I make jewelry as a hobby and would like to sell it online. How do I go about that the legal way?

You may like an attorney. . . @

Unless you have some way to drive traffic to your website, you’re better off using ebay, etsy, artfire, or one of the other sites to sell your jewelry. It’s not easy to get a website noticed, and people have to find your site before they can purchase from you.

If there’s a Small Business Development office in your area, you can check with them to see what paperwork you need to complete. I think I went to the county clerk’s office to obtain and file my paperwork, but it’s been long enough that I’m not completely certain. Call your local government’s main phone number, tell the operator why you’re calling, and you should be routed to the right office.

Good luck!

http://www.etsy.com
There fees are low, much lower than ebay.

I use Etsy. Their fees are less than Ebay and they are just for handmade and vintage items. It only costs 20 cents to list something for 4 months and they only get like 3.5% of what you sell it for. I just opened my store last week please check it out.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/FinERJewelry

EBAY

I found the below site a few days ago. She’s a stay at home mom with a lot of good ideas. It’s always a good idea to get a mentor and she looks like a good one to help you on your path. There’s enough on her site that you don’t have to invest in any of the ebooks. And who knows? May it will turn into a full time passion!

Hello, You can sell jewelry legally as a hobbyist. Ths most important thing is to keep track of your sales.

The legalities are pretty basic:

1. Get a free tax ID number at your state board of equalization and you collect sales tax on every item sold to buyers inside you state. At the end of the fiscal year you fill out a simple form and send the board of equalization the tax monies you collected.

2. Call the city clerk in the city you live in. Ask how much you can make per quarter before you need a business license. In my city it is $400 per quarter. Any amount under that and no licence is requred. A license here is about $50 a year (it all may differ city to city).

3. If you are selling under a name other than your own, go to yoru count clerk and file a fictitious business name. There will be a small fee ( $35 here) and you will have to run an ad in the paper ($25 to $60 on average)

When selling it is important to know how much you can make in real profit. A basic formula is 3 times the cost of materials plus whatever hourly wage you pay yourself for labor. When pricing you have to really take into consideration your skill level, the quality of the piece, and what your customer is, in reality, willing to pay for it. You will get more for the same piece at an upscale art show than at a flea market, so take your venue into consideration when pricing as well.

Ebay can be a good way to begin if you have a tight niche. Menaing, if you are selling a very particular type of item people will be searching for. For example- "renaissance earrings" or "Mah Jong bracelets" are narrow categories where you will not have a lot of competition. If you are selling something broader like "sterling silver earrings" or "birthstone necklaces" you will find the competition much to abundant to really make a good profit. Ebay fees to list are pretty low now, but about 12% of the final value. Getting payments through PayPal you will lose another several percent and about 35 cents per transaction. You have to be sure that the markup on your jewelry is high enough to still make a good profit without being totally undersold by your competition.

You can sell online at http://www.etsy.com for preyy low fees, but with a lot of competition.

You can create your own website, but this is closer to a full time propositiona nd truly is a loto of work and research. If you are thinking about that try http://www.sitesell.com for an excellent web hosting source.

You can try selling as a vendor at craft fairs and events. This can be time consuming and costly. You will need to think about the price of getting your displays set up, tables, coverings, and lots of inventory, travel, transportation, cost of hiring additional help, incidentals, and food. Entry fees for a cheap local show can cost $25 or $50 at a real low. A mid range festival can be $150 to $250 and a county faire or trade show can be $500 and up.

Other local non-online venues are galleries, jewelry boutiques and local clothing boutiques.

Hope this helps and best of luck.

I have a jewelry business and I sell on ebay and etsy and that is great as a staring point. But I use those to generate customers the same as when I do flea markets and craft and art shows.

The focus of all those things is to build traffic to my website which I built on http://pagebuzz.com which I highly recomend becuase of the low cost and great support.

By building my own web business I save money on fees and eventually I won’t need etsy and ebay to get sales. With the serarch engine tools my website host has it is easy to get more traffic and manage the keywords so my products are found.

If you want to run a jewelry business I would say you most definetly need a website even if it does not generate all of your sales. It does make you more credible and people feel more comforatble buying from people that are more visable and reachable.