Like many crafters, I occasionally sell a piece or two of my jewelry to friends, family, or co-workers. While I do have a bag of jewelry priced and ready to hand to someone who is interested, I don’t always have it with me, or it might just be too awkward to load someone up with so much at one time.

Granted, some people will ask if you sell your work just as a way to be courteous, but very often they are sincerely interested in buying a piece or two, especially if they have been seeing you wear some of your work (like jewelry) around the office.

In comes the handy business card that includes the URL to your on-line shop. Even if you are like me and too busy to spend the amount of time necessary to run your shop at a high volume level, just having a small number of items in one of those free crafting networks like Artfire, Efreeme, or Etsy can be a good solution for this situation. Most shops allows like these are free to set up and charge a nominal fee for selling. Some, like Efreeme.com, charge nothing, even if you list items for sale or make a sale.

Just the other day, I sold a few pair of earrings (one pictured above) to a co-worker who I directed to my Etsy shop. Both pieces were items I can easily remake, so I was still able to keep the listings. In fact, the earrings above are only in my shop as kits, but she wanted the finished earrings.

If you have been saying no to yourself about opening a web shop to sell your arts and crafts, maybe this is a reason to reconsider.