How to Start Selling Handmade Greeting Cards Online

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Sell your Handmade birthday, anniversary, humorous and other greeting cards online

Making handmade greeting cards with art and verses is a hobby for some. It requires some talent for coming up with cards sentiments and designs that sell.

As with many hobbies, the handmade card business is a specialty, part of the larger $7.5 Billion greeting card industry.

You may think that no one buys handmade cards, they’re usually more expensive than mass manufactured cards. But, there is a significant market of handmade greeting cards.

There are people who just aren’t interested in mass commercialized cards and they want to give something more personable.

Where are those buyers, you may ask? Not surprisingly, you’ll find them online. At Etsy, Amazon Handmade, eBay, CafePress and many other crafty platforms.

Can you make money selling handmade greeting cards? Not only can you make extra cash, but you can make a larger income too. It all depends on how far you want to take your hobby business.

Assuming you have the skills to create handmade greeting cards, next you need to plan what type of cards and for what sub-markets you want to start selling.

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Niche Handmade Greeting Cards Markets

Planning – You decide what type of paper and lettering style you’re going to create the handmade cards on. Also, the sentiments you’ll imprint on them is a decision you have to make before creation.

Use the commercial greeting cards markets as a guide, but keeping in mind that your market is the handmade cards.

These are some examples of niches you may want to consider;

Handmade greeting cards for birthdays
Thank you cards
Handmade greeting cards for Teachers Day
Handmade greeting cards for Mom and Dad
Handmade greeting cards for Mothers’ Day
Valentine’s Day handmade cards
Handmade greeting cards for best wishes
Handmade sympathy cards

Platforms to Sell Handmade Greeting Cards

You can start a handmade cards business from home and begin by selling the traditional way; flea markets and farmer’s market. Although these are good places to start, in order to grow your card business an internet shop or platform is essential.

Here are 6 online platforms where you can begin to sell your handmade cards.

Your Own Platform

The decision where to sell your handmade goods is one of the first you need to take. Are you going to develop your own shop or are you going to set up shop on somebody else’s platform?

Your own shop hosted on your platform will require that you do your own Marketing. This can be thru organic traffic and using Social Media. If you go with this option be ready for a bigger learning curve.

One of the major drawback of this option is that you won’t have the backing of an established platform with customers already built in.

The plus side of developing your own website is that it is yours. This means facing little restrictions in terms of the type of goods, creative and monetization choices.

7 Apps to sell handmade goods, besides Etsy

Etsy

Etsy has made the process for selling handmade goods including greeting cards fairly easy. Create an account, take good pictures, write descriptions and learn a bit of search engine optimization (SEO) and you’re good to go.

Creating a shop on Etsy is simpler than developing your own from scratch. However, you’ll have to learn SEO anyways if you want to rank your products high on the Etsy’s engine.

Also, Etsy does have some restrictions and you have to pay the platform commission on your sales.

Which Handmade Cards are on demand on Etsy?

Long-tailed Keywords for Etsy and Other Search Engines

Long-tailed keywords are the best for nailing down buyers intent. These are phrases with 3 or more words that cover a theme with a specific purpose.

Here are some examples of long tailed keywords to use on Etsy and other platforms to rank on their engines.

Handmade thank you cards for teachers
Thank you cards with photo
Handmade cards without borders
Greeting cards with simple borders
Handmade luxury birthday card for her
Custom thank you cards for weddings
Custom thank you cards for sympathy
Handmade cards with flowers
Handmade cards with circles
Handmade cards for students
Handmade cards with balloons
Birthday cards handmade for mothers
Birthdays cards handmade for dads

Zazzle

Zazzle like CafePress is a print on demand platform where you can upload the greeting cards designs and print them as they’re sold.

On this platform you become a freelance designer. Zazzle ships the cards, does the customer service and collects payments on your behalf.

You’ll get paid via PayPal or with a check for your sales less commissions.

You have the opportunity to continue earning passive income as long as your card designs continues to sell on Zazzle.

More options – Amazon Handmade, Shopify, eBay and ShopHandmade are other platforms to sell your cards.

Writing Greeting Cards for Other Companies

Another way to make money with handmade cards is to write them or make art for commercial use. There are established greetings card companies that pay freelancers to write poetry, sentiments, verses, art and funny lines.

Viabella Greeting Cards

Artists and writers can make submissions at Viabella. You can make proposals of arts, photography and verses to be used on greeting cards and fine stationaries.

Submissions for Humor are paid at higher prices. The general guidelines for submissions accepted are $50 to $150 per verse and $150 to $250 per photography or art.

Noble Works Cards

Noble is a greeting card publisher, wholesalers and online retailer. This company specializes in funny, clever and edgy cards.

Can you write things like, “I started a new exercise routine, every day I do diddly squats” (from the website)?

If you can write humorous or sarcastic verses like that one, make submissions to Noble and ask about pay.

At the bottom of the Noble’s page you can find the submission tab and inquiry form via email.

Blue Mountain Arts

Blue Mountain sells ecards and printable greeting cards for all occasions. This is one of the oldest American Greeting cards company now gone full digital.

Use the submission guidelines to inquiry about content and pay.

Final Thoughts

It’s fairly easy to start your own handmade greeting cards business online. This type of business allows you to make extra money or more income depending on your goals.

If you have talent for writing sentiments and also designing cards, your next step is to become familiar with doing business on the online platform of your choice.

Places where you can sell your greeting cards include; your own site or third party platforms.

You can also make money writing cards sentiments or funny lines for other companies. These will pay you per accepted submissions.