DIY-ers have a huge opportunity to sell online. By creating something unique, they’re able to attract customers who are looking for that one-of-a-kind, handmade product — something that you can’t just find on Amazon. So, if you’re a crafty type of person or looking for a new business idea, consider turning your DIY project into a prospering venture.
But figuring out how you can put these artistic skills to work can be a little bit tricky. How can you offer something unique and special? What are the best DIY products to sell online?
We’ve gathered 30 simple, low-cost DIY craft ideas that you can make and sell with minimal startup expenses. Even better: there’s no official training needed and certainly nothing requiring a professional sculptor’s skills.
Low-Cost DIY Products
These craft projects are perfect for entrepreneurs on a budget. They require minimal materials, most of which can be found at your local craft store or even around the house.
Printables
Create downloadable and printable artwork, calendars, or planners that customers can purchase and print at home. This is a great option for digital products that require no physical shipping and can be sold at any time, making it a low-cost DIY product with high profit margins. You can even offer customized options for an extra fee, allowing customers to personalize their prints.
Printable coloring pages by @Leslie.Braginsky
Also read: Digital Product Ideas That Fit Almost Every Storefront
Mason Jar Crafts
Decorate mason jars with paint, fabric, or other materials to create unique storage solutions or decorative items. These versatile jars can be used for anything from storing kitchen supplies to holding candles and flowers. You can even create themed sets, such as a set of mason jars decorated with different designs for the holidays or pretty flowers.
Notecards
If you’re searching for an inexpensive DIY product that appeals to many, notecards could be the way to go. Paper and textiles are budget-friendly, and you don’t need any special skills to make them. Plus, they’re cheap and easy to ship since they’re made of paper. Get creative by trying calligraphy, stamps, dried flowers, or even DIY prints from the internet to craft stunning cards for your store.
Floral designs are a popular style for notecards (Image: @typoflora)
Tutorial: Easy DIY Watercolor Prints
Bath Bombs
Bath bombs have been rising in popularity since early 2015, and today, the market for these fizzing bathtub potions is more popular than ever before. Even more interesting, the materials that go into them are very inexpensive.
The few basic ingredients for these DIY crafts (baking soda, epsom salts, food coloring, to name a few) can be purchased in large quantities at a pretty low cost — meaning high margins for you!
Candles
Candles are DIY crafts that can be sold all year. Since most people won’t splurge on quality candles for themselves, they make great gifts. With birthdays, anniversaries, and many holidays year-round, you’ve always got a reason to keep customers coming back for more.
By purchasing bulk wax and scented oils, you can create many different scent combinations in a variety of different sizes and shapes. And the really good news is that you can launch a candle-making operation for under $100.
Holiday Ornaments or Gift Tags
Buying new holiday decor every year is a cherished tradition for many families. Hand-crafted items not only showcase the thoughtfulness of the giver but also provide the opportunity for reuse year after year. Beyond just holiday ornaments, crafters expand on this skill to create various DIY products like personalized gift tags, napkin holder embellishments, and more, which sell all year round.
The best part: When using materials like clay, you can create your own DIY products at minimal cost, boosting your profit margins.
Tutorial: Make your own clay ornaments
Magnets
Fun, cheerful magnets are an easy and thoughtful gift to give — and they’re extremely cost-effective to make. In fact, you can likely create these items for $0.01-0.03 per magnet. Grab some resin, magnets, and some images or drawings, and in a few hours, you can make hundreds of magnets to sell online. How exciting!
Colorful magnets by @ministoryco
Also: How To Find Trending Products To Sell Online
Keychains
Keychains are timeless accessories that remain trendy and serve as a means of self-expression. They have long outlived their practical purpose and have become identity pieces. Dangling initials reflect personalization, animal designs showcase one’s love for animals, and images of tourist attractions indicate a passion for travel.
Using materials like leather, canvas, plastic, or cloth, you can create keychains for customers with all kinds of interests and habits. Sell to both men and women, keeping your market large. Bonus: The small size of keychains ensures your materials go a long way.
Personalized keychains by PlusDesignCrafts
Lip Balms
Did you know that homemade lip balms only require beeswax, coconut oil, vitamin E, and a microwave? Most balms will take you less than five minutes to create. Watch this video to get started, and feel free to experiment with different colors and containers to make your unique creations.
Customized Dinner Napkins or Hand Towels
For the home decorator who loves details, customized napkins or hand towels are an important design piece. With minimal sewing skills and a few low-cost materials, you can create beautiful table accents and customized creations for the world’s most devoted home decorators. In just a few hours, you can create a large inventory of DIY items to sell right away.
