With current economic times being what they are, people are returning to a simpler way of life. They crave the good old-fashioned ways of homemade apple butter to spread on their biscuits, or the smile that creeps across a friend’s face when they give them a handcrafted gift—made just for them. As an artist or crafter, this should cause a big sigh of relief. And believe it or not, even though the news keeps touting the fact that people are cutting back on their spending, there are plenty of people still out there spending a ton of money.

So how do you get your art or craft in front of these credit card wielding, cash spending buyers?

3 easy ways to market your arts and crafts business

1.       Write and submit articles. If you have a website or a blog that you are trying to drive traffic to in an effort to boost sales, the number one way is by writing and submitting articles. If writing isn’t your talent, then find a ghostwriter to produce the articles for you. When you write articles that position you as an expert in your field, two things happen. First, you build credibility with your audience, which makes them want to buy from you—to do business with you. Second, search engines love content and links. So when you post an article online, it gets indexed and picked up by the search engines. And the author box at the bottom of your article and on the article submission sites allows you to link to your website and talk about your craft. This is a huge traffic driver in your online marketing strategy.

2.       Craft SEO website copy. Artists and crafters focus a lot on the picture portion of their website. While visuals are a must on websites, the copy that is on your website is just as important. It’s imperative that your website pages and product descriptions are rich with keywords—words and phrases that your target audience would use to find you. If you can learn the basics of search engine optimization and create copy for your website that meets these guidelines, your site will get indexed and ranked by the major search engines—increasing your chance to drive more visitors to your website. With more visitors, you have an opportunity to turn their visit into a sale. More opportunities mean more sales. SEO is a talent and if you can’t perfect it, hire a writer who can help.

3.       Participate in online forums and groups. Join and network in online groups where your potential buyers are. Find forums that are related to your art or craft. Visit and post comments on related blogs—even if it’s blogs of fellow crafters or artists. When you post comments and questions to forums and blogs, you can usually include your name and link to your website. Again, this allows you to gain attention from your target audience and drive traffic to your site. It can also help with search engine rankings because search engines love links. The more links you have on your website and the more your website is floating around out there, the better chance you have of getting picked up by the search engines.

Using these three tools on a consistent basis (at least 2-3 times per week) will help you to boost your arts and crafts sales. And with most of these options being low cost or no cost, there is no excuse as to why you shouldn’t be using these tools to capture your fair share of the buyers that are spending money with your competitors.