How do I sell handmade on Instagram?

You sell handmade on Instagram by using it for the job it is genuinely good at, which is people meeting you and deciding they like you, and moving the actual selling somewhere you control. Half of that answer is very good news about what you make, and the other half took me years to see for myself, so I'll give you both.

I know the feeling that probably brought you here. The post that took 40 minutes to shoot, edit and caption. Waiting for the light to come round to the right window before photographing a quilt, redoing the shot until the binding sat straight, writing a caption I was quietly a bit proud of. And then Instagram would show it to a fraction of the people who had already chosen to follow me, and the people missing it weren't strangers who never found me, they were followers, people who had actually asked to see my work. That gap between the effort going in and the reach coming out does my head in to this day, and understanding why it exists turns out to be most of the answer to this question.

What should I actually post as a maker?

The honest good news first: Instagram genuinely works for makers, and it works because of something no factory can copy. Process. People can buy a finished cushion anywhere, but watching one get made, the fabric arriving, the unpicking of an evening's work when it goes wrong, that is why anyone follows a maker at all.

So show the making, not only the made. Your hands in the work, and your face when you can bear to be on camera, will connect better than a perfectly styled flat lay of the finished piece, because people follow people and a flat lay could belong to anyone.

Video is reaching further than still photos at the moment, and I say at the moment deliberately, because platform mechanics shift and anybody offering you a permanent rule about them is guessing. The pattern underneath is steadier: whatever format the platform is currently pushing gets shown to more people, and right now that means short video of you making things.

Then the unglamorous half, which does more selling than any of it. Post consistently enough that people remember you exist, at a pace you can actually hold, because a shop that appears twice a year reads as closed. Reply to comments and messages like a person, since you are the entire reason anyone followed. Use the caption to say something worth reading, one real thought about the piece or the week it came out of, rather than 30 hashtags doing an impression of marketing.

And tell people plainly when something is for sale, with the price on. Makers systematically under-ask. We post the finished piece, hope somebody enquires, feel awkward about naming the price, and then conclude that selling on Instagram doesn't work, when nobody was ever actually told the thing was for sale. "This one's finished, it's £45, message me if you'd like it" is just a shop doing what shops do.

Why do so few of my followers see my posts?

Because you don't decide who sees your post. Instagram decides, every single time, and once that sentence properly lands, the maddening gap between your effort and your reach stops being a mystery.

Think about what a follower actually is. Somebody found your work, liked it, and pressed a button that says yes please, show me more of this. That is permission, a customer volunteering her attention before you have asked for anything, and it might be the most valuable thing a small business can be handed.

And then the platform charges an invisible toll on it. Your post goes out, and Instagram shows it to some portion of those people, at a moment of its choosing, based on what it believes will keep everyone scrolling. None of that makes Instagram evil, mind. Its job is holding attention on Instagram, it is very good at its job, and its job simply stopped being the same as your job the moment you had something to sell.

But have you considered what that means from her side? Following you was the customer trying to give you her attention. The only reason it doesn't reliably reach you is that the delivery sits with somebody else. You already did the hard part and earned the yes. You just never took ownership of it.

How do I actually sell from Instagram then?

Keep posting. I want that heard first, because none of this is an argument for leaving, and plenty of makers are doing lovely business there. Instagram is where people meet you, and meeting you is the start of every sale you will ever make. The fix is adding one step, and the step is small.

Give the people who already like you a way to hear from you directly. For me that is email, and I've written before about why a maker needs an email list at all, but the principle matters more than the tool: when you have something to sell, you want a route to your warmest people that does not depend on the algorithm being in a good mood that particular Tuesday.

Watch what changes when you have it. On Instagram alone, launch day means posting and hoping. With a direct line, the people who care most hear about the new collection because you told them, all of them, at the time you chose, and Instagram carries on doing what it does brilliantly, which is bringing new people in at the top. It is the same thinking as selling handmade without depending on Etsy, owning the audience rather than renting the reach, wherever people happen to have found you first.

What should I change this week?

Nothing dramatic, and nothing that costs money. Carry on showing the making. Say when things are for sale, price included. Then add one line to your bio and the occasional caption, inviting people who love your work onto your email list, with a genuine reason to join. First look at new pieces beats 10% off here, because your best buyers want the thing more than they want money off the thing.

That is the whole move. The next time a collection is ready, you will be launching it to people who chose to hear about it, instead of posting into the feed and refreshing.

If you would like walking through it properly, I have put the starting point into a free email course called 7 Days to Shift Your Shop, one short email a day for a week, on moving from waiting to be found to launching to people who already care. It exists because nobody told me any of this back when I was the one doing the 40-minute posts.

An audience you can reach and an audience you can only hope reaches you look exactly the same on a follower count. You only find out which one you have on the day you need them