Using Gift Certificates or Coupons for your Handmade Business

Posted by MCatherine Lunsford on 10/03/10   |   Categorized as Art Fire Business Spark,Etsy Business Spark,Etsy Tips,For Buyers,For Sellers,How To,Learn

Share |

iSew

Coupon Organizer | $32 | iSew

Have you ever thought about providing a coupon or voucher or gift certificate to be used for product in your Etsy shop? On occasion I have but I couldn’t really figure out how to offer one.

A ‘Gift Certificate’ is more like something someone purchases for a person for whom one doesn’t quite know what product to purchase and gives the ‘Certificate’ to be applied to a ‘purchase of preference’, but a ‘coupon’ offers a ‘discount’ on a product at time of purchase.

Gift Certificates

Etsy provides a way to create a gift certificate and it turns out there is quite a bit to know about offering a gift certificate, so if you are thinking about providing gift certificates in your Etsy shop for Holiday sales you will want to spend some time reading this article from Etsy’s The Storque blog.

PayPal offers to generate a gift certificate but not a coupon code. Here’s how:

Log in to your PayPal account.

Go to My Account > Profile > Redeem Gift Certificates and Points.

Click Create a Gift Certificate Now. Fill out the Gift Certificate and make sure to put your Etsy store’s URL for the Shopping URL.

Click Create Button Now. PayPal will generate HTML code that you can copy and paste into your store or any other website, blog, MySpace page, whatever.

Be sure to check out all of your options, and check out the Gift Certificate Manual for more info.

Coupon

If you are ‘clever’ and have your own web site or a webmaster, as I have because I am rather ‘techno-ignorant,’ you or the webmaster can create what is known as a ‘coupon code’. My webmaster tells me it was easy and he added a specific ‘promotion page’ to my web site. When a customer buys the promotion package at check-out, the code is automatically installed so the product prices are at the advertised cost.

Here is one site to help you create coupon code. It does require membership to have access to the program. http://www.paycodes.com/

Presently code cannot be ‘installed’ into your Etsy shop, but if you have a newsletter, you could offer a coupon code (such as HolidaySales) in the notes to seller during the checkout process.After the sale, you can credit the amount back to the buyer or simply make a price change to offer the discount directly to all customers when offering a ‘Sale’.

ArtFire provides shop owners a way to create coupon codes. If you are a shopper on ArtFire just look for the ‘Coupons’ icon in the side bar of the home page.

Have you used gift certificates or coupon codes in your handmade business? If so, are you happy with the results? Please share your stories below.

~MCatherine Lunsford



Tagged as: , , , , ,
  • Creations By Viviana

    Great Article! I’m going to look into the Paypal Gift Certificate as a possibility for the holidays. I offered 10%, 20% and 30% coupons to my first handful of customers and have also done so with current repeat customers. I created them using Publisher and sent it to them with their purchased order to use on their next purchased. They would contact me w/ the coupon code (which I just made up and kept records of who got what discount) and I would create a custom/reserved order for them reflecting the discounted amount.
    I learned along the way too. I initially forgot to put an expiration date. I also created a policy on Etsy regarding the coupons (which stated they could not be combined or used along with special sales, i.e. B2G1free deals) reiterating what the coupon itself stated along with some additional info.

  • Blueskypottery

    Good article. I hadn’t looked into some of these options. Thanks for the info.

  • http://twitter.com/EtsyBagalicious Corinne Battle

    I do offer gift certificates in my shop but so far no one has purchased any. People have purchased them locally (directly from me) though and I’ve used them for donations to several fundraising auctions. The way I do it does involve people contacting me ahead of time (with their unique gift certificate code that I’ve generated for them), before they purchase. I didn’t know that Etsy had a way to do gift certificates or about the PayPal option…I’ll have to look into those and see if they are better. Thanks so much for this informative article! ~Corinne at Bagalicious, http://bagalicious.etsy.com

  • Jonscreations

    Ah…what a good idea! Thanks for the info!

  • http://www.handmadespark.com/blog/making-gift-certificates-available-for-your-etsy-store-through-your-facebook-fan-page/ Making Gift Certificates Available for your Etsy Store through your Facebook Fan Page | Handmade Spark

    [...] See also:  Using Gift Certificates or Coupons for your Handmade Business [...]

  • Gimideals

    Thanks for a useful post! Helped me a lot. Looking forward for more such information. Also, visit http://www.gimideals.com for more coupon codes and offers.

blog comments powered by Disqus