Is it possible to make money from your crochet without selling anything?

That’s no online products, no physical products. Nothing at all.

It sounds too good to be true right? I mean how can you possibly build a business without a single product of your own? How is it possible that anyone would give you money without receiving a product of some sort in return?

But they will.

Here’s how. You are going to need either:

• A blog
• A YouTube channel
• A podcast

If you have 1 or more of these platforms then you are able to make money from your crochet without having any products of your own.

How? By recommending other people’s products to your audience. There are 2 ways to do this, keep reading to find out how they both work.

First, you need content. You need to give your audience a reason to come to your platform and read / watch / listen to your content.

You can attract people to come over to your platform by being helpful and answering a question they have (a bit like how you came to read this article 😉).

Once you have attracted an audience to come on over to your content, you can show them products from other businesses that they might be interested in.

How do you do that? by signing up to ad and affiliate networks.

Let’s start with the ad networks – this is the easiest of the 2 to get set up and earning money from.

Ad Networks

I’m sure you’ve visited websites where there are ads in the side bars and in between the paragraphs. A lot of websites have ad content on them, and that’s because they are a source of income for that site.

Ad revenue can be very profitable for a website. The more visitors you get to your site, the more money those ads will generate for you.

Ads are not just available on websites, you can have them on your YouTube channel as well. YouTube has a monetisation programme that you can apply for, and if you qualify you can put ads onto the beginning and end of your videos. If your video is long enough, the ads can also be added into the middle too.

As with websites, the more views your videos get, the more ad revenue you will make.

Podcasts are also starting to become more popular with ad networks. Like YouTube you can have ads at the start, end and if your podcast episode is long enough, mid episode too.

No matter if you have ads on a blog, YouTube channel or a podcast, they all rely on you getting traffic. The more views you get the more revenue you make, so you really have an incentive to create good quality content in order to attract new viewers.

Blog Ads

Many blogs use ads on their site. You can add them throughout your content and in the sidebars too. You get to control how many ads are shown on each post or page and you can exclude certain pages from showing ads.

The more viewers you get visiting your blog, the better quality of ad network you can join. The better the ad network, the better the payout rate you will get for each viewer of your site.

Google Adsense will let you apply with zero traffic. Ezoic will let you join with 10,000 page views a month. MediaVine needs you to have 100,000 views a month.

The better the ad network, the more revenue you will make. Some bloggers can make over $5000 a month just through ad revenue, so it can be incredibly lucrative. It can take time to build up the traffic to get to these earning levels, but it can be well worth the effort.

YouTube Ads

With YouTube you have no choice but to have Google Adsense. You can apply for monetisation after you reach 1000 subscribers and you have 4000 viewing hours in a 12 month period. This might sound like a lot, but if you create some unmissable videos and promote your content to your social media following (and don’t forget the power of keywords for appearing in search results) you can rack this up pretty quickly.

I managed it within 4 months by promoting my crocheting along and creating videos for each part. The key is to have must watch videos that will appeal to a wide audience

Podcast Ads

Most podcast ads are spoken by you, the host. You will get paid for that ad, but research shows that ads spoken by the host convert far better than if you use a clip spoken by someone else.

The more downloads you are getting every month, the better the choice of ads you will have available to choose from.

If you can generate a high rate of traffic to your content, then ads can be very lucrative on any platform. The trick is creating the must have content to entice people onto your platform.

No matter which platform you are using, ads can be very lucrative if you are willing to put the effort into building up the traffic your platform attracts.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing can also be very lucrative, just as much as ads can be, and you can use it as well as ads on your platforms.

Affiliate marketing is where you get paid for recommending someone else’s product and bringing them a sale. Do you only get paid if someone buys that product using your special affiliate link.

The most obvious Affiliate programme to sign up to is Amazon. You need to generate 3 sales within 3 months to stay on the programme, so it is probably best to wait until you’re getting a good amount of traffic before signing up.

For yarn, you can sign up to LoveCrafts own affiliate programme and Hobbie, Joanne’s and Michaels have an affiliate programme through CJ Publishing. Share A Sale and Awin are other Affiliate networks that you may be able to find some good partners to sign up to.

Affiliate marketing is all about recommendations and your audience trusting that you are recommending good, quality products. So make sure you are choosing the products you are promoting carefully.

As with ads, the success of your affiliate marketing depends on the amount of traffic you’re getting. You may only get 1% conversion on your Affiliate links, so you need a good amount of traffic to make a decent amount of money from each link.

It is entirely up to you what products you recommend, but they have to fit with your target audience, and those who you are targeting with your content. If it doesn’t, you won’t see your links convert into commission for you.

You can use both ad networks and affiliate marketing on your blog, YouTube channel or podcast at the same time. They can both be very lucrative as long as you grow the traffic that is coming to consume the content you create, so creating high quality content is the key to making good profits from both of these methods.

What content should I create?

Who is your target audience and what questions can you answer for them? For crocheters this could be free patterns or stitch guides. How to do certain techniques such as foundationless chains. You could have reviews of yarn, hooks or other accessories. You could introduce your audience to crochet designers, yarn brands or crochet related events.

There is so much content that you could create around crochet, you just have to decide what you will enjoy creating content for.

It does take time to build up a successful platform, you should give it at least 6 months of consistent content creation before you start seeing good levels of traffic coming to your platform. But the benefits can be well worth the effort.

There are 3 other ways that I can help you make money from your crochet

1. sign up to the Crochet Business School newsletter, for weekly tips on growing your crochet business, straight into your inbox.

2. You can also check out the Podcast for biweekly bite sized episodes on issues you should think about to grow your crochet business

3. Come and join our Facebook Community Group to connect with others on the same journey as you as well as regular checking in and tips from me