It happens to everyone at some point. An unexpected bill comes in, the car needs a new tyre and we find ourselves needing to find some quick cash to pay it off. Thankfully as a crocheter you have the option to use your crochet to raise the money. So how can you make money from crochet fast to get the bills paid even if you don’t have a social media following?
Make Something Quick And Sell
Start by raiding your yarn stash. The last thing you want to do is add to your money issues by buying new yarn. There are lots of quick crochet patterns that only need a small amount of yarn, so this is a great way to de-stash as well.
Quick crochet projects include keyrings, bookmarks, coasters, mug cosies and tonnes more besides.
I have a list of 50 crochet patterns that are quick to make here that is free to download.
When choosing what to make there’s a few things you can do to make sure things sell well. Take a look at what’s trending right now on social media and on pattern selling sites – they usually have a list of bestsellers on the homepage. Lean into the time of year it is. Christmas, Valentines, Easter, summer holidays, Halloween are all seasons and events that you can select specific patterns for to appeal to gift buyers.
These quick projects mean that they are easier to sell as they’ll have a lower price. Just make sure you’re making the money that you need when choosing the price tag.
Put On A Sale
Sales are a great way to bring in extra cash, after all everyone loves a bargain. They attract people in your audience who couldn’t quite afford your prices before, but hang around in the hope that they’ll be able to get their hands on your wonderful crochet at some point. They can also bring in new customers who are just perpetual bargain hunters.
This works best for clearing out existing stock rather than making a lot of new stuff. You have the chance to get rid of stock that maybe has been sitting around for a while and raise the much needed funds at the same time.
Be warned though, you shouldn’t hold sales too often as that can train people to simply wait until you slash your prices and so they never buy at full price.
When deciding what discount you’re going to give, make sure it’s not so steep that you lose money. You still need to make a profit to get those bills paid so choose your pricing with care.
Make sure you promote your sale loudly and often, both on your regular selling sites and in local selling groups. Local groups often have rules on when and how often you can advertise in them, so make sure you note all the rules so you can market your socks off without getting banned.
The Reverse Sale
This is one of my favourite marketing tricks. It works so well because crocheters are notorious at under-pricing themselves.
The way it works is that you announce that you are going to raise your prices. At the end of the month, or in a couple of weeks. So now is the last chance to buy at your current prices before everything goes up.
You will get a flurry of sales from people who were planning on buying from you at some point, but want to get what they want at your current prices.
But you have to follow through. You have to raise your prices permanently when you say you would or your audience will feel like they’ve been scammed and you’ll lose future customers.
I’ve had great success with reverse sales in my own business and it means you make the full profit on your orders and at the same time increase your profits for the future. It’s a win win.
What’s Trending
Looking at what’s trending and then offering something based on those trends can bring in some quick sales. Earlier on I mentioned this in relation to small, quick makes. But here I’m talking about larger, made to order items.
Take the orders now, get payment in advance and then make and deliver later. You get the money you need fast, but then you have a to-do list to work through and get sent out to people.
There’s always the latest trends going around in the crochet world, we’ve seen plenty of them in the past – Wind spinners, mermaid blankets, pocket shawls, pumpkins….
See what’s trending right now – again social media and pattern selling sites are your best research tools for this, and see what you can offer to take advantage.
Just make sure that you don’t take on too much. Be clear about how long it’s going to take you to make and deliver these items, and be clear on how much you can crochet in that time. You don’t want to be getting angry messages from customers who don’t receive what they paid for by the date you said they’d have it.
Reach Out To Past Customers
A quick way to drum up some extra sales is to message previous customers. Past customers are easier to sell to because they’ve already made the decision to buy from you before so you’ve already built that know, like and trust factor that is so important. Look at what they bought from you before and offer something else that would fit that purchase type. So if they bought bookmarks from you before, do you have a new design you could offer? If they bought a set of baskets from you, do you have anything else in the home decor or organisation categories to offer them?
Past customers don’t necessarily keep an eye on what new things you have to offer, so this is a way of reminding them you exist, but make sure to not be too pushy about it. You’re simply getting back in touch to see if they’re aware of what you have available right now.
This Is A Stopgap, Not A Strategy
Needing to raise money fast happens to everyone, but this doesn’t work if you’re facing this problem on a regular basis. If you’re getting to the end of every month and finding that you have a cash short fall, then the methods above are not going to do the job for you. These are something you use once or twice a year for unexpected bills, not the every month shortfall.
If you are having trouble making enough money every month then you need a different strategy altogether. If you want to know more about this then download my free Map Your Path workbook here which can help you come up with a long term strategy to bring in predictable, stable income with your crochet.
For more tips on how to make money from your crochet then subscribe to my free Substack here where I post daily, or check out my free podcast here.
