How to Start a Jewelry Business Online in 2024

Do you love jewelry? 💍 Have you ever wondered how to start a jewelry business online?

Whether you want to make your own jewelry, spotlight artists in your online store, or create a dropshipping store where you sell jewelry created by existing brands, you’ll find the information you need to get started in this article.

We’ll cover four key steps of how to start a jewelry business online:

• Make a business plan 💼
• Choose a name 📢
• Set up your jewelry business website with WordPress 💎
• Start selling 🛒

Let’s get started!

How to start a jewelry business online

1. Make a business plan 💼

One of the most common mistakes first-time business owners make is to jump into selling without a comprehensive business plan. This is easy to do with an online store, but it’s also a surefire way to run your business into the ground.

Your business plan should define five key aspects of your business:

Your niche

This is the segment of the jewelry market your business will appeal to. For example, if you want to sell jewelry for cosplay or theater, your niche would be costume jewelry.

To identify your niche, ask yourself a couple of questions:

• What type of jewelry do you want to sell? Will you focus on a single type of jewelry, like rings, or sell many different types? Will it be handmade, factory made, or secondhand? What materials will you use? Your goal here is to determine the unique selling point of your jewelry business.
• Who will you sell to? What demographics (age, gender, location) do they fall into? Are they part of a specific subculture? Do they need to fit their jewelry purchases into a tight budget or are they interested in luxury goods? You can use this information to build a target audience profile.

You can then use this information to create a brand statement. This is one to two sentences explaining what your business does and why, plus what makes it unique. Here’s an example of what this might look like:

“We turn found objects into jewelry, to show that there is beauty in the mundane.”

Your target audience

We already touched on this in the previous section, but it’s important to develop a deeper understanding of your target audience. You want to know things like:

• Do they prefer specific materials for their jewelry?
• Are they buying jewelry for everyday use or for special occasions?
• When buying jewelry, what do they consider other than price and aesthetics? For example, do they care about ethical sourcing for materials? Are they more likely to purchase from an individual artist than an impersonal brand?

If you’ve already sold jewelry offline, you can base this information on your existing customer base. If you haven’t, though, you’ll need to rely on studies about the jewelry market and observations of your competitors’ audience. Which brings us smoothly into our next point:

Your competitors

In order to position yourself properly in your niche you must first understand the businesses already in your niche. There are a couple of ways to do this:

• Look at studies. Studies can help you understand who has the biggest market share, who their audience is, and much more. You can find them by looking up terms like “[your niche] market share.”
• Look at websites. Google your niche and look at the first few websites that show up. Pay special attention to the company names, colors and imagery used in their website design, and words and phrases in their marketing copy.

You can take this a step further by performing a full competitor analysis. This will give you insight into the traffic and engagement levels your competitors’ websites have.

Who will make your jewelry

The next step in how to start a jewelry business online is to figure out who your jewelry will come from. There are a few options here:

• Individual artisans. This can be you, people in your friend circle, or people whose work you admire and hope to sell.
• Wholesaler. These are companies that sell products in bulk for a discount.
• Dropshipping. Technically these goods still come from wholesalers, but you won’t need to find space for the inventory. Instead, the wholesaler will send products directly to your customers.

Be sure to go beyond the basics here to list specific artists and companies you want to work with.

Your budget

Another thing you need to establish in your business plan is your budget. This can be complicated depending on your business model, but most businesses can get started by understanding three things:

• Opening funds. These are the funds you have to invest in launching your business.
• Expenses. This includes the cost of making and shipping jewelry, paying for web hosting and other costs involved in launching your business. It should also include the money you plan to pay yourself with.
• Income. If you have any existing income from jewelry, you’ll want to list that. Otherwise, when you’re first starting out, you’ll want to focus on goal incomes.

If making a budget for your business feels overwhelming, you can Google “business budget template” and find a free or low-cost resource to guide you.

2. Choose a name for your jewelry business 📢

You might already have a name in mind, but it’s important not to rush this decision. After all, you want to pick a business name that makes a good first impression and is memorable so that people can easily find you.

Some other factors to consider include:

• What you sell. A great business name is one that tells people what to expect from your business. For example, if you want to sell secondhand jewelry, you might use a name like “Second Life Jewelry.”
• What emotions you want to be associated with your brand. Using words that evoke a specific emotion can help people build a stronger mental association with your brand. Some examples of words that work well for this are “Elegant” and “Luxurious.”
• Who you sell to. You can make sure you’re attracting the right audience using phrases like “for women.”

Most of all, make sure that your business name is easy to spell and pronounce so that people can easily find you. This will make it easier for people to recommend your business, too!

If you want some help with this aspect of starting an online jewelry business, check out these business name generator tools for some catchy ideas.

3. Set up your jewelry business website with WordPress 💎

The third step in how to start a jewelry business online is to create an online presence. You can sell jewelry through a third-party site like Etsy, but we recommend building your own website with WordPress. This gives you full creative control over the appearance of your jewelry shop and also saves you from being caught off guard by changes to fee or payment structures.

There are several things you’ll need to do to get this website set up:

• Choose a web host. There are many high-quality web hosting companies that are optimized for WordPress. Some even offer plans with pre-installed WordPress so you can start building your site right away.
• Choose a theme. This will dictate the overall layout of your site. We recommend Neve for maximum design flexibility. Beyond giving you lots of built-in design options, it also has a pre-built template to help you create an online jewelry shop. Importing this template offers the fastest way to get started with a working online jewelry shop.
• Choose your plugins. These are tools that can help you expand the functionality of your site. At the bare minimum, you’ll need to pick a security plugin, an ecommerce plugin, and a social media plugin.
• Set up your first pages. You’ll need to set up a homepage, an About page, a Contact page, and your ecommerce store area. Check out our guide to 12 Essential WordPress Blog Pages to Have for a better idea of the pages you’ll need on your website.

For a more detailed guide to the technical aspects, you can check out our step-by-step tutorial on how to make a website with WordPress.

If you use the Neve WordPress theme and import the jewelry template, your site can look like this within just a few minutes:

Your website will be the main place where customers interact with your business, so take the time to get this set up right. You may even want to hire a freelance designer to give your website the best possible chance of success.

4. Start selling 🛒

The final step in how to start a jewelry business online is to start selling your jewelry! To do this, you’ll need to promote your jewelry store in a few different ways:

• Tell your friends and family about it. You never know who might be interested in making a purchase or sharing your business with their network.
• Market on social media. Share high-quality images of your jewelry on platforms like Instagram to entice new people to check out your site.
• Build an email newsletter. This is where you can let your core audience know about new products, sales, and other important developments for your jewelry business.

You may also want to consider things like influencer sponsorships and paid ads. That’s if you have the budget for them.

For even more ideas, check out our full guide on how to get traffic to a website.

Final thoughts on how to start a jewelry business online

• Make a business plan
• Choose a name
• Set up a website using WordPress
• Start selling

📌 Of course, learning how to start a jewelry business online is only the first step. You’ll also need to build strategies for increasing your audience, dealing with shipping and deliveries as your business grows, and providing excellent customer service so your customers will keep coming back for more.

What kind of jewelry business are you starting? Let us know about it in the comments section below!