Tutorial: Creating custom-made dinner napkins
Planters
Who doesn’t like plants? Put them in a pretty container, and you instantly enhance any space. Designing one-of-a-kind planters that cater to various tastes and styles enables shoppers to achieve their desired aesthetic at home or in the office. Often, you can build them with low-cost raw materials and still make them look chic by incorporating different designs from contemporary/modern to Victorian or Craftsman.
Concrete plant pot by ElementalDesignStore
Tutorial: Create your own concrete planters
Another low-cost DIY project is to create pot wraps and other gardening embellishments that can be sold for outdoor use. With the right materials, you can create a variety of designs and styles to suit any plant!
Easy-to-Make Craft Ideas
These DIY products are simple to make, making them perfect for beginners or those with limited time. With a little effort and creativity, these crafts can still yield high-quality products that customers will love.
Pet Toys
The APPA indicates that more than $60 billion is spent on the pet industry each year. Needless to say, people love their pets–and they’re happy to spend some money to make them happy. You can tap into this massive market by creating handmade, eco-friendly toys for pets that are made from low-cost recycled materials. There are a lot of YouTube video tutorials out there for such DIY crafts.
Dog chew toy by RunningPets
Step-by-step tutorial: DIY rope chew toy for dogs
Tote Bags
Did you know that the average person uses about 425 plastic grocery bags a year? As more and more consumers strive to cut down on plastic bag use, tote bags are becoming more important than ever before.
From the grocery store to the coffee shop, these versatile catch-alls have a huge market–and they’re extremely inexpensive to make. By offering a unique design or message on your tote bags, you can attract customers and differentiate yourself from competitors.
Similar to other DIY crafts on this list, making a tote bag is not hard at all.
Tutorial: Make a polka dot canvas tote bag
By the way, you can also use print-on-demand services like Printful. You’ll only need to create a design for your tote, and Printful will take care of sourcing the bags, printing, and shipping orders to customers. Similarly, you can sell other print-on-demand products with your design, such as apparel, accessories, and home decor.
Creating a custom tote bag is easy with Printful
Handmade Soap
More and more consumers want to incorporate safe, organic cleaning products into their daily lives. Capitalize on this movement by creating and marketing your own made-from-scratch DIY products, like hand soap. With minimal startup investment, you can purchase soap-making materials and start creating unique DIY crafts to sell within this market.
Like candles, every host or hostess, sister or uncle appreciates items that make them feel spoiled. With the amazing varieties of scents and dyes available, it’s easy to develop DIY products for specific markets.
Tutorial: DIY gemstone soap
Coasters
Don’t put that there — use a coaster! Thanks to paranoid moms all over the world, the coaster business is alive and well. And if you’re dipping your toes in the ecommerce soup for the first time, coasters are an easy way to get started. They’re available in a wide variety of materials (wood, cork, plastics, textiles, glass — even concrete), and you can design them to fit many different aesthetics.
To give your coaster business a leg-up, add customization for special occasions, like birthdays, weddings, or corporate parties.
Cute, sustainable coasters made from scraps of fabric (Image: @sharonhollanddesigns)
Tutorial: DIY Resin Beach Coasters
Headbands
Headbands are great DIY products to sell online because they’re easy to make and fun to experiment on. Not sure how to make a headband? No problem. There are plenty of tutorials online, and some don’t even require sewing. If you’ve been looking for a no-sweat craft, headbands are a safe and stylish bet.
Tip: To attract sustainable shoppers, make headbands from upcycled materials.
Tutorial: Upcycled No-Sew Knotted T-Shirt Headband
Electronic Cases
Look around, and you’ll notice that just about everyone has a smartphone or tablet within arm’s reach. Because we carry these expensive pieces of tech with us wherever we go, it makes sense that people are willing to invest in a decent carrying case or accessory to keep it safe. With a willingness to learn a bit of sewing, you can create cases for electronics that are both stylish and useful for a huge market of consumers.
Kindle cover by LullabyCraftsWorld
In a climate where boring plastic boxes are everywhere, the rougher, the better… or at least more unusual, natural, and authentic.
Tutorial: Make your own leather iPad case
Ceramics
Ceramics may seem like a sophisticated art form, but you can start by making a simple bowl. You will not necessarily need a wheel and expensive equipment for firing your DIY products; consider beginning with just your hands and home oven instead. Again, many consumers interpret this rough look as authentic and interesting compared to the flawless bowls spun perfectly with centrifugal force.
By using acrylic paint, glitter, or even nail polish, you can turn your ceramic DIY crafts into a piece of art. It can be really effortless — watch the video to see how.
Wall Art
Who says framed prints, posters, or paintings have to dominate our walls?
By sharing your quirky or lovely creations or by making personalized wall decor, you allow consumers to decorate their homes with pieces that are distinctly them. See what you can create that’s unique, marketable, and missing from the current wall art marketplace.
