How to sell handmade products online from Bulgaria

In short: sell handmade products online from your own store and let Etsy, eMAG and Instagram bring customers to it. The price covers materials, your hours at a set hourly rate, packaging and fees. The production time is shown on each product, and goods made to the customer's specifications are excluded from the EU 14-day right of withdrawal.

This guide is for makers and small workshops in Bulgaria, local or from abroad, who make ceramics, candles, soap, jewelry, textiles, woodwork or custom gifts and want steady orders instead of occasional sales in direct messages. It is written by the team behind CloudCart, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform,. It is not legal or tax advice: your accountant confirms the form of business and the taxes.

Where to sell handmade products: your own store or a marketplace

Your own online store is the base of a handmade business, because the customer, the price and the personalization stay with you, while marketplaces and social media bring new buyers for a fee. Build the website first and add Etsy, eMAG (a large marketplace in Bulgaria and Romania) and social media after it, so your customer list does not live inside someone else's system.

Etsy is the international marketplace for handmade, vintage and craft supplies. According to Etsy's help center on fees, each listing costs $0.20, charged whether or not the item sells, and Etsy takes a 6.5% transaction fee on the total order amount, including shipping and gift wrap. A payment processing fee comes on top, at a rate that depends on the seller's country.

	Own store	Etsy	eMAG Marketplace	Instagram and Facebook
Which buyers	The ones you bring: social media, Google, referrals, repeat customers	Buyers worldwide who search for handmade	A broad Bulgarian and Romanian audience that compares prices	People who follow your profile
Fees on each sale	0% commission with CloudCart, a fixed monthly plan	$0.20 per listing + 6.5% of the sale + payment processing	Commission by category	No fee on orders taken in messages; ads are paid separately
Personalization (engraving, photo, color)	Fields on the product page, each with its own price	Under the marketplace rules	Under the marketplace rules	By hand, in the chat
Contact with the customer after the sale	Yours: email, discounts, repeat orders	Stays on Etsy	Stays on eMAG	Yours, with no order history
Best for	Main channel and brand	Sales abroad	Series products kept in stock	Showing the process and first customers

The channels work better when each one leads to a single place with full information, secure payment and clear terms. If you add eMAG, put the commission for your category into the price before you publish it.

How to price a handmade product

The price of a handmade product is the cost per item multiplied by a factor that leaves a profit, and the cost includes your labor at an hourly rate. The most common mistake in handmade is a price that only covers materials.

1. Materials for one item. Divide the price of a pack of material by the number of items it makes: wax, clay, yarn, leather, glaze.
2. Labor. Time one item for real, including preparation and cleaning, and multiply it by the rate you want per hour.
3. Overheads. Electricity for the kiln, tools, workshop rent, divided by the number of items you make in a month.
4. Shipping packaging. Box, filling, tape, a card. For fragile goods this is its own line, because filling and a double box cost more than bubble wrap alone.
5. Fees and platform. The card payment fee, the channel commission and the monthly plan divided by your orders.
6. Profit. Multiply the cost by 2 for sales to consumers. That leaves room for discounts, ads and wholesale.

A sample calculation for a candle in a glass jar, without VAT registration:

Line	Amount
Materials (wax, wick, fragrance, jar)	€3.80
Labor: 20 minutes at €15 an hour	€5.00
Overheads	€0.70
Shipping packaging	€1.20
Cost per item	€10.70
Store price (cost × 2, rounded)	€22.00
Etsy fees on the same sale with €8 shipping: 6.5% of €30 + $0.20 listing	about €2.10 + payment processing

Once you are registered for VAT, 20% VAT is added to the price. A business established in Bulgaria must register once its annual turnover in the country exceeds €51,130, a rule in force since Jan 1, 2026, and the application is filed within 7 days of exceeding it (VAT Act, Art. 96, in Bulgarian). If you ship to consumers in other EU countries, a combined threshold of €10,000 a year applies to those distance sales, and above it VAT is charged at the rate of the customer's country, which you can declare through the One Stop Shop (OSS) with one registration (Your Europe, cross-border VAT). The formulas for markup and margin are in the guide to pricing and margin for an online store. OSS step by step is covered in the guide to EU VAT for cross-border sales.

Photos of handmade products that sell

Photos of handmade products need to show size, texture and uniqueness, because the buyer cannot hold the item. Prepare 5 to 7 shots per product in the same light, so the whole catalog looks like one brand.

• Main photo on a light background. The whole item, no props, for the category page and the ads.
• Scale. The item in a hand or next to a familiar object.
• Detail. The stitching, the glaze, the wood grain. This is the shot that proves the item is made by hand.
• Variants. A separate photo for each color or size, so the customer sees exactly what they pick.
• A line on uniqueness. "Each piece is handmade and may differ slightly from the photo" sits under the gallery and in your terms and conditions.

Shoot in daylight by a window, with the phone on a tripod and no flash. The background can be cleaned with an AI tool, and the description written from the photo and the product data.

Made to order: how to show the lead time and take orders with no stock

Made to order works in an online store when the product can be bought at zero stock and the production time is visible on the product page.

In CloudCart this takes two settings:

1. Allow selling when sold out. In Products → Inventory, select the products you make to order and turn on Continue selling when sold out. The setting applies only to products with stock tracking. Items you keep ready in stock keep normal stock tracking.
2. Create a status with the lead time. In Products → Product statuses, add a status with the name the customer sees, for example "Made for you in 5 to 7 business days". With no quantity condition, the status is manual and you assign it only to made-to-order products.
3. Assign the status to the products. On the edit page of each made-to-order product, choose the status in the availability status field.
4. Protect your capacity. When orders exceed what you make in a week, extend the time in the status. The change applies at once to every product that uses it.

