It’s easy to imagine that launching a proper online shop is a weekend-swallowing project. On Airehaus it isn’t. Because the business toolkit is already built — storefront, product manager, shipping engine, orders dashboard — your job is simply to switch it on and fill it with your work. This checklist runs through every step in order, so you always know what comes next and what each step is actually for.
Two of the steps below — your membership and your Stripe connection — are the true gatekeepers: until both are active, you can’t sell. Everything else is about making your shop look and work the way you want. Let’s take them in order.
1. Activate your membership
Membership is how Airehaus keeps the lights on without ever taking a commission — one flat monthly fee, no per-sale cut. Activating it is the first of the two switches that let you sell. There's no percentage waiting in the background and nothing extra skimmed from your orders later; what you see is the whole cost.
2. Connect your Stripe account
Checkout on Airehaus is a direct charge on your own Stripe account, which means buyers pay you, not the platform. Stripe's onboarding walks you through verifying your identity and linking a bank account; once it's done, money from every order lands with you automatically. This is the second switch — with membership active and Stripe connected, you can go live.
3. Build your storefront
Your storefront is your home inside the marketplace — a dedicated page at your own handle carrying your name, your story and your work. Add a shop name, a short bio that tells buyers who makes the work and how, and your shipping and returns policies so expectations are clear before anyone orders. This is what turns a listing into a recognisable business.
4. Add your products
Strong listings do most of the selling. Add clear, well-lit photos from a few angles, a description that covers materials and dimensions, and variants for size, colour or finish with their own stock counts. Enter each product's weight and dimensions too — the shipping engine uses them to quote accurately, so buyers are charged the right postage and you're never out of pocket.
5. Set your shipping
Airehaus holds no carrier keys and organises no parcels — shipping is entirely yours to define. Set flat rates by zone (for example one price for Australia, another for New Zealand, another for the rest of the world), offer free shipping over a threshold, or plug in your own carrier account. However you post, you stay in control of cost and method.
6. Go live and take orders
With both switches on and your listings published, your products enter the marketplace and can be found by buyers. Discovery runs on fair equal-rotation, so a brand-new shop still gets genuine exposure rather than being buried under established sellers. From here it's the fun part: orders arrive in your dashboard, you fulfil them, and you mark them shipped with tracking.
How long does this really take?
Most of the checklist is quick. Activating your membership takes a couple of minutes. Connecting Stripe is the step most likely to pause you, and only because it involves verifying your identity and linking a bank account — Stripe may take a little time to confirm the details, though it’s often near-instant. Building your storefront and writing a good bio is an hour of thoughtful work rather than a technical hurdle. Photographing and listing your products is the part that genuinely scales with your catalogue: a handful of items is an afternoon; a large range is worth spreading across a few sessions so the quality stays high.
In other words, you could realistically go from sign-up to a live shop in a single focused day, with the ongoing work being simply adding new pieces as you make them. There’s no long approval process standing between you and your first sale — once the two switches are on and a product is published, you’re open for business.
Common mistakes to avoid
A few small missteps trip up new sellers more than anything technical. None are hard to avoid once you know to watch for them:
- Thin photos. A single dim photo undersells even beautiful work. Natural light and a few angles do more for conversion than almost anything else.
- Guessing at weight and dimensions. These feed your shipping quotes. Guess low and you eat the difference on every parcel; measure once and it’s handled.
- Vague shipping policies. Buyers hesitate when postage and timeframes are unclear. Spell them out and you remove the main reason people abandon a cart.
- Forgetting variants’ stock. If a size or colour sells out, its stock count should reflect that so you don’t oversell something you can’t make in time.
- A blank bio. The story of who makes the work is part of what buyers are paying for. An empty profile leaves that value on the table.
A quick word on what you keep
It’s worth restating the thing that makes this whole checklist worth completing: every step above sets up something you own. Your Stripe, your storefront, your catalogue, your shipping rules and your customer relationships are all yours, not the platform’s. Airehaus takes zero commission and never touches your money — it earns from the flat membership alone. That’s why the setup is worth doing properly: you’re not furnishing someone else’s shop, you’re building your own.
Before you go live: a final pass
Once your listings are up, do one last review with a buyer’s eye before you announce your shop. A few minutes here saves a lot of back-and-forth later:
- Check every product has at least one clear, well-lit photo and honest dimensions.
- Confirm your variants have the right stock counts so nothing oversells.
- Send yourself a test through the cart to see the buyer’s checkout experience.
- Read your shipping and returns policies as if you were the customer — are they clear?
- Make sure your bio says who makes the work and what makes it special.
You’re open — now what?
After your first orders start arriving, running the shop settles into a simple rhythm: fulfil promptly, mark orders shipped with tracking so buyers stay informed, and keep your listings fresh as you make new work. Because your customers are yours to keep, a happy buyer is the beginning of a relationship, not the end of a transaction — reason enough to package your work with care.
For the bigger picture on why this model works the way it does, read the best platform to sell handmade products. And if you’re still weighing the costs, zero commission vs marketplace fees shows exactly how a flat membership compares to a percentage cut as you grow.