Well i guess the first place to start if you want to sell crafts on the web is to get a homepage. There are many places to get one and I would suggest getting at least one freebie to start with so you can practice with what you want on the page and how to make a page. Youve seen the banners that say free homepage? Now you would like to know which one do I go for? Here are some guide lines:
(1) Check to see weather they will let you sell your product with out any extra fees! It will usually say in the guidelines what you can or cant do. If they dont tell you up front dont be afraid to ask! Email never had a better use.
(2) How much hard drive space am I alowed? This is very important if you are going to have a huge catalog with many pictures. Pictures take up a lot of space. If however you find a provider that has other things you like and you dont intend on picture quantity go for the better appointed provider that may have smaller allowance in megabytes.
(3)Does the potential site have pop up windows that you dont like?
This is a personal preference thing. Once again if you like other things about the provider this may not matter. To find out look in the providers page that has some kind of link to their users pages and check out a few of them to see if the pop up is there.
(4) This may be the most important.....do you like the interface?
I mean is it easy or convienient enough that you can operate the functions that make youre page. Can you make adjustments to your page easily? Do you like the colors?(important to you sensitive types). This is actually something you will have to already have signed up and started a homepage to find out. Rule of thumb if its to complicated try another free homepage place. Just remember to write down your passwords and id for the page(Remember the diary?) so when you learn more you can come back and do some more work on it.
This is a little off topic here but I'll leave the tip anyway.
It takes a long time to get traffic to your page. This means that you should jump right in and get a homepage up running and start promoting NOW. By the time you get it on the search engines or promote it enough to get some traffic you can have it improved and more professional. Nobody told ME that and it took me even longer because i waited till i had everything just right on my first homepage. I could have been working on getting traffic right from the get go.
Another off topic hint: You can have more than one page where your homepage is. This is something else it took me awhile to discover.
Usually you can find out how to make another page in the editing section of the homepage provider. To allow peaple to get to your other page you simply put a link to the other page on your homepage. I wont go into it to far here but this is the basic concept.
The link will look exactly like your homepage address with these additions. In your html code put all of the following with out any spaces and substitute the address for your homepage address.
First put a < then put a href="put your homepage address here and instead of Index.html(your homepage file name)put the name of the page the link takes you to like page2.htmllast put this ">page2 then put< then put / then put a>
this is what it will look like on the page
page2
One last thing for this page if you need more help and would like to join with other crafters on the web join our club. Its called CRAFTERS NET BUSINES Its a free club on yahoo click Here to go there now.