(Note from Tawra: Here's the next article in the Work at Home Series by Patrice Lewis. She writes for my favorite magazine Countryside and I just love her articles on working at home.)

No matter how wonderful your home craft product is, it won't make you a dime unless you can sell it.

Well, duh. This is nothing new. However, where do you sell it? Ah, there's the rub.

How to sell your product – and where – depend on a number of factors. How widespread is its appeal? Does it appeal to men? Women? Children? Teenagers? Seniors? Blue-collar workers? White collar workers? The wealthy? The low-income? City dwellers? Farm folks? The sophisticated? The earthy?

As you might guess, there are dozens and dozens of factors that can influence where to sell your product. Obviously I can't target everyone's specific product and offer advice as to a potential market. This article will examine some ideas and offer some suggestions for how to market your home craft product.

Research Your Market

You need to find a niche and fill it with something people want. Yes, you've heard it before, but it's true. To go into business competing with hundreds or thousands of people who are making similar or identical products is asking to fail.

For instance, a few years ago when the cigar craze swept the country, my husband seriously thought about getting into the humidor business. A quick search on the internet revealed that there were hundreds of humidor manufacturers. He dropped the idea immediately. Why compete with folks who were already experts in their craft? In this instance, there wasn't a niche to fill – it had already been filled. He would have been foolish to try to elbow in on something so well-established.

On the other hand, at every Renaissance Faire or Medieval living history event we attended (and we attended lots!), we noticed that nearly everyone carried two things with them: a knife, and something to drink from. We weren't metalworkers, so making knives was out of the question. However, almost all the drinking vessels that were available for purchase were either cheap imports from overseas, or ceramic mugs that were easily broken. Not many people were selling anything authentic and historic. We'd found our niche.

How Thin is your Market?

The more common your craft, the thinner the market. Country crafts and jewelry, for instance, are popular items, but there are many people already making them. Your product must be unique enough, cheap enough, or high-quality enough to compete.

On the other hand, there are lots and lots of people who enjoy country crafts and jewelry, so your market is broader to begin with. This gives you an advantage.

Target your market according to how pricey your craft is. If you make one-of-a-kind elegant jewelry pieces that sell upwards of $100 or more, you are unlikely to do well if you try selling at small craft fairs. If your jewelry is produced quickly and sells in the $5 to $50 range, you'll do much better.

Marketing Options

You have only two real options for selling your product: (1) sell the items yourself; or (2) have someone else sell them for you.

In this article, we'll concentrate on discussing some of the ways you can market the item yourself. The second option, having someone else sell them for you, will be discussed in a future article about wholesaling.

What About Craft Fairs?

Craft fairs, incidentally, are what most people think first when they decide to try marketing their craft product. Makes sense, doesn't it, to sell a craft product at a craft fair? Well, yes and no.

Recognize the demographics of who attends crafts fairs: mostly women, mostly lower to middle-class, and mostly married with children. If you sell something that has no appeal to this demographic, you won't do well.

I speak from experience. Traditional craft shows are financial flops for us. We make wooden tankards – like beer steins, made of wood – that have a strongly masculine appeal. They are usually priced higher than most of the other products at craft shows. The result? If we sell four or five pieces over a weekend, we're lucky. In other words, we don't make enough money to make doing traditional craft shows worth our while.

(Keep in mind that we make tankards for a living – it's our primary source of income. Therefore something that doesn't "pay" well isn't worth our time to do. It's a different story if we decide to do a local craft fair just for fun, as we sometimes do.)

Time Away from Home

Another thing to consider is how much time away from home your marketing efforts require. If you do craft fairs, you need time on the road (to and from) and the time at the show itself (usually a Saturday and Sunday). Unless your craft is something you can do anywhere (i.e. knitting or crocheting sweaters), then the time spent going to shows is time away from the manufacturing process. Last time I checked, most craft fairs frowned on bringing a table saw and belt sander onto the premises.

When we first got into this business and were desperately trying to do enough craft shows to survive (a foolish marketing choice, we later learned), we found ourselves away from home four days a week. We lived in a semi-rural area, and the large shows we needed to do were far away. We would travel on Friday, sell on Saturday and Sunday, and travel again on Monday. This meant that we only had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to make more product.

It was a hellish schedule that meant we had to put off having children, getting livestock, or any other goal we had in mind for our future. It was also unsustainable, especially since the shows yielded so little income that we needed to do a lot of them in order to make enough money to survive. It also meant that we didn't have any down time, any time off.

We learned that if we did fewer events that were better targeted (even if they were far away), we had a higher volume of sales and made enough money that the event was financially worthwhile. For us, this meant Oktoberfests, Renaissance Faires, and other themed shows where wooden beer steins had a broader appeal.

Match the Product

If you do events, it makes sense to match your product to the type of show. How well would lace doilies sell at a motorcycle rally? How well would leather whips and chains sell at a family event? How well would NRA bumperstickers sell at a hippie festival?

This type of marketing – matching your product to the potential customer – applies to any sort of advertising or promotion. It staggers me how many people mis-match their marketing attempts. In my last article, I mentioned two vendors who were making very poor sales for their products: pastel ceramic dragons at an event that had few children, and black wax skull candles (and other weird, even offensive, wax items) at an event with lots of kids. Had these vendors swapped events, each might have done better.

So look at how well your product fits the target market. Don't attempt to sell cute country crafts to a sophisticated, Architectural Digest-reading audience. Don't try to sell heavy metal stuff at a wine-tasting. Don't try to sell sleek modernistic products to farmers or ranchers. It's not a fit.

For Example...