If you also sell on Etsy, each listing's settings have a "Made to order" field, which CloudCart sends together with the product.

Personalization: engraving, the customer's photo and a choice of color

Personalization in an online store is done with product options: fields on the product page that the customer fills in before adding the product to the cart, each with its own price.

1. Install the Product Options app. Products → Options then appears in the menu.
2. Create the option. + Create new option, an internal name and a storefront name, for example "Name to engrave" or "Your photo".
3. Choose the field type. Text for an inscription or a date, a file for the customer's photo (for example jpg or png), or a choice from an image gallery for the glaze color or the type of gift box.
4. Set a price. A fixed surcharge (+€5 for engraving) or a percentage of the product price.
5. Decide if it is required. A required option keeps the product out of the cart until it is filled in.
6. Choose which products it applies to. Single products, a whole category or a selected collection.

An option does not split stock: the mug with an inscription and the mug without one are the same product in your inventory. Colors and sizes you make ahead in batches should be variants, so each has its own stock and photo. You get 5 options on Baby Pack, 10 on Starter Pack and unlimited from CC Pro up, as listed on pricing.

Important: goods made to the consumer's specifications or clearly personalized are excluded from the 14-day right of withdrawal for online purchases (Your Europe, returns; in Bulgaria, Art. 57(3) of the Consumer Protection Act). Ready-made handmade items from your catalog can be returned within 14 days like any online purchase. State the difference in your terms and conditions and next to the personalization option. Complaints about defects apply to both kinds. The details are in the guide to returns and consumer rights.

Do you need a company to sell handmade products in Bulgaria

To sell handmade products regularly in Bulgaria, there are two main registered forms: a craftsman under the Crafts Act, or a trader (a sole trader, ET, or a limited liability company, EOOD).

The Crafts Act (in Bulgarian) defines a craft in Art. 3: the activity is on the list of crafts in Annex 1, the work is done by hand or with tools specific to the craft, and it requires knowledge and skills from training, a qualification or professional experience. The list includes, for example, jewelry making, art ceramics, pottery, artistic woodwork and weaving. Candles and soap are not on the list, so for them the usual form is an ET or an EOOD. A craftsman starts work after entry in the BULSTAT register, Bulgaria's register for entities outside the Commercial Register (Art. 4).

	Craftsman (BULSTAT)	ET or EOOD
Who it is for	A craft from the official list, done by hand by you	Any products, including ready goods for resale
Where you register	BULSTAT register	Commercial Register

When an ET or an EOOD is the better choice, what registration costs and what applies to foreign founders are covered in the guide to company registration for an online store. Soap, creams and balms are cosmetic products under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009. Before the first sale, the responsible person notifies each product in the EU Cosmetic Products Notification Portal, CPNP (Art. 13 of the regulation, see the European Commission's CPNP page), and safety and labeling follow the same regulation. With any form, the online store is registered with the NRA (National Revenue Agency) before the first sale under Ordinance N-18, Bulgaria's rules for reporting online sales. How it works and which document you issue for each payment is covered in the guide to Ordinance N-18 and NRA registration.

Instagram and Facebook for handmade: from the post to the order

Instagram and Facebook sell handmade products best when they show the making process and lead in one click to the product page in your store.

• The process is the content. A short video from the wheel, the wax pour, the last stitch. This is why people buy handmade instead of factory goods.
• A catalog for Instagram and Facebook. In Apps → XML Feed → FaceBook, turn on the catalog feed and paste its address into Meta Commerce Manager. Your products can then be tagged in posts and used in dynamic ads.
• Your posts on the storefront. The Social Feed app shows your latest posts from Instagram, Facebook and TikTok in a store section, with a Follow button.
• The seasons. Gifts for Christmas, Valentine's Day and Women's Day on March 8, a gift occasion in Bulgaria, are ordered weeks ahead. Announce the last day to order made-to-order items before each holiday and put it in the product status.

How to start selling handmade online in one week

A store for handmade products can go live in about a week if your photos and prices are ready.

1. Day 1: register the business. Decide between craftsman, ET or EOOD with your accountant and file the documents.
2. Day 2: prices. Work out the cost and price of the 10 to 20 products you start with, using the steps above.
3. Day 3: photos and descriptions. 5 to 7 shots per product, and a description with size, material, care and production time.
4. Day 4: the store. Pick a design, add the products to the catalog, and set up variants and product options for personalization.
5. Day 5: delivery and payment. Connect the couriers: Econt and Speedy (DPD Bulgaria), the main Bulgarian couriers, and BOX NOW parcel lockers. Turn on card payments through CloudCart Pay (Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay) and cash on delivery (COD), and describe how you pack fragile items.
6. Day 6: rules. Terms and conditions with the difference between ready-made and personalized items, a withdrawal form, and the store's registration with the NRA.
7. Day 7: first customers. A process post with a product link, the Meta catalog and, if you want it, Etsy.

If you would rather not set everything up by hand, you can build the store with an AI assistant: with Claude Code, ChatGPT/Codex or Gemini CLI and a PAT token from the admin, you describe in one sentence what you make, and the assistant creates the categories and products step by step.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about product options, Etsy or lead times in your store? Write to us at support@cloudcart.com.