FMTTM Coffee Club

Norman_Conquest

Norman_Conquest

Well-known member
It was good to catch up and have a little chat earlier today and something we must keep on doing. I hope you both got as much out of it as I have, it's always good to talk face to face and just as good to listen to others. The time just flew and I was shocked at how long we had been sat there.

With inspiration from you both, I will start looking into selling my wood-turned items online - If only I knew an IT guy who could set me a website up 🤣 🤣 🤣. Only joking Mark, I think Etsy would be the best place to start.

guisborough_rob - You seem the best at organising these mornings, so I will leave it up to you to arrange the next one and I will fit in with you. Let me know what coloured wood you would like the bowl and I will get on with making something for your better half. If you want the outer ring painted, I would suggest a light coloured wood (Ash, beech, sycamore).

sadgit - We need to look at changing your user name now, it certainly doesn't suit you. Give me a shout if you fancy having a go on the lathe and I will sort something out. Be prepared to get bitten by the bug - it will cost you a fortune ;). The woodturning helped me release a lot of pressure when I was working in the school and was good for my mental health.

Thanks again,
 
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Norman_Conquest said:
It was good to catch up and have a little chat earlier today and something we must keep on doing. I hope you both got as much out of it as I have, it's always good to talk face to face and just as good to listen to listen to others. The time just flew and I was shocked at how long we had been sat there.

With inspiration from you both, I will start looking into selling my wood-turned items online - If only I knew an IT guy who could set me a website up 🤣 🤣 🤣. Only joking Mark, I think Etsy would be the best place to start.

guisborough_rob - You seem the best at organising these mornings, so I will leave it up to you to arrange the next one and I will fit in with you. Let me know what coloured wood you would like the bowl and I will get on with making something for your better half. If you want the outer ring painted, I would suggest a light coloured wood (Ash, beech, sycamore).

sadgit - We need to look at changing your user name now, it certainly doesn't suit you. Give me a shout if you fancy having a go on the lathe and I will sort something out. Be prepared to get bitten by the bug - it will cost you a fortune ;). The woodturning helped me release a lot of pressure when I was working in the school and was good for my mental health.

Thanks again,
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Take a look at Wordpress. Etsy will give you a market but they take a lot of fees. With Wordpress you can quite quickly get a site up and running and set up card payments etc even klarna

Or you can look at stuff like shopify
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
Take a look at Wordpress. Etsy will give you a market but they take a lot of fees. With Wordpress you can quite quickly get a site up and running and set up card payments etc even klarna

Or you can look at stuff like shopify
Click to expand...

But unless he’s spending money on advertising, who’s going to see his site?

Etsy take a large fee as they do the marketing for you and get eyes on your products (broadly speaking)

Ideally you would have a website running alongside Etsy, so you could direct Etsy customers to your site
 
AytonMews said:
But unless he’s spending money on advertising, who’s going to see his site?

Etsy take a large fee as they do the marketing for you and get eyes on your products (broadly speaking)

Ideally you would have a website running alongside Etsy, so you could direct Etsy customers to your site
Click to expand...
Same as every other site out there that is not on Etsy I'd imagine.

Etsy takes nearly 7% of the total take, on top of a payment processing fee and a currency conversion fee of 2.5% for any foreign customers. They don't really do any advertising for you, you just appear in searches. If you want to advertise in Etsy, you have to promote listings which costs additional, and to integrate Etsy into your site is $10 a month else you have to maintain two stock /inventory systems.

For a small specialised / bespoke service I'd imagine most customers would be local and he would just need to showcase what he can make, what they look like and what the costs / timescales are. None of that really needs Etsy and he would probably find plenty of customers through sharing his site on here, local Facebook groups, community pages and the like.

Wordpress and the like all have seo modules that let you easily describe the site with relevant keywords for search engine optimisation.

Etsy works far better for mail order services, but then as well as getting eyes on your product you're also competing on quality and price with the entirety of Etsy, even so far as suggesting similar items or sellers while browsing your items. I've often found items from sellers and ended up buying identical, cheaper or better because it's all on the same ecosystem.

You'll also have to deal with claims a lot as Etsy customers are notoriously picky and Etsy, like eBay, sides with the buyer a lot.
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
For a small specialised / bespoke service I'd imagine most customers would be local and he would just need to showcase what he can make, what they look like and what the costs / timescales are. None of that really needs Etsy and he would probably find plenty of customers through sharing his site on here, local Facebook groups, community pages and the like.
Click to expand...


Fair enough, he probably just needs a simple 5 page brochure site with pics and contact details then, without woocommerce etc… Could be knocked up in an afternoon.
 
AytonMews said:
Fair enough, he probably just needs a simple 5 page brochure site with pics and contact details then, without woocommerce etc… Could be knocked up in an afternoon.
Click to expand...

What would something like that cost to set up and run?

Can I also say thanks to both of you for your input on how I would move this idea forward, this is what prevented me from selling online (not understanding how I would).
 
Norman_Conquest said:
What would something like that cost to set up and run?

Can I also say thanks to both of you for your input on how I would move this idea forward, this is what prevented me from selling online (not understanding how I would).
Click to expand...

Wordpress is free to use.


You would just need to purchase a domain name (£5ish), then pay for the monthly hosting of the website (a few quid a month for a small site like that)
 
Domain names cheap to register initially but after that they tend to go up upon renewal but not silly amounts, change from £20 for a couple of years

Hosting £5-10 a month

Wordpress is one click install If you wanted online ordering / payments then woocommerce is an add on for free that lets you have listings, stock, integrate to a Facebook page, and signing up to stripe for debit card payments.

I'd avoid PayPal as their fees are close to 3%, stripe is about 1.5%, difference adds up fast on larger items as people tend to use PayPal given the choice, and then that also locks you into PayPal dispute resolution which, like eBay, sides with the buyer almost every time.

Loads of YouTube guides on setting up from scratch, there's people that will do it for you but honestly it's easy enough to muddle through

Then theres managed options which cost a monthly fee but you can roll something out quick and easy - look at wix and shopify as examples
 
Three coffees today has wired me so no nap for me this afty!!

It was a really good meet up with Norman Conquest and sadgit and is something we are now going to do at least once a month. As Norm says, we went to Kirkleatham Walled Garden cafe today but we can vary venues.

I’ll message folk via the conversation facility. I’ll add Norfolkred1 to that list. Anyone else, just let one of us know.
 
I really loved meeting you both today. I was nervous as hell meeting new people but the time did fly. 3 Americanos I am still wired like hell. Your turning is inspiring, I am most certainly an IT guy but 100% not a web guy. I do know a person who is. I mentioned Etsy as a place to start, they like all places take a nice cut, but a cut of selling is better than in the loft 😀😀
 
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