There are many ways to make money from crochet. Most of us enter the world of crochet business by selling what we make. But this is actually the hardest and one of the least profitable ways to turn our crochet into a career. It demands endless hours of crocheting, and if you’re not crocheting you’re not earning. You make the item once and profit from it once.
But what if you could make something once, then earn from it countless times? What if you could still make money while you took a break without having to come back to a huge to do list? What if you got to work flexibly and only the hours you choose instead of what your order list demands?
The answer lies in crochet digital products, and that’s not the scary idea you think it is.
What Is A Digital Product?
You’ve probably bought several digital products yourself before, whether related to crochet or in a different niche. Digital products are simply a file that exists online. It can be a pdf, an e-book, a video file or even an audio file.
The beauty of these is that multiple people can access the same file or they can be duplicated. That means instead of selling ownership of a product you are selling access to a resource. The only work you need to do after you’ve created them is to promote them so they sell more.
So what kinds of crochet digital products could you create? Let’s look at your options and how they work.
Crochet Patterns
The most obvious crochet digital products are crochet patterns. Crochet patterns mean that you can still crochet all day but without the pressure of meeting an order deadline. Patterns come in several different forms – written, video, and charts, and you can choose whichever suits you best and build your audience based on your own preferences.
There is a huge demand for new crochet patterns. There are millions of crocheters across the globe who love to discover new patterns and new designers. Because digital products are delivered electronically, there are no border restrictions to making sales unlike physical products. This makes it so much easier to sell patterns and build an audience.
Crochet patterns can be sold on many platforms, but the most popular include Ravelry, Etsy and Shopify. The listings are set up in much the same way as you would a physical product, except you don’t have to worry about postage options. You then simply upload your pattern file and the selling site handles the rest.
If you want to learn how to write a crochet pattern step by step with all the details and tips you need to get your first pattern published, then take a look at my Crochet Pattern Writing For Beginners Course here, or if you’re still deciding if writing crochet patterns is the right path for you, then you can download my free step by step guide on how to write crochet patterns here.
E-books And Guides
One of the simplest ways to create crochet digital products is through e-books and guides.
E-books and guides are about taking the knowledge you already have and turning it into a product that other crocheters need. You’ve been crocheting for years and to you this stuff is second nature, but to a new crocheter it is a goldmine waiting to be tapped.
You can create these on any crochet subject at all. From guides on how to learn crochet and the supplies you need, to stitch guides, guides on how to crochet different techniques such as Mosaic or Interlocking crochet. You can create guides to crochet slang or calendars on crochet events and fairs that are happening this year. The possibilities are endless.
These guides and e-books can be written in a word doc and then saved as a pdf. They don’t need to look super stylish, they just need to do the job that you promised in the listing. But if you do want to pretty up your digital products, you can create them in Canva and use different fonts, templates and add your branding too.
These can be sold on Etsy and Shopify or on platforms specifically designed for digital sales like Payhip.
Videos And Tutorials
The next step up from e-books and guides are videos and tutorials. It’s the same sort of idea, turn your knowledge into products. But videos and tutorials are more in-depth and require more work to both record and to edit. This in turn means that you can sell them for a higher price.
Your years of crochet experience mean that getting more in-depth on a topic comes easy to you. In fact the temptation to go too in-depth and overwhelm your customer is the bigger issue and not under delivering.
You can turn anything that can be made into an e-book into a more detailed tutorial. Instead of writing a short e-book you can create a video series that shows more detail and goes more in-depth so that the customer can follow along and get a broader understanding.
Etsy and Shopify are not built to host a video library, so purchases are not as easily accessible as they need to be for tutorials. Platforms such as Payhip, MemberPress or even YouTube memberships if you meet the qualification criteria are better suited to this.
You don’t need a lot of equipment to record videos. You can use your smartphone or webcam and then you just need a brightly lit room. You will however need to use editing software to edit out any bad takes and to get decent sound quality. I use Descript for my videos and it is considered one of the best affordable editing platforms available.