I received an email from a nice fellow in response to my last article on "What To Do When Nobody Wants Your Product." He had a question as to why his wife's products weren't selling. She makes high-quality, hand-crocheted custom dog sweaters and dog beds. His email to me read as follows: "She has had samples at several pet stores and at our neighbor's dog grooming studio. She has done craft fairs. She has had very limited success in selling them because customers can buy a dog sweater or bed at Wal-Mart for one-third the price. We have looked at the product at Wal-Mart and they are made in China and of very poor quality, but they are around $10 each where she sells her product for about $30. So our question is, how do you compete with Wal-Mart? Or should she just give it up and go back to making baby blankets for people we know who are having babies?"

Can you sense the frustration? Here is a skilled craftswoman making a high-quality, custom, hand-crafted product, and she can't get anyone to buy it. The temptation is to think that there's something wrong with the product, but that's not true. Rather, there was a mis-match in their marketing.

I replied that they can't compete with Wal-Mart – that's not the proper market for them. Budget-minded people aren't interested in spending large amounts of money on dog sweaters.

Rather, I suggested that they print up some glossy, handsome (not frou-frou) brochures that highlighted the unique advantages of their products, and target the rich and famous. The wealthy are known for spending large sums of money to pamper their pets.  I suggested that this woman jack up her prices (I mean that, too!), use the highest-quality wool yarn (or whatever she deems is the best yarn to use), and she should target people to whom money is no object for their pets.

This might be accomplished by doing some internet research and pulling up pet boutiques in chi-chi parts of the country (Rodeo Drive in L.A. comes to mind, for instance).  I recommended avoiding the chain pet stores such as PetSmart because buying decisions are usually too big for a small supplier like this woman.

The Paris Hiltons and Martha Stewarts of the world want only the best for their pets, and are perfectly willing and able to spend $150 or up on The Best dog sweater. These types of people do not want whatever anyone else can get at Wal-Mart, nor do these types of folks go to crafts fairs looking for high-end products. Rather, they want something they can brag was hand-made just for them, that was custom fitted to their particular pet.  These people are out there - and it's the crafter's job to find them.

In this case, it isn't that nobody wanted this woman's product.  Rather, her marketing efforts have been mis-directed.  If she targeted her advertising toward the people who can afford the type of high-quality product she makes, her sales may increase.

Try Some Synergy

If you have a product that you just can't move yourself, see if you can't find a way to sell it in combination with something else. This can either be something else you make, or something that someone else makes.

If you make wooden jewelry that you just can't sell, try joining forces with someone who makes hand-forged cutlery and see if you can make elegant handles. If you can't sell enough of your hand-thrown ceramic goblets, try joining up with someone who makes custom picnic baskets.

One of our oldest wholesale partnerships for our business is a fellow who makes exquisite hand-turned wooden goblets. His pieces are one-of-a-kind and very expensive, so he sells our tankards (which are more earthy and less expensive) at his shows to round out his sales. Both of us do very well as a result.

This is an example of a synergistic relationship. "Synergy" is when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Our part (the tankards) and our friend's part (the goblets) each achieved a certain level of sales. Combined, however, the sales were higher than if we each sold the items separately.

Remember the Fanaticism Rule

Remember this: people are fanatics about their hobbies and are willing to spend money on them. That's why you're making the craft item you're passionate about, because you're a fanatic, right? This is a good thing.

Sometimes being able to change a small feature about your product can turn mediocre sales into great sales. For instance, if you were to laser-engrave or silkscreen a generic motorcycle onto the side of your hand-crafted mailboxes or lavender-velvet frammerjammits, you will probably sell them like gangbusters at a motorcycle rally.

By making a product that can be modified to fit an appropriate market, you gain a lot of flexibility. You also gain the ability to cross-market (or cross-target) your product.

There are literally thousands of groups of fanatics out there. That's what people like to spend their money on. If you can modify your product to cater to peoples' hobbies, your business will increase.

If you take your selection of hand-crafted candles to a candle show, for instance, then you're surrounded by nothing but other candle-makers. However, if you take your specialty Elvis/tractor/airplane/cat/speedboat/whatever candles to events that cater to Elvis-lovers, tractor-lovers, airplane-lovers, cat-lovers, speedboat-lovers, or whatever-lovers, people will buy them.

Hate Elvis or tractors or airplanes or cats or speedboats? It doesn't matter. Remember, if you can't tap into your own passions, tap into someone else's. That's how to succeed in a home craft business, by tapping into what people like to spend money on.

Internet Sales

What about the Internet?

It's too large a subject for this article. I will address internet selling in a future article.

Scratching the Surface

This article barely scratches the surface of marketing your product, but I hope it gives you some ideas of how to approach the subject. It goes without saying that successful marketing of your home craft product is the lynchpin to making your business succeed. And there are always new things to learn, new markets to explore, and new techniques to try.

Even now, after fourteen years in business, my husband and I are learning. For instance, we've recently decided to try marketing our wooden tankards to movie prop companies. Well, why not? Our tankards have appeared in the movie Master and Commander as props (they were bought indirectly through a catalog we supply, so we're always the last to know if they are used in a movie). We thought, why not try marketing directly to the prop companies? We just had some brochures printed up, I obtained a copy of the Hollywood Blu-Book (a directory for the entertainment industry), and we'll see what happens.

In the End...

Don't surrender a product just because your early sales are poor. First, it takes time to build up a market; second, it takes time to research the proper markets to target.

So never give up. Never surrender. You can sell your products; your job is to find out where.

Patrice Lewis is co-founder of Don Lewis Designs (www.donlewisdesigns.com). She and her husband have been in business for fourteen years. The Lewis's live on forty acres in north Idaho with their two homeschooled children, assorted livestock, and a shop which overflows into the house with depressing regularity.