Do you want free publicity for your handmade craft?

Are you a craftsperson who loves what they do?
If you are, you've no doubt enjoyed making your craft, whatever it may be, lampworking, silversmithing, cardmaking - the list could go on and on....  but will have got to the stage where you saturated your friends and family with gifts from yourself and still want to carry on making.  There is after all, a finite amount of items that you can keep for yourself.

If this is you, I'm sure you will have turned to making items to sell and if you're wanting to turn it into a viable business - to make items to sell at a realistic price.  No doubt you'll see items everywhere that have been handcrafted by people selling them at cost because they've enjoyed making them - but you simply can't compete with that and nor should you!

If you handmade craft is now a business your prices should be paying you an hourly rate.  However, we all know that handmade goods are / should be more expensive than inexpensively manufactured machine made goods. The edge is the fact that your products are different.

This is  abracelet made using purchased beads which have been manufactured. Now take a look at this lady's website  Judith Johnston and you will immediately see the difference with not only the quality, but the beatuy.

So, given that your product is so different from the norm on the high street, you have an edge when it comes to publicity!  Many journals are happy to run articles COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE about artisans and their work because it is newsworthy.

If you're participating in an event, take time out a month or two before and research your local magazines - just see how many of them have articles about local people.  Find an angle for a story about you and write a precis and send it to the editor (email as many as you like with a precis as some may not be interested, but if you get a reply from more than one saying they'd like to run a story about you - you can choose which would suit you best).

When I had a pendant featured in Vogue magazine, I wrote to 5 magazines.  3 didn't reply, 1 wanted me to have a paid advert as well as running a feature and the 5th  - she loved the story!  I have since had half a dozen articles written about me - from a pargagraph or two to a double page feature in their glossy magazine.  All it has cost me is a little time in keeping in contact with the reporter - and in actual fact we got on so well, we've kept in touch because we like each other!

If you were a shop on the high street, you can almost guarantee that you'd be requested to run an expensive advert at the same time, but handmade workers have the 'edge' with newsworthyness because it's not about the 'shop' per se, it's about YOU.

Why not give it a go?