How to Start Selling Crystals

Well hello! I assume you are looking for how to go about selling crystals, minerals, rocks and more of the magic that comes out of mama Earth! You are not alone, a ton of people are looking to start a crystal shop these days. There are different levels of ‘crystal shop’ we will dive into here, in addition to how to sell crystals, platforms to use, and more! Before we get going, I would recommend reading my post on the reality of running a crystal shop and decide if it is really what you want to sign up for. It’s not all magical unicorns and good vibes, no matter how awesome crystals are.

So you’ve read through my other post and you are determined to sell crystals for a living! Welcome to crystal world my friend! You have quite a journey ahead full of magic, learning, hiccups, amazing people, adventures and more. Now in case you didn’t read my other post, here is your quick disclaimer. Selling crystals is not as easy as it might seem when you see us selling online. Sure it is full of awesomeness, but it is physically and mentally challenging (if not exhausting). The good news is you don’t have to make a 100% commitment right off the bat. I would actually STRONGLY recommend you don’t actually, and that is where we will get started. So let’s get in to how to start selling crystals!

Set Your Crystal Shop Goals

First you’ll want to determine how large of a commitment you want to make to selling crystals. Do you want this to be your full time job where you make an actual living? Do you you just want this to be a small side business just to have fun with crystals and pay for your own crystal habit? There are many levels in between which I’ll cover below. Only you can determine your ultimate goals and what your personal situations will allow or require. Some people are single adults that need to support their entire living status, some don’t HAVE to work and can do this to earn money and have fun without the stress of having to make that certain amount. Some people live in affordable areas and some live in the land of the $5000 closet sized apartment. Some have kinds, some don’t and so on. Keep all of those in mind when reading on about starting your crystal selling adventure.

You might not know for sure what you will end up choosing, but having SOME sort of goal in mind will help to have even as you get started.

How to Sell Crystals

START SMALL

Determining HOW you sell crystals will depend a lot on the factors mentioned above, but will also be determined by your schedule, your drive, and your financial situation. I’m sure there are others depending on each of your unique situations, but those are big ones.

But we will start out with the way I suggest EVERYONE try to start selling crystals, and that is SMALL. Please, please get a taste for it before you go full commitment. Many people will start out with trying a ‘de-stash’ account on Instagram, TikTok or other social platform you prefer. This is selling your personal pieces that you just may not connect with anymore, or you may decide that is how you want to go about funding this crystal business experiment. Now first and foremost, I want to warn you that the ‘de-stash’ trial will only give you a partial test of selling crystals.

With a de-stash you will get a sense of:

Trying to find customers (do NOT poach other peoples, I’ll get into that later)
Pricing items
Selling on your chosen platform
Receiving payment & the fees you will incur (it is not legal to take payment by personal Venmo or Zelle, just so you know), and the IRS now tracks anything over $600 anyway.
Dealing with customers and providing customer service
Setting some rules and policies
Shipping orders
Possibly also: social media, tracking down payments

What it WON’T give you a sense of, and I want you to consider these as VERY big missing pieces…

Sourcing – this is a HUGEEEEE missing piece, and one that will take a lot of time to learn and do going forward.
Regular business stuff – another big one that encompasses a lot of things and hours of your week.
The daily or weekly grind of trying to do this for a living, unless you have a TON to de-stash haha.

Once you give the de-stash a shot there are a couple ways you can step it up a notch which we will talk about below. There are two very different ways you can go about it, and give it a good thought before you commit to either one.

Step It Up A Notch

Like I mentioned really give your ultimate goals a thought before you make your next move, even before you start selling crystals. Do you ultimately want an online crystal shop? A physical store? Or just sell crystals through Instagram? The more you can decide your future now the better so you don’t have to start over later.

If you decide to continue with selling on social media, the next step would be to grab some actual inventory to sell. You can do this by visiting local gem shows or crystal warehouses. For gem shows you’ll want to google things like ‘gem and mineral show near ___’ or other keywords like ‘crystals’. You’ll want to try to find ones that offer a wholesale section versus just retail. For warehouses you’ll want to do the same. Depending on where you live this may not be entirely possible (for either honestly). But I do have a list of wholesale crystals and tips and tricks on the page.

If you decide you’d like to setup an actual online crystal shop, you will still want to do the above, but now that you are committing a bit more you’ll want to try to setup an actual shop. Now I wouldn’t suggest jumping full-force into a shop. But you can give something like Etsy or eBay a shot. This way everything is pretty much plug and play and you just load your photos, product images and setup ‘shop policies’ (I’ll dive into that more later). This info can always be transferred to another online shop later.

These shop formats aren’t perfect, and they do have high fees, but they have the benefit of existing traffic unlike a separate shop. You can read more about these options and a few others on where to sell crystals on this other post.

Something I would still do, is grab a custom URL for your shop (PS, you’ll want to figure out a shop name now!). You can grab them for like $12 through google domains and just direct it (a forward) to your Etsy shop’s address. We have covered branding, crystal logos and such in a separate post, but that should be part of this next step as well! You need a shop name that will hopefully match your domain, social media accounts, and make sure it is AVAILABLE! Do not take someone else’s name, and do not choose something so similar that it will cause confusion.

Tons more to come to the site!