Café Handmade is a weekly virtual craft show. It’s like a traditional craft show..but better! You can now attend a craft show without having to search the newspaper, get a map, and drive miles away just to fight for a parking spot. Each week, amazingly talented artists set up their virtual booth to show their wares to the world. Each virtual booth links to the artist’s online shop for the customers to purchase directly from the artist. One of the most exciting aspects of attending a traditional craft show is chatting with the artist and watching them at work…we mimic that with our featured artist interviews and artist demonstration videos. There are many other great features on Café Handmade.

What are the benefits of Cafe Handmade for the shops/artists?

Café Handmade is a great place for artists to show off their work at a low cost. An artist would pay on average $100.00 for 5-7 hours at a traditional craft show with limited attendance. A virtual booth at Café Handmade averages to less than $1 a day and we are currently receiving 1500-2000 visitors a week. Promoting your work only within your selling venue can be costly and your shop can get lost in the crowd. With 50-100 vendors on Café Handmade each week, your virtual booth is in a more intimate setting and we have the resources to promote our vendors on a larger scale through various online media. We pride ourselves on personal service and work hard to promote the site and drive the traffic through to our vendor’s shops.

What are the benefits for shoppers?

There are a wide variety of crafts displayed on Café Handmade and new vendors are setting up virtual booths each week so it is constantly changing. We give you insight into artist’s lives and how they work. You will also find some of our favorite things, items we have purchased, and readers can win a shopping spree!

Are there any unique features that you have which differentiate you from other websites or businesses?

One unique feature we have is our Reader Rewards program. Each month we will select one lucky reader to win $50.00 to shop at anyone of our Reader Rewards Sponsored Shops. The winner can divide their $50.00 among shops or spend it all in one place. There are two ways to earn entries. Everyone on our email list is automatically entered each month. The second way to earn an entry is by participating in the Weekly Scavenger Hunt, which can earn you up to 4 entries a month if you participate each week.

Who would enjoy visiting Cafe Handmade?

We want to attract anyone who loves handmade! Whether you buy or sell, Café Handmade is a great place to stroll through the aisles of crafters.

What are the costs for shops who would like to be listed in Cafe Handmade?

We offer a variety of ways to promote your work on Café Handmade. Of course, the virtual craft show which is as low as $5 per week, featured sponsors ($5/wk), and the Artist Directory ($10/year). We have free ways to promote as well; artist demonstrations, friendly competitions, and giveaways.

What are your plans for 2009?

For 2009 we would like to increase our traffic, but more so than number of hits, we want quality traffic, meaning we want the visitors to our site to flow through to the vendors and shop! We are actively looking for different advertising venues that make sense for our artists demographics. We also want to know what our readers would like to see on Café Handmade. We are also creating a social network for the artists to set up a profile and allow our readers to get to know them on a more personal level, just as you would at a traditional craft show. We are hoping to open the Café Handmade Lounge by the end of March.

Who are some of the vendors that you can find on Cafe Handmade?

You can find WillOaks Studio, Edelstine Designs, Visions in Glass, Polka Dot Candle Shoppe, Made for Me by Oaklie, Sandy’s Cape Cod Originals, Michael Grace Designs, and so many more at our craft show this week.

 

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