I sell my jewellery online, including on eBay, and I've noticed how many people talk about how hard it is to sell jewellery there. It's certainly true that the jewellery category is very crowded, but personally I've found it to be ok, although I wouldn't like to be depending on it as my only sales outlet (I'm much more into multiple income streams!). I think it's always possible to do well, even in marketplaces where there appears to be a lot of competition, and I'll explain why in this article.
It goes against conventional wisdom, but I don't see myself as being in competition with anyone else, because my pieces are unique. Even if some of them are similar in style to the work of others, they never look exactly the same, and - more importantly - they have a unique energy. And all I need to accomplish, in terms of making sales, is to attract buyers whose own energy is compatible with mine, and - by extension - with that of my work. I don't need everyone to love what I'm doing, I don't need to be seen by an enormous audience, I don't need to 'fight' other jewellery designers for visibility and sales, and I don't need to rely on taking huge numbers of exhausting action steps to promote my work (although these may of course be useful).
I only need one buyer for each item (or a handful of bidders, in the case of eBay auctions), and out there already are those individual people for whom one (or more) of my pieces will be just right. I just need to line up my energy on an inner level, while making the work, and while writing my ads, and allow the natural matching-up process to follow on a physical level. The same is true for anyone who has a product or service to sell.
This process, while entirely natural, is not something that comes so naturally to most people (myself included, which is why I'm continuing to work on it), because so many have grown up in a environment that tends to pooh-pooh the possibility that things really might work in such a way (it's too easy! - where's all the struggle and suffering and hard work that western culture seems to value so much?!). But it's easy enough, for many people, to suspend any disbelief and give it a try - and then to be happily surprised!
Have you ever been shopping, and, when choosing between two very similar or identical objects, felt much more strongly drawn to one over the other, even though logically speaking, there was little or nothing to distinguish them? That's energy matching at work, and that's why making a sale is an inside job, and competition is much less important than most people think!
The next two parts of this article look at a few techniques you can use to put this into practice and reap real results.
