Wondering how to make money with crochet?
Crochet is an incredibly popular hobby and one that is also surprisingly easy to learn.
If you keep it up, always training and honing your skills, crochet can even be a way to earn a living.
For those that don’t know already, ‘crochet’ is the French title given to the activity of interlocking loops of material using a crochet hook to create fabrics.
Dissimilar to knitting, creating fabric with crochet involves completing each stitch fully before moving onto the next.
Thankfully, starting up a business in crochet can be almost entirely free – even with a few material costs, business in crochet is incredibly inexpensive compared with creating a large-scale company from scratch. Shopping at Joann’s is the perfect starting place
Another great benefit with crochet is that the market is fairly uncompetitive as it is a far more unique and obscure field than other typical business niches.
This article will run you how to make money with crochet.
how to make money with crochet – 8 Practical & Proven Methods
1. Selling Patterns
The first and most obvious way to earn money via crochet is to create and sell fabrics for a profit.
If you enjoy designing patterns and expressing your creative side, this can be an incredibly fun way to earn money.
Online you are also now able to create digital, PDF versions of your patterns and sell these in a downloadable format.
This is innumerable benefits.
Not only by selling your patterns through the web are you opening the opportunity to engage in incredibly easy trading, instantaneously delivering designs straight to their purchasers with little hassle, but your designs can also be sold an infinite number of times.
Spending time creating just one unique pattern will unlock an endless source of passive income in an easy-to-use digital format.
The only real work you’ll need to put into your designs after having created them is marketing.
So long as you continue to market (advertise) your products, you’ll draw in a tonne of sales and keep your income source flowing nicely.
2. Offering Free Patterns But Paid Advertising
Another popular way to earn through creating crochet patterns is to offer them for free.
Instead of earning money through sales of your patterns, you’ll be creating an income through paid advertisements.
On your website/whichever platform you promote your designs through, you can implement paid ads that’ll draw in money every single time they’re clicked/viewed.
All you need to do is have a decent set of patterns that attract a lot of downloads and site views.
Once you’ve done that, all you need to do is market your site and direct people to your paid adverts.
Systems such as Google AdSense and affiliate marketing platforms such as Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) allow you to advertise the products other companies are selling, with you being paid each time somebody from your site makes a purchase.
It’s really that simple!
3. Craft Shows
Taking part in craft shows is a slightly different option to the previous two but a profitable one nonetheless.
Attending and being involved in craft shows, events at which crafters can display their creations and sell them to passersby, can be an excellent way to not only sell your fabrics without having to deliver them, but to also increase publicity and get your name out there as a designer.
It’s crucial, however, that you already have a decent amount of physical fabrics ready to show off before you sign up to be part of a craft show.
If you turn up with just a couple of fabrics to show you’ll be left with nothing to do when they sell out, or with nothing more to offer than a couple of beginner crafts – which is likely to distinguish people’s faith in you as an experienced designer.
It’s best to have a few pieces of work ready to show off beforehand.
4. Testing People’s Patterns
Plenty of designers pay good money to others to test their patterns.
All this involves is checking through other people’s designs and looking for areas that could do with improvement or that are flawed.
This option pays decent money and requires little effort, however it does require significantly more experience in the field.
If you’re fairly new to crochet then you likely won’t have a keen eye for what makes a fabric good/bad and thus you’re best to learn your field a little better before criticising the work of more experienced designers.
5. Creating A Physical Store
In addition to starting up online stores, you can consider creating an actual physical shop through which you’d sell your fabrics.
The only issue with this option is that it’ll require a fairly large sum of money to get started.
You’ll not only need to pay to buy/rent a building to use to sell from, but you’ll also be required to spend money on furnishings and any necessary renovations/improvements.
This method has far more potential for loss than the others, however in conjunction with online stores and other methods of earning you’ll be able to balance out any losses from your real-life store.
I’d recommend that you first establish a significant presence online as well as creating a few stable sources of income through other methods of earning with crochet.
Once you have the foundations of your business in place, then it may be time to consider starting up a brick and mortar store – but only then.
The great thing about owning a store if your own is that you can begin to purchase items to sell at wholesale prices.
These prices are significantly lower than the costs of typical outlet stores and will save you a decent amount of money when buying materials.
It’ll also allow you to sell physical fabrics you’ve created rather than just digital online patterns, giving you the chance to be a lot more creative and to sell specific items upon request.
Additionally, you can partner up with fellow crocheters and sell their designs too, earning a profit for yourself with each sale for your services.
6. Teaching
As with any skill, teaching crochet can be an incredibly versatile and simple way to earn money.
This can be done either from your home, mobile or even with group classes.
There are plenty advantages for each of these methods, however the main advantage of being an independent teacher is that you can work entirely according to your hours.
Simply decide on your availability and fit clients in as and when you’re free.
As well as teaching people in person (which has its advantages when it comes to demonstrating tricky techniques), you can also offer to instruct people online over video chat.
Additionally, you may wish instead to create courses that don’t require you to actively teach but that can instead be created and then sold on as many times as you wish.
I’d recommend teaching both online and offline as sharing your skills with people actively face-to-face is an invaluable way to generate publicity and get people talking about you, while teaching online can also act as a passive source of income through the creation of courses.
7. YouTube
Creating a YouTube channel dedicated to giving crochet tutorials is another excellent way to earn money.
Once you’ve setup your channel and begun attracting a decent amount of views, you can begin to monetize your crochet videos using the following methods:
7. Google AdSense
AdSense allows you to implement paid advertisements into your YouTube videos.
To get started, first head over to Google AdSense and sign up. It’s totally free to create an account so don’t worry about any fees.
You’ll be earning money through these ads only when they’re clicked so you should focus on generating a decent amount of views to increase the likelihood of people clicking on your AdSense links.
Be sure to include advertisements relevant to your audience (crochet enthusiasts) to maximises your chances of having them clicked on by viewers.
You will be paid for these ads per view, however the revenue generated from these is considerably low.
Having a large audience is the only way to earn decent money from these ads.
8. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the process of advertising products for a company and being paid in commission each time somebody makes a purchase through your links.
Simply include links to products referenced in your videos in your description and persuade viewers to use your discount codes to make a purchase and you’ll earn a large amount of money through affiliate marketing revenue alone.
See Also: Lab-grown Diamonds: How do Lab-grown Diamonds compare against Earth-mined diamonds?
