When you’re stuck in a boring 9-5 job or you’re looking for a way to work flexible so that you can stay home with your kids, you’re crochet could be the answer. I’m sure you’ve asked yourself the question at some point “Can I Make A Living Selling My Crochet?” It sounds so easy to do and so ideal. Crochet and sell it, make a living doing what you love without having to deal with a soul sucking corporate job. So is it possible?
What You Need To Get Started
Lets start with what you need to get started selling your crochet. You need some crochet items to sell, a place to show them off as for sale and a way to take payments.
3 simple things right?
But that simplicity is deceiving as you have so many options available to you.
- What kind of things do you crochet to sell?
- Do you sell online, at craft fairs, only make to order, only sell what is already made?
- Do you use PayPal, cash only, set up on Shopify?
The options are endless.
We haven’t even started on pricing yet.
This might be looking overwhelming right now, and it is. Unless you’ve been involved in how a business works before then this is a whole new world for you.
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not as simple to sell your crochet as it first appears. Are you prepared to learn how to do all this, as it is going to take time and effort to figure out. You have fantastic crochet skills, but the sales side is a whole different beast.
Let’s Talk About The Money
We’ve talked about what you need to think about and what kind of things you need to learn. Now lets get onto what you need to earn to make a living from your crochet.
If you sell something for $10, you have not made $10. You need to take your costs off first. Your costs include:
- Your yarn
- The accessories you used (stuffing, buttons, etc)
- The fees your payment platform charged
- Any packaging you used
- Your wages
Let me repeat that last one Your Wages. Your salary is not what’s left after you pay your costs, you are a cost.
If you were applying for a 9-5 job you would absolutely want to know what you were going to get paid every month or every hour. Yet so few crocheters who are planning to make a living from their crochet think about this. Why?
Because they are so busy and so desperate to make the dream a reality that they stick their heads in the sand when it comes to the finances. But if you do this you are heading for a nasty shock eventually. It’s far too easy to get bust selling and quickly make a big financial loss and discover that you aren’t making enough to pay your bills.
Don’t do this. Get serious about the money even before you start selling.
If a hat takes 3 hours to make, and needs $15 worth of yarn and accessories, what are you going to charge for it? At a salary of $10 per hour you’re going to need to charge close to $50 for that hat, if not more. You will need to sell 2 or 3 hats a day to make those numbers work for you. Can you imagine crocheting 3 hats a day, everyday for the rest of your career?
Do you feel that sinking feeling in your stomach? That’s reality crashing down. It’s the realisation that selling your crochet may not be the answer to solving your financial issues.
But this is not the end of your dreams of making a living from your crochet.
There Is A Solution
I’m not trying to crush your dreams, I’m just showing you the reality of the situation.
The reality is that it isn’t possible to build a long term sustainable income from selling your crochet. It simply takes too much time to crochet each item and when you take time off to take a break or spend time with your family you’re not earning a penny. This means there is a big limit to how much money you can make by selling your crochet and it can easily lead to working 60 hour weeks and complete burnout.
BUT your crochet skills can earn you a living – it just looks a bit different from what you originally imagined.
There are many ways that you can make a living from your crochet skills:
- Writing crochet patterns
- Becoming a content creator
- Teaching how to crochet
And more. These can all be done in conjunction with selling the crochet that you make if that’s what you really want to do. Open your eyes to the possibilities, as there is no reason you can’t start a crochet blog and earn money from ads and affiliate links. There is no reason that you can’t teach others how to crochet whether it be through in person classes or you sell pre-recorded online classes.
There are endless possibilities once you get past that instinctive reaction of “I couldn’t possibly do something like that!”
That instinctive first reaction is just fear and lack of confidence. It’s not grounded in reality. You can do anything if you want to. If you’re prepared to learn and do the work. And just a moment ago you were prepared to learn and do the work to sell the crochet you make, so why not this?
You don’t even need to be that tech savvy these days to write a blog or film and edit videos. The tools to do these have been made so simple now, they’re drag and drop builders which are really easy to use. No coding required. I’ve been in the online crochet space for 7 years now and I haven’t had to do a single bit of coding yet.
Fear keeps you trapped. Take a deep breath, steal yourself and start exploring the possibilities with an open mind and a can do attitude.
That’s what I had to do. I reached the point in 2019 where I realised that selling my crochet was never going to work. I was burned out, my crochet felt like a chore and I hated making the same things over and over again since what I crocheted depended on what my customers were ordering.
I had to make a pivot or I had to give up on my dream of turning my crochet into a career. I chose to pivot and I turned to writing crochet patterns. It was the best decision I ever made. But I also explored other options such as blogging, YouTube, merchandising, memberships and more besides. That’s how I know what options are out there and how they can turn your crochet into a reliable, sustainable and lucrative salary for you.
So What Now?
Now it’s time to explore the possibilities and decide what your road ahead looks like. I have a playlist on my podcast with each episode focusing on a different way that you can make money from your crochet. You can listen in now here.
As the saying goes – You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know, and if making a living from your crochet is what you’re determined to do, it’s time to find out what you don’t know yet.
If you are ready to start exploring options for turning your crochet into a business, you can start by downloading my free guide on 12 Different Ways You Can Make Money With Your Crochet Skills here to get an idea of all the options open to you. The only thing standing in the way of you turning your crochet into a business that you can make a living from is you and your confidence.
You can also listen into my free podcast here with a whole range of episodes on everything about starting and building your own crochet business, but I recommend starting with Episode 101: Are You Determined To Start Selling Your Crochet?
Lastly, you can subscribe to my free Substack page here for daily tips and to hear more about my own experience starting and growing my crochet business.
