Kim Komando

Okay, I'll admit it: I'm a Kim Komando junkie. That aside, the article below is from her newsletter today. She does freely allow people to send her newsletters to others so I suspect with the appropriate kudos to komando I just did this article from her newsletter is fine to repost here.

Hope this helps any who did not know about these places.
John

3 places to set up shop for free

Selling items online is a good way to raise extra money. You could set up your own website, of course, but it takes time to create and then market the site to attract visitors.

Instead, set up shop at one of these popular sites. They're all dedicated to selling arts and crafts. You do very little set-up work, and all the marketing is done for you.

ArtFire.com will help you sell almost any handcrafted item in nearly any category you care to name.

ArtFire doesn't limit you to your own handicrafts. You can also sell clothing designs and patterns, e-books, movies, music, art supplies, vintage collectibles and antiques. It's a bit like the buy-it-now side of eBay in some respects; there are no auctions.

Starting an ArtFire store is simple. Just sign up, enter your information and list your items for sale. You'll want to include useful item descriptions and plenty of pictures to entice buyers. ArtFire also lets you customize your store to suit your products and personality.

ArtFire does your advertising for you. It ranks high in Google search results for strong traffic. Plus, it rotates your products so site visitors see them more often.

The first month of the service is free. After that, it's $12 a month to keep your store going. However, there are no per-item or transaction fees to pay. It's an excellent choice if you deal in consistent, high volume sales.

The popular site Etsy.com operates somewhat the opposite of ArtFire. It's totally free to create a store and keep it open. However, you pay a per-item posting fee and a transaction fee when each item sells.

The posting fee is 20 cents per item. That fee lets you keep the item active for four months. Etsy also takes a 3.5 percent cut of every transaction.

If you deal in low-volume and high-dollar sales, Etsy is preferable to ArtFire. You can recoup 20 cents easily with a single sale. With ArtFire, you need to consistently sell to break even.

Etsy is fairly strict about what you are allowed to post. All items must be handmade, vintage or related supplies. There's little for sale along the lines of used media or even user-made media like music CDs or e-books.

Zibbet.com is probably the most versatile site for creating a shop. Zibbet.com is probably the most versatile site for creating a shop. You can sign up for a free Basic account. It charges no fees whatsoever but limits you to 50 items.

If you only have a few items to sell, this is a good way to go. It also makes it a good site to use in conjunction with other selling sites. You can maximize your exposure without spending any more money. Zibbet will even import items directly from Etsy and Artfire.

The Basic account gives you decent features. It lists your items on Google and Find.com, has respectable shop management tools and even offers free business cards.

If you want more options, you can get a Premium account for $10 a month or $70 a year. This adds additional customization and item images, sales mode, coupons, a Facebook app and more. All these make it easier to generate interest in your products.

In terms of allowed items, Zibbet is fairly standard. The major categories are handmade, fine art, vintage and supplies. Other than vintage clothing, I saw no used items for sale. However, you can post digital art, CDs and other media.

Cost: Free
Systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OSX

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