Wall decor by StoreByRebecca
Tutorial: Custom string art wall decor
Car Freshies
Add a little personal touch to the places where people spend the most time, like their cars. Car freshies offer a distinctive scent that sets them apart from other air fresheners on the market — allowing you to offer customers a one-of-a-kind aroma for their car.
To make these cute DIY products, you will need some aroma beads, essential oils, molds, pigments, and string.
Car freshie by Smell Ya Later Freshie
Unique Craft Projects
These DIY products are unlike any you’ll find on the market, making them stand out to potential customers. They may require a bit more specialized knowledge or materials, but the end result is worth it.
3D Printed Products
The possibilities with 3D printing are endless. You can create custom jewelry and accessories, figurines and collectibles, or even unique home decor items. While investing in a 3D printer may be more expensive, some craft ideas can help you make your margins higher. Go for smaller items like keychains, jewelry, magnets, etc.
Dread Hair Extensions
Dreads come back in fashion every now and again. Why not offer some lovely dread options? Get some wooden beads, wool, cotton, silk, pewter, fabrics, and you’re ready to go.
Braid extension by 27HairTreasures
Milk Bath Kits
Salts, oils, teas, jellies — bathtubs aren’t just for bubbles anymore. And one of the latest trends for pampering world-wearied skin (that’s also surprisingly easy to make at home) is the milk bath. Powdered milk, essential oils, baking soda, mineral salts, and occasionally dried flowers are all you’ll need to mix up a simple batch for your customers.
But before you start thinking about how to sell your DIY crafts, take a few minutes to think through the packaging. Milk bath packaging should be waterproof (for obvious reasons) and stylish enough to communicate the experience. If you use simple mason jars, decorate them with labels or ribbons. The fancier your packaging, the more likely your DIY products are to be purchased as gifts.
Use beautiful images to promote milk baths on social media (Image: Anita Austvika / Unsplash)
Cat Tents
When you’re thinking about easy DIY crafts to make and sell online, cat tents don’t usually come to mind. But they should. A fairly niche DIY product, cat tents are simple to make, need only a handful of materials, and require little to no special skills. For broader appeal, offer your customers customizable options, like tents in different sizes and colors or personalization for their pet’s name.
Adventure tents for cats from @tinkertradingco
Tutorial: DIY Cat Bed
Printed Throw Pillows
Did you know the home decor market brings in about $62.5 billion each year? It’s true. That’s why entering this segment of the marketplace makes a lot of sense — especially if you have a completely unique offering, like custom-printed throw pillows. Personalized throw pillows allow shoppers and gift buyers to express their pride and identity. And you don’t need a screen printing shop to get started — you can do this at home.
Resin Jewelry
Resin jewelry is simple to make, and a starter kit is relatively inexpensive. With a bit of patience and an eye for design, you can create beautiful, one-of-a-kind pieces to sell online. Plus, using clear resin, you can even offer photo-based jewelry creations that allow your customers to turn a favorite image into a treasured piece of jewelry.
Resin jewelry by Shirley Yunjing Chen
Tutorial: How to make resin jewelry
Kids Toys
As of 2019, the average amount spent per child per year on toys within the US was about $300, according to Statista. That’s a decent chunk of change. By creating DIY crafts like toys for children of different ages, you can share your creations with little ones who will love your DIY products for years to come. And you don’t have to be a manufacturer, either. With some cloth, paint, and stuffing, you can become the next master toymaker.
Soft toy blocks by SewMuchInCommon
Tutorial: Create a DIY dollhouse pillow
Wooden Designs
If the textures and grains of wood have always intrigued you, the rustic home decor niche could be for you. Since the goal is to keep natural objects in their original forms and hues as much as possible, beginners find making modifications and simple upgrades simple. Another advantage to this crafty path is that you can discover many of your raw materials at the junkyard or thrift store.
You’ll likely need a garage to get started, though. That’s how one of Ecwid’s merchants took off her rustic home decor business. Read her story to learn a lot of helpful insights about the home decor industry.
Blankets
If you can source a good cloth or yarn supplier, selling blankets can make you a lot of money. With the right plan, a blanket can look really high-end, even if it’s inexpensive to make.
Discover the countless ways to create a cozy blanket beyond just crocheting. Check out this video tutorial for an inspiring example.
DIY Kits
A brilliant way to enter the DIY market is to create DIY kits. This allows you to offer your customers a unique experience and, depending on your kit, a fully customizable finished product that they can be proud of.
You could create DIY makeup or soap-making kits, painting or pottery sets, jewelry-making supplies, or car freshie kits. Think about your target audience and what kinds of DIY activities they may be interested in trying out.
