Just finding any old craft show in your area is not nearly as good as finding the best craft show options in your area. Right?

Hi, I am Rob, and I am going to be your guide today in finding the best crafts shows in your area.

Firstly, I should add that this is heavily dependent on which country you live in and even which area or city in that country.

Plus, I should probably point out that I am not going to be covering details like the rules and laws that govern participation in crafts shows where you live.

Cool, shall we get started then? Come with me …

Where we are right now Early 2021 – Yes, that.

I should mention that I am writing this page in the middle of the “dead-shows” years. 2020 and 2021 are probably both going to be the years that we had all the shows cancel. If they never cancelled, they were poorly attended.

Covid pitched up and the entire world pulled up their handbrake and we all crashed into the guy in front of us and the world changed – forever. Therefore if you are searching for any type of show in 2021, my advice might be of little help.

On that subject. IF YOU ARE DESPERATE TO SHOW YOUR STUFF RIGHT NOW. I do have a suggestion, and it will probably work if you get it right. In fact, this method is something you can do at least once a month and it can be the thing that fills your empty weekends. Also, if you are the organizer of this method, you can make a bit of extra money from it too.

The survival Show Method (Your OWN show)

The Place to do it.

You find an empty piece of land as near to the main shopping area in your town as possible.

It can be an empty building lot (contact the owner and get permission to do this.

It can be the front of a business that is closed on the weekends and does not mind that you are going to run a small show on their grounds.

It could even be in a park (yes, town council or municipality permission is quite important).

But perhaps the easiest would be on a sports club grounds because you could go quite big with that one.

Finally, if you are only going to be alone, or just a few crafters, then the front yard of a friend’s house would do just fine too.

How you do it.

Ok, so this is the easy part.

You find a few other crafters and you set out some rules, and basically create a mini craft market or flea market that is totally yours.

You agree on who gets what size space and then agree on when you do this too.

I suggest both days on a weekend and if it is in summer, include Friday night too. In fact, if you do that, include Saturday night too. A night market is always popular. (remember that places like restaurants, pubs, and other businesses would love to have you pulling in a crowd of people over a weekend once a month.)

More about this.

This page was meant to be on finding craft shows near you, so let me finish by saying that if I get enough people emailing me and asking for a proper course or cheat sheet on this idea, then I will create it with a ton more details that this. Ok, back to the topic.

Finding Craft shows in your area – Method number one – Facebook.

If you are not already on all the crafter groups, especially in your area, then I suggest that you make that your number one priority. You will get a ton of help, lots of complainers, and more, but overall it pays you to belong to groups on Facebook.

Ask people in that group and they will give you enough shows to investigate all week.

Plus, you can search inside Facebook and you will uncover a lot of old show listings. Let me give you an example.

I live in Brantford, Canada. I know that the small town between us and Hamilton has a show, so on Facebook, I did a search, and look at what I found. Job done. cool huh?

Finding Craft shows in your area – Method number two – Local Newspapers.

Contact your local newspaper, yes – by phone, and ask for the Aunty who writes about the what’s happening stuff in your area. They will have a lot that they can help you with.

Then do a Google search for the same newspaper but add “events” or “what’s happening” into the search.

Finding Craft shows in your area – Method number three – Other Crafters

Normally I used to wait until I was actually trading at a show to ask all the other traders about other shows. That way you know you are asking one who seems to know what they are doing. I say this because if you just ask on a group on Facebook, you have no idea as to how experienced the people that reply are.

Some traders will lie to you to “protect” their good shows, but generally, most are like a real family and will help you with pleasure.

You should also ask them if they think your product is a fit for that show. They might hurt your feelings a bit, or give you wrong advice, but by asking them directly, it shows that you trust their judgment – even if you do not take any advice they give you.

I remember when I used to do temporary tattoos I learned the hard way to avoid conservative areas, because extremely conservative types never let their kids get a temporary tattoo, and kids are 80% of my business.

Finding Craft shows in your area – Method number four – Craft publications.

This method is often country-specific. Every region, county, province, or country is likely to have some sort of show guide if they also have a strong enough show circuit.

You will need to do a Google search for this one. Here are 2 links that I have that might work for you.

https://workfromhomemembership.com/fairs-and-festivals

https://sunshineartist.com/

Finding Craft shows in your area – Method number five – Your cities marketing/publicity department

Ok, so with this method you need to start with your own city, and when you have done it properly, then copy the same method over to all the nearby towns and cities in your area.

Simply contact their publicity department, most towns and cities have one, and ask them for every scrap of information, past and present that they can give you.

Finding Craft shows in your area – Method number six – Google search

This one is self-explanatory. Hop onto Google search and try 20 different ways to search for shows, use keywords like markets, festivals, country shows, flea markets

Make some money from your efforts.

If you had been keeping accurate notes, phone numbers, names, dates, and a lot more, you could start your own Craft Show Book for your local area.

You will be surprised at how many people will pay you for your research. The best part is that with everybody online these days, you would not even need to print or publish anything as it would all be on a website. Please remember that I will build you a free premium site if you use my affiliate link to get your hosting.

You could charge people a monthly or annual fee to get all the info you publish.

If you are really lucky, you could get the people who are hosting the shows to pay a fee to be in your publication.

You could run ads too, people like myself would possibly pay for ads, as I have a lot of crafting courses that I sell.

In fact, if enough people contact me asking for this, I would create this Show-Guide-as-a-Business course for you. Contact me and ask.

Final Comments – and how I can help you.

This page started out as a 350 work quickie, and I was simply going to run off a few pages fast to add some weight to my website for some Google-Love.

Well, I enjoyed sharing this information so much that I have already decided to turn it, as-is, into a cheat sheet that you can download, and even share with your friends.

So, knowing that you might not be reading this on one of my websites, I am adding a few links here for your attention.

My main craft Show success Secrets Course – https://craftsuccess.workfromhomemembership.com/

My email address if you need to contact me for anything – rob@designsmith.co.za

The page that has all my other freebies, cheat sheets, or courses  – https://workfromhomemembership.com/

FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE CHEAT SHEET

To get the transcript of this page as a download you need to go to this link

https://workfromhomemembership.com/findcraftshowcheatsheet

 

 

 

If you are doing ANYTHING online – I have a free download that is chock-a-block full of 14 years of my experience online.

I have a ton of places where you can go off and find resources that might be the one thing you needed to turn your online work, courses, images or whatever into a massive success.

I call it my Business Toolkit. – I edit this every year or so to add more links and remove ones that are not that cool anymore.

Click here to download it – https://robertbruceanderson.com/freebusinesstoolkit