4 Ways to Crush Your Handmade Competitors

I hate worrying, don’t you?

Every now and again I run across people in the handmade blogging/consulting arena who make me anxious. Even if our audiences are different and I have no reason to really worry, I often feel nervous and think things like:

I wish I had a better layout on my blog

Why is their traffic so much higher than mine

I wish people were buzzing about my website too

Now, the only way to overcome these feelings is to sit down and take a hard look at their business.

The reasons you want to analyze your competitors is to see:

- What they are doing right.

- Things they are doing wrong.

- The items selling best for them.

- Where they’ve been featured and for what.

- What people are buzzing most about.

Then you can come up with serious ways to CRUSH IT and create your own handmade fame.

4 Simple Ways to Crush Your Handmade Competitors

Tip #1 – Make yourself unique.

What makes you and/or your products different from your competitors? If you don’t know, you need to come up with something to set yourself apart. To me, making yourself unique really boils down to one question:

Who Wants to Buy Your Products?

If you are selling to everyone, narrow that down NOW. Three Examples:

• You and your competitors sell handmade soap which is for ‘everyone’. You decide to make yourself different by only making soap for men. You would change your fragrance list and color scheme then start marketing your new brand accordingly. Not only will you be ‘different’ from your competitors, you will start being remembered as the ‘handmade soap company just for men’. Stuff like that spreads fast.

Now one thing to consider is that “men” is a big category. You can take this down another few notches and create a niche for yourself that is easy to market and create a buzz for. Most men are very different. Some like like sports, some that hate them. Men who like cars, men who are eco it up on the streetcar. Young men, old men.  Gaming men and Working Men.

• Say you sell handmade cards. If you only want to sell online but that means trying to sell cards among a lot of crafty people. So you decide to change things up and create a bunch of ‘card making kits’. These kits are aimed at crafty kids so now all the crafty people are snapping them up. Now you are the Crafty Kids Card Kit Company and you are an instant hit.

• What if you are a jewelry designer? You want to appeal to brides because that’s where the big money is but you are consistently being beaten in sales by competitor shops. You decide to do something crazy and start targeting “Eco-Brides”. You start sourcing all of your material locally and incorporate recycled pieces as well. You even create a line featuring live grass that has to be watered. Now you’re unique AND in the money!

Tip #2 – Improve your photos.

After being unique, your photos are the biggest factor in success. When you sell online, noone can physically touch or examine your pieces so you need to show them exactly how they look by snapping photos that will give buyers a real sense of what they are about to purchase.

This is going to sound harsh. You KNOW if your photos stink. I don’t care how old you are or how inexperienced you are. If you want to take awful shots and then talk about them as being ‘not bad’ then just forget online selling. Not bad won’t get you sales regardless of how damn unique you are. There are endless resources out there to help you improve your photos but let’s start with the most simple factors:

• Buy a new camera

If you are using a camera you got 5 years ago, it’s time for an upgrade. If you aren’t sure about investing in a new camera you could borrow a few from different friends and family to see which one produces the best results. I spent a month researching the best camera for my business.

• Practice makes perfect

I hate saying this but it’s true. I snapped a minimum of 30 shots PER item until I found 5 quality photos to use on Etsy. Some days I couldn’t even 5 good ones and had to snap another 30 per item. As time went on, I just took 5 shots per product and all of them were perfect.

• Use common sense

Would you want to buy a brand new book from Amazon that is snapped on top of someone’s bed. That’s just weird. What if it was on top of a wood floor. Not professional. It doesn’t matter if this is your home business, you need to go for a clean look for all of your photos.

• Do your homework

Back to the endless resources available. Read up on tips and actually TAKE ACTION on them.

Tip #3 – Offer something they don’t.

You know your business well so you will examine competitors and easily identify things you consider ‘flaws’. Use your competitors weak points to enhance your own business. For instance, say they only offer made to order items. You will start busting your butt to create a selection of ready made items, shipped out within 1 business day. Or what if they charge $5 for gift wrapping. Now you will start offering complimentary gift wrapping (which you can factor into your prices to ensure you aren’t losing a dime).

Where do you look for these flaws?

• Their website

• In their shop photos and listing descriptions

• In their blogs & social sites

• In their advertising

Tip #4 – Be Everywhere and then some.

The best part about social media is there are so many people still unwilling to try. That means some of your competitors may not be on Twitter or Facebook yet. Get on there are start spreading the word about what YOU offer before they do. By the time they get on there, you will already be 10 steps ahead.

It’s still very likely that the other half of your competitors are already using social sites. No biggie. Use the same ‘examining technique’ to determine their social media weaknesses. There’s a damn good chance they are just tweeting their own links so since you just read up on how not to be annoying on Twitter, you know how to use Twitter more effectively which makes your brand more likable and your success more favorable.

One last thought: Once you have worked on tips 1, 2 & 3 you will need to actively and aggressively promote yourself because noone will know about your great UNIQUE brand but you.

The bottom line is there are endless ways to stand out from the crowd but these 4 tips are the easiest and most successful ways to really kick things up a notch. If you found this post helpful be sure to leave a comment and tweet this post by clicking on the ‘retweet’ button at the top of the post!

Soda Can Pic courtesy of John Linwood