Want to get right to the solution that rocked my socks off? Scroll right down to the end to skip over the story and get right to the goods!
In an attempt to connect more with the handmade community (and likely to compete with my fav marketplace, Etsy) Amazon launched their entirely handmade platform, Amazon Handmade, back in 2015. A piece of humble pie for you all – I applied with AllyBeth Design Co back in 2016 but was denied almost immediately. I was crushed! Over the next few years, this little biz grew in leaps and bounds and I was thrilled when we were accepted when I applied again in 2017.
We currently sell on Amazon Canada and Amazon US, although we don’t commonly link to these shops on our social platforms. Why? Because like Etsy, we don’t own these platforms and cannot guarantee they will be there, or if they will work for us forever. But – just like Etsy – Amazon Handmade comes with built in traffic which increases our exposure 100x over. Woohoo!
However, that excitement quickly died when I realized how labour intensive it is to upload individual handmade items to the Amazon platform. As you can imagine, Amazon was originally built to buy and sell popular items. Particularly items that already have universal barcodes. Since the majority of handmade items do not, this process becomes significantly slower.
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