Work at Home Online Guide

Start Lampworking

I get a lot of questions from people interested in lampwork bead making, so I thought I’d answer as many as I can here. This will allow me to be oh-so-clever and say, “Go read my article on lampworkart.com.” I suspect this will not happen, and that instead I will spend hours discussing the topic, but you never know.

My advice to wannabe/newbie lampworkers boils down to the following:

1. Take a class, if possible, before you invest in any equipment. The International Society of Glass Beadmakers has a list of classes. If you live way, way out in the middle of nowhere like I do, you can teach yourself from books. Many of us have done this successfully. The best book to start out with is Cindy Jenkins’ Making Glass Beads . She outlines the materials you’ll need to get started and the basic processes to make beads. I also like her Beads of Glass and Corina Tettinger’s Passing the Flame - A Beadmaker's Guide to Detail and Design for those of you ready to expand your skills.

2. If you fall in love with the process at the class, it’s too late. You’re hooked. Go ahead and whip out that credit card and go buy yourself a torch. There are a lot of models to choose from, but the big decision in the beginning is Hot Head vs. oxygen-propane torch. Hot Heads are inexpensive and easy to set up, but slow to melt glass, tend to leave more scum on your beads, are noisy, and in the long-run will probably cost you more in fuel. Oxygen-propane torches burn clean, are quiet, and allow for more control, but they are more expensive initially. You’ll also need safety equipment, mandrels, bead release, a fire-proof surface, fiber blankets and/or a kiln (another large expense), a controller, etc.

3. If you don’t fall in love at the class, don’t worry. It’s not for everyone. The last thing you want to do is pursue something that will cost you lots of money and time before you ever see a return.

4. If you classify yourself as danger-prone and/or your hospital ER knows you by your first name, an art-form involving pressurized gas tanks, fire and hot, flying glass may be an unwise choice.

Selling Your Beads

So how do you become successful like the super-lampworkers you see making hundreds of dollars per bead? The first thing to recognize is that lampworking is not a get-rich-quick scheme. The second thing to realize is that not many beads actually sell for those prices. I don’t know of anyone who sat down the first time at a torch and produced hundred-dollar quality beads. In fact, most of us can’t give our first hideous, lopsided creations away. Not even to family. Okay, maybe to a mom or a sweet aunt. No. Every fabulous hundred-dollar-bead is the product of years of torch time, patience, trial and error, artistic vision, a few burns, and love of the medium.

Okay, so you took a class, you bought a torch, a kiln, and all the assorted necessities, you’re past the stage where people laugh at your beads, and you’re ready to take that giant leap and sell your work. What do you do? You can go the personal route and sell to crafty friends and family. It’s not a bad place to start. If you’re really prolific you may want to try your hand at a craft fair. You may also want to take the leap onto the internet. If you do, you’ll soon discover that the number one bead store on the web is eBay! Yep. That’s right. The same place where you can purchase a wrinkled t-shirt for $8,800 is also one of the main outlets for online bead-makers.

So why register? First, it’s free. Second, the sooner you register the sooner that annoying little glowing newbie icon goes away and people start to take you more seriously. A word of advice however, after you register don’t list your items to sell right away. Buy a few things on eBay first. This gives you a few positive feedback points (a rating system where members rate each other and build trust). People will be more likely to buy something from someone with some positive feedback than someone with a “zero.” So go purchase that beanie-baby your little niece has been wanting and get used to the environment. This will also allow you to see what you do and don’t like from the sellers and will help you make better choices when you do finally list something for sale.

Once you've become a member another option is to open an eBay store. This used to be a good place to start your online business. It takes little knowledge of HTML or web design and allows you to get your products displayed where people may actually find them. Keep in mind, however, that you will still need to run auctions to drive traffic to your store. However, things have changed and it's not something I would recommend now. If you build your business through an eBay store you operate entirely at their whim and they tend to hike prices up regularly. A smarter solution is to diversify your online presence with your own website.

Starting your own website/online store doesn't have to be difficult. Look into these programs:

Which eCommerce Software is best for you? Get free quotes from multiple firms RFP.ORG
Merchant Solutions-Comparison chart
One Month Free Trial! ProStores - an eBay Company

JustBeads is a very viable auction alternative to eBay for lampwork artists. This is due to several factors such as real customer service, lower fees, policing of unscrupulous bead sellers, and a narrow focus on beads alone. As more and more lampworkers become aggravated with eBay's unwillingness to sort the mass-produced beads posing as art beads from the artist-made art beads, JustBeads (with their patrolled artist bead section) is very likely to grow and thrive. It is now nearly impossible for new lampwork artists to get noticed on eBay when their listings are lost under a landslide of thousands of listings of so-called "studio" made beads. Competition is intense and if your beads aren't at least as nice looking as the imports, then you'll have a hard time unloading them for a decent price.

The Business End

Accepting payments online is not as big of a deal as you might think. You can go the traditional route and get a merchant account to accept credit cards, or you can do what most everyone else does and set up an account with PayPal. They allow your customers to pay you securely by credit card or e-check. There is a fee for each transaction, but overall it’s fairly inexpensive. You can sign up here:

Shipping your goods should be one of your number-one priorities. You want to build your customer base by delivering a high quality product in a timely fashion for relatively little money. The easiest way to lose a customer is to charge them a lot in shipping and then send it via slow boat in a poorly wrapped package. Look at your shipping cost, add the amount for your packing materials and call it good.

Starting a Website

After a while you may decide that you need to have a web presence. A web site will do several things. One, it will give your customers a place where they can find all of your goods in one easy place. Two, it will help legitimize your business. Three, they are super-fun to run! See Start Your Own Website for more info.

The first thing you’ll need to do is pick a web hosting service. This is different from your internet service provider, though yours may also provide web hosting. I have tried several and they range from good to very poor. Take your time in deciding, because once you pick one, getting out without losing money can be tricky. Most will register your domain name as part of a package. This site is powered by IX Webhosting .

Take a look at their options, programs, and deals and decide for yourself.

Once you start your website you'll need a way to sell your products via a shopping cart of some kind. You can do this exclusively through Paypal (see link above) or through an ecommerce service. Paypal's buy now buttons are free and work okay for a small number of items, but since it's not linked to a database of any kind it will eventually become cumbersome to use. I have used Paypal in combination with Mal's ecommerce . Mal's service is free and pretty easy to use, although it still doesn't allow for an inventory. Other ecommerce services allow you to track your goods through a database as well as provide the basic shopping cart function. The one I'm using now is ZenCart and I really like it.

The next thing you'll want to do is set up a links page and establish link partnerships with other similar sites. This will help boost your site in the search rankings. Link farms promise lots of links for your site, but many of the search engines have identified these and ignore their links anyway so unless you're willing to pay to have someone do this, be prepared to devote some time each week to finding a reciprocal link or two.

Good luck and happy bead-making!

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