Memberships And Subscriptions
Memberships and subscriptions are where crochet digital products turn into stable financial income that is predictable month on month. That stability is something that will make life easier and your monthly finances far easier to predict.
You can create a membership for a huge variety of topics, pattern memberships where your members get a new crochet pattern each month, crochet support memberships where people can come to get their crochet questions answered, or crochet community memberships where people come for the connection with fellow crocheters. You can even add a physical product if you want and create subscription boxes where members get a box of goodies delivered to them every month.
As long as you are clear about the benefits of your membership, make them easily accessible and make the value obvious, then you can build a successful source of income.
I have several memberships in my own business, each with its own distinct job. A members only podcast for aspiring pattern writers, a paid Substack tier for crochet business owners who need accountability and a way to get through the overwhelming to-do list, and a 1:1 membership for those who need their crochet business questions answered. Each has its own unique selling point, each has a price point to match the value, ranging from $7 to $79 a month. How you create and price your own membership is entirely up to you.
Memberships can be run on many different platforms depending on the membership type. Community based memberships can be run inside private Facebook groups or on Discord. Memberships with content can be hosted on Payhip or Memberpress.
Templates And Printables
Last but not least we have templates and printables. These are easier to create than tutorials and memberships. You’ve probably created a few templates for yourself before too – those graphics you made on Canva to make your social media posts instantly recognisable? Those can easily be converted into a template.
This again is about taking knowledge you already have, or more specifically systems you have already created for yourself, and repackaging them to be sold. How do you track money coming in and going out? That can be converted into a template. Did you have a play around in Canva and create a pretty crochet themed to-do list for yourself? That can be turned into a printable.
These types of product are fairly quick to create and can be used by a wide variety of people. You could even create new types of printable that maybe you haven’t made for yourself before like note paper with the same design as the to-do lists — an easy conversion inside Canva.
Printables and templates are very popular on sites like Etsy, Shopify and Payhip and it’s a very accessible way to start with crochet digital products.
Which Do You Choose?
So which type of digital product do you choose to create? That’s going to depend on you, your interests and what your goal is right now.
If you’ve never created any digital product before then starting with an e-book or guide is the simplest introduction. But to make a long term, sustainable business that provides regular income then you want to look towards memberships or products that are easier to sell such as crochet patterns, which have a huge worldwide demand.
You have a lot of choices, and each of them have their pros and cons.
This is why I created the 90 Day Crochet Blueprint programme. Inside we get your digital crochet business planned out and choose what your focus will be both in the short and the long term. We look at which options are best for you, so you leave the programme with a roadmap of exactly what you need to do in the next 90 days to get your crochet digital products set up and earning you money. You can discover more about the Blueprint Programme here.
Blogs And YouTube
There is another type of digital income for crocheters. They’re not strictly speaking digital products but rather digital content creation. You then earn your money from the people coming to view your content.
I’m talking about blogs and YouTube videos. Writing blog posts and making videos can earn you a living through ads and affiliate links. Ads for other people’s content get inserted into your blogs and videos and you receive a payment for allowing that. Affiliate links are your recommendations to your viewers on products they might be interested in. Affiliate marketing done right is not salesy, it is helpful to your audience to give them links to things that can help them and they would genuinely like.
This will not make you money fast. It is a slow burn game where you put in a lot of effort early on in order to reap the rewards much further down the line. Blogs and YouTube channels are a very popular option amongst crochet business owners, but they do come with a significant time investment before you see any kind of return.
Although not really digital products, I’m including blogs and YouTube here as they are included inside my Blueprint Programme.
Your Next Step
So what’s your next step?
If you don’t feel like The Blueprint is for you then have a listen to my podcast, and this playlist on all the different ways to make money from your crochet here. I go into each of the above digital products in more detail along with how they work.
If you feel confident working it out for yourself, that’s fantastic. But I can offer you a place to connect with other crochet business owners, a place to hold yourself accountable and where you can find tips to avoid overwhelm and stay productive. If that sounds like the place for you, then come and join us inside The Nook here.
However you decide to create crochet digital products, know that they will help you to make a profit while being able to step away from your hook and create the flexible lifestyle you’ve always wanted.
