Selling guide · Last updated August 30, 2026

How to sell baked goods online from your home kitchen

Selling baked goods online does not mean shipping brownies across the country. For most home bakers it means a customer in your town finds you on their phone, sees real prices, and sends an order you can actually fill. Here are your options, honestly compared, plus the one-afternoon setup that turns followers into orders.

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Key takeaways

Local pickup and delivery come first; cottage food rules often restrict shipping anyway.
DMs are free and personal, but they melt down past a few orders a week.
One link with prices, questions, and a deposit policy turns six-message conversations into one complete request.

Your real options, honestly

There are five realistic places to sell as a home baker, and you will probably use two or three of them together. None of them is wrong. They just break down at different volumes.

The honest version: DMs feel free but cost the most time per order. Marketplaces bring traffic but take a cut and keep the customer relationship. A shop link costs a few dollars a month and collects the details for you, but you still bring the audience. Most working setups are social for discovery plus one link where every order lands.

Where	What it costs	What it is good at
Your own shop link	A flat subscription, US$49/year with Confita	Complete orders: prices, questions, deposits, one link in your bio
Instagram + Facebook DMs	Free	Discovery and chat; melts down past a few orders a week
Local FB groups + Nextdoor	Free	Reaching neighbors who can actually pick up this Saturday
Farmers markets	A booth fee per market day	Sampling, cash sales, and meeting your weekly regulars
Marketplaces	A commission on every sale, often around 10%	Built-in traffic, but the platform owns the customer

Why shipping is the wrong first step

Shipping feels like the obvious meaning of selling online, and for most home bakers it is the wrong first step. Cottage food laws in many states limit or forbid shipping, and some restrict you to direct, in-person sales. Check your state’s rules before you promise to mail anything.

Even where shipping is legal, the economics are rough. Boxes, insulation, cold packs, and priority postage can cost more than the bake itself, and one melted-buttercream review hurts more than ten happy pickups help.

Local first is not settling, it is sequencing. Pickup windows at your door, porch delivery within a few miles, a market table once a month. You can sell out a week of capacity without ever printing a shipping label, and you can add shipping later if your state allows it and the math works.

The setup that takes one afternoon

If you already have a phone and a free hour of daylight, the whole setup fits in one afternoon. Five steps, in order:

Photograph 3 to 5 products near a window in daylight. A phone camera is fine; dim kitchen lighting is the only real enemy.
Write a real price on every item. A price is a filter that works while you sleep.
Add the questions you always end up asking anyway: date, servings, flavors, allergies, pickup or delivery.
Write your deposit policy in one sentence, like a 50% deposit reserves your date.
Put the link in your Instagram and Facebook bios, then answer every price DM with it.

From DMs to a link: what changes

Before: someone comments how much on a cake photo. You reply check your DMs. Then come the questions, one at a time, across a day: what date, how many servings, which flavors, any allergies, pickup where, how do you pay. Six messages, sometimes spread over two days, and the order still lives in a chat thread you have to scroll to find on Friday.

After: the same person taps the link in your bio, picks the cake, answers those exact questions on the product page, attaches an inspiration photo, and sends one complete request. You read it once, quote it once, and the conversation that remains is the fun kind, not data entry.

The difference is not just minutes. Complete orders kill the two mistakes that cost real money: the wrong pickup date and the missed allergy note.

Keep the Square account from your market table

If Saturday card sales already run through Square, your weekday online orders do not need a new processor. Confita can connect that existing Square seller account, associate online payments with an eligible Square location, and send customers to Square-hosted checkout.

The account stays familiar, but the transaction channel changes. An online card payment can use a different rate from a tap at the market. When Square payments run through your own connected account, Confita adds no fee; Square’s applicable online fees still apply.

One link, the whole order

This is what your customer sees when they tap the link: your products with prices, your schedule, and your questions built into ordering. Nothing to install, no account to create.

A Confita shop is US$49/year, or US$9.99/month if you prefer monthly, and the first 7 days are free, so trying it costs you an afternoon.

The customer side: a link in the browser, not an app.

Marigold Oven mini cheesecake product page showing price, availability, payment methods, order notes, total, and add to order action

Questions, answered

Frequently asked questions

Where can I sell my baked goods online?

The realistic channels are your own shop link, Instagram and Facebook, local groups like Nextdoor, and marketplaces, usually two or three together. Social is where people discover you; the link is where order details get collected. Marketplaces add traffic but take a cut and own the customer relationship.

Do I need a website to sell baked goods?

Not a full website with hosting and plugins. You need one page that shows products, prices, and your order questions, which is what a shop link is. A full website makes sense later, when you want search traffic and a brand home, and even then the shop link usually stays on as the ordering layer.

Can I sell baked goods on Instagram?

Instagram is excellent for finding customers and terrible at collecting orders. Post there, build the audience there, but send buyers to a link that captures the date, quantity, flavors, and payment details in one step. Bakers who run whole orders in DMs hit a ceiling at a handful of orders a week.

Can I ship baked goods to other states?

Usually not under cottage food laws, which in most states limit you to in-state and often direct-to-consumer sales. Interstate shipping generally requires a licensed commercial kitchen and extra compliance. Check your state’s program before promising shipping, and build the local business first either way.

Pairs well with