I hated it so much at first to go out there and promote my stuff. Thought by doing it online it would be easier. (buzzer sound here) Nope, not easy.
Best advice, participate a lot in teams here. Especially in teams where promotion is the focus. Whenever you see someone posting about their work, for example in threads where you list your items, add yours and just a sentence about what you like about your item.
It won't take long (and I promise) that it will build your confidence.
As for selling in brick and mortar places, I'm not there yet, especially because I do not have a sufficient inventory of items to sell. it will get there eventually.
Since I don't like to be pushy when promoting my stuff, I quickly developed a different approach: share what I like, what I feel, what I am working on, and my design failures. It has brought a commendable attention to my work and projects a more human image of my shop and myself. And it turns out that social networks specialists promote this approach more and more, because when the only information you get from someone being just about "buy my stuff", it always ends up with an "unfollow" or "unlike" click.
