a-kind jewelry and vintage gems.”

But the categories don’t stop there; there are many, many categories to sell under, or buy from.

There are even Night Bazaars and Early Bird Bazaars where just about anything can be sold.

And the staff at TopHatter are coming up with new categories to sell under as demand grows.

TopHatter Live Auctions

Here’s a quick peek into what one of the auctions actually looks like. Each avatar represents an actual person attending the auction. You can chat with other attendees, bid on items, and if you are a seller and you attend live, you can answer buyers questions real time!

 Sign Up to Become a Seller

It’s easy enough to sign up to become a seller, but you will need to exercise a little patience in the beginning. Top Hatter’s current policy is:

“In order to protect buyers against fraudulent sellers, new sellers can only schedule a single lot at a time until they sell 3 lots. After that, priority scheduling is granted to sellers based on their statistics on Tophatter.”

Even after you reach your 3 sales required, you can’t always list items in the auction you’d like; sometimes the auctions are full and you have to wait a day or two to get into an open slot.

Just like any live auction, some items receive no bids, which can be disappointing for sellers. Some items are bid up to a low price, which is a bargain for the buyer and so-so for the seller. And other items sell for well beyond their stated retail value.

TopHatter in Summary

So is it worth it to sell on TopHatter? The answer may be different depending on the items you’re selling. It’s a lot of fun for sure, and the site is growing every day. Our vote is yes, it’s worth a try!

Share and Enjoy

So, you’re looking for somewhere to sell your handmade jewelry? Maybe you started making jewelry as a hobby and your friends and family loved your jewelry so much, they suggested you sell it. Or maybe you just made so much that your inventory overcame the space you had. In any case, when you’re ready to start selling jewelry online, Artfire.com is worth considering.

As of today, you can try Artfire.com for free for the first 14 days. After that it costs just $12.95 per month. One nice thing about Artfire.com is that there are no additional fees. You pay a flat rate of $12.95 per month, and that’s it.

The admin interface is super easy to use, for adding products, uploading images, customizing your store front and so many other cool features. You can create coupons, discount all of the items in your store, set your store on vacation mode and so much more. Art Fire has forums where you can interact with other sellers.

But don’t think that all you have to do is list your items on ArtFire and you’ll instantly get tons of sales. It doesn’t work that way. The sellers that consistently sell items, also market their items through other venues such as Facebook, blogs, craft shows, etc.

The great thing is that if you do market your jewelry, eventually you can build up a reputation and a following and selling will become easier.

And if you’re considering getting started with Art Fire, read their Setup for Success guide for some great pointers on succeeding  as a seller.

Here are some other great help links to get you started.

• Setting Up Your ArtFire Studio
• Listing a Product
• Guide for Simple Studio Banner Creation
• PayPal Setup Help Guide
• If you still need more, here’s a link to ArtFire’s complete Help Guide Index

We have a store setup on ArtFire called ArtisticPendants. Feel free to visit to see an example of what a live store looks like.

If you decide to give ArtFire a try, here’s wishing you good luck!

Share and Enjoy

Etsy is one of the most popular sites to sell handmade items on, including jewelry.

If you’d like to find out more about selling on Etsy, view the Sell page.

With Etsy, there is no flat fee to sell. There is a cost per item to list on Etsy. The cost is 20 cents per item, and the listing is good for four months. After four months, the listing expires and to renew it costs another 20 cents per item. There is an additional sales fee of 3.5% for every item that sells. Etsy allows you to pay your fees once each month.

The down side to this model, is that if you list a lot of items, but don’t sell much, the listing fees can add up. There is a lot of competition on Etsy in the handmade jewelry category. The up side is, it’s cheap to start and little risk to try. But be warned, if you don’t have many items listed, you generally won’t sell much. Just like with any other site, you will need to market your items. Etsy does have a well established clientele, but to stand out, you should be prepared to link to your items on Facebook, blogs and market your Etsy store using other methods.

To find out more about selling on Etsy, before taking the plunge, check out the Seller FAQs and the Etsy forums. Etsy even has a video library where you can watch free videos on Etsy success and other topics of interest.

Share and Enjoy