An online presence can greatly benefit any type of crafter in today’s global market. A presence on the internet is essentially like having a store open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, no waiting between those seasonal craft shows that happen just two or three times a year.

An online store gives new creditably to the crafter as a legitimate business, because now their customers can go to their online store to shop for birthday gifts, valentine gifts, mother’s day gifts etc. without having to wait for the next craft show. Their customers can also easily contact them if there is something they need that is not in their online store.

Some crafters are overwhelmed at the thought of having a web site. Hiring a web designer to build their store with ecommerce capabilities, hosting, managing and promoting their web site can be very expensive, and there are also other issues like security, merchant accounts etc.

But there is another option. Join an online crafters’ mall. In a good crafters’ mall the crafter/artisan will have their own store front. They will have a control panel where they can easily add their own product, and product descriptions, they will take care of all their own orders, and they will not pay commissions on their sales.

They can also have their own dot com, dot net business names (when available). As soon as they open their online store they get instant traffic.