Candle making kit by FlorenceandCoStudio
Personalized Gifts
Customized products can make great gift options. You can use embroidery, engraving, or printing techniques to add names, monograms, or personal messages to various items such as mugs, bookmarks, phone cases, tote bags, and more. Personalized DIY products can help your business stand out from other craft projects.
Print-on-demand services like Printful make it easy to sell personalized apparel, accessories, or home decor. You’ll only need to create a design for your product, and Printful will take care of sourcing the item, printing, and shipping orders to customers.
Learn more: Print-on-Demand Explained: How to Sell Custom Products without Breaking the Bank
Where to Sell DIY Products
Selling your DIY crafts online gives you access to a global market of potential customers. Choose one or multiple platforms that align with your brand and target audience, and use social media to promote your products and drive traffic to your online store.
But where exactly should you be selling your creations? Here are some popular options for reaching potential customers:
Your Own Website
Selling on your own website has a great advantage: you have full control over your branding, customer experience, and profits. Plus, with the right ecommerce platform like Ecwid by Lightspeed, setting up an online store is easy and affordable.
Create an online store using Ecwid for free and customize it to reflect your brand and showcase your DIY products. You don’t need any coding or design skills — just choose a website template and edit it to add your photos and text.
Choose from dozens of free website templates
Online Marketplaces
You can also sell your DIY products on popular online marketplaces focused on handmade or designed products. Here are some common options:
- Etsy: The go-to marketplace for handmade items, Etsy has a large community of shoppers looking for unique and creative products.
- Amazon Handmade: Similar to Etsy, Amazon Handmade caters specifically to handmade items and has a large customer base.
- Crealandia: For those who specialize in handmade and eco-friendly products, Crealandia is a great platform to connect with like-minded customers.
- Folksy: A UK-based handcrafted and designed products marketplace, Folksy is a great option for DIY-ers targeting the British market.
- Goimagine: A marketplace for handmade and ethically-made products, Goimagine supports small businesses and fair trade practices.
- eBay: An established and popular marketplace, eBay offers a wide range of products, including handmade and DIY items.
By the way, if you decide to create your website with Ecwid, you can easily integrate your Ecwid store with eBay, Amazon, and some other marketplaces.
Social Media
Use social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest to share photos and videos of your DIY products and reach potential customers. You can also use these platforms to interact with your audience, build a following, and drive traffic to your website.
To make selling DIY products on social media easier, use a link-in-bio tool, such as Linkup. It allows you to create a mobile-friendly page with links to all of your social profiles, content, and, most importantly, products. This way, potential customers can easily buy your DIY products right from your social media page.
Thania Villarreal’s Linkup page for her business, Zealously Handmade
Don’t limit yourself to just one platform — try out different social media channels to see which ones work best for your brand and target audience. And if you’d like to see which platforms bring you the most sales, you can quickly check it in the insights section in your Linkup.
Local Markets and Craft Fairs
Set up a booth at local markets and craft fairs to reach customers in person. This is a great way to get immediate feedback on your products and build a local following.
Markets and fairs also offer great opportunities to network with other small business owners and potentially collaborate on future craft projects or events. Plus, you can use these events as a way to promote your online store and social media channels.
Choose Several Sale Channels
With the options listed above, you can start selling your DIY products online and reaching potential customers in your community. For best results, sell on several platforms at once. For example, on your website, Linkup, Etsy, or Amazon Handmade. Plus, don’t miss an opportunity to sell your crafts on local markets!
Marketplaces can be great for driving shoppers to your products, but they usually charge high fees. That’s why having your own website is crucial for increasing your profit margins and strengthing your brand. As for local events, they allow you to build a local customer base.
By being present on different platforms, you can reach the widest possible audience and increase your chances of success as a DIY entrepreneur. So why limit yourself to just one sales channel when you have so many options? Consider using Ecwid‘s ecommerce platform to manage and sell your DIY products easily across multiple channels for maximum exposure.
DIY Crafts: Your Gateway to Ecommerce
Whether you’ve been crafting for years or it’s something new you’d like to experiment with, you can dive into these craft ideas right away. From toys to candles, the possibilities are endless: get inspired and start your ecommerce business with Ecwid. Today, consumers are moving away from mass-produced goods to those created with love by individual crafters.
Tote bags, planters, candles, bath bombs, pet toys, handmade soap, printed throw pillows, resin jewelry, customized dinner napkins, hand towels, keychains… And these are just a few of the things you can make yourself and sell online.
Once you’ve decided on what DIY crafts to make and sell, be sure to check out these beginner business resources:
Need DIY craft ideas to make and sell?
Discover DIY craft ideas and learn how you can sell them online.
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