When you first get the idea to make some extra cash by selling the Crochet you’ve made, it sounds like the perfect solution. After all you get paid to do what you love. You get paid to crochet every chance you get, what could be the more perfect solution to your money worries?

But is selling your crochet really all it’s cracked up to be?

I ended up choosing not to sell what I made anymore, but I still make a great income from crochet. Let me tell you why I stopped selling my crochet.

What You Need To Successfully Sell Your Crochet

To create a successful business or side gig for selling your crochet, you need to have a product line. This is a set of items that you will be showing off and advertising on social media, YouTube, TikTok or wherever else you choose to tell everyone about what you have for sale.

This product line will be all you have to offer unless you are willing to take on custom orders. This means that you will be making the same items over and over again. It is your customers that dictate what you make, you don’t get to choose.

Now if you enjoy making the same types of items over and over, or enjoy just the process of crocheting and don’t really mind what you make, then you are well suited to this. But some crocheters (including me!) don’t enjoy crocheting this way.

I love to make different things all the time. One week I can be working on a blanket, the next week a hat, the following week a stuffed octopus, then a headband after that. I thrive on variety and trying out new stitches and techniques all the time.

Crocheting Became A Chore

Once I started getting orders and my customers began dictating what I made, crochet stopped being fun and started becoming a chore. It took away the joy of crochet for me.

Not only that, but as more orders came in from my Etsy shop and from Facebook, it was no longer an option to crochet or not. I HAD to crochet in order to get those orders made up. I became a slave to my hook, I no longer had the choice of to crochet or not to crochet as I had to work as often as possible in order to meet my turnaround times.

I Didn’t Show Up

This had a knock on effect on how I marketed my business and my crochet products – I didn’t. Because if I advertised a product on my Facebook page, then that could generate orders. If an order came in then I would have to make that item. And I didn’t want to make it, I didn’t want to be saddled with that chore, I didn’t want to be forced to crochet instead of it being a choice. So I didn’t post anything. That meant no sales, and no money coming in. That meant I didn’t have a business and my financial worries came biting at the door again.

Let’s not even get started on setting prices that gave me the profit I needed but that customers would be willing to pay me – that was a whole other story.

I lost the joy of crochet, I lost the relaxation of my hobby. All because I was trying to make money from it. So instead of following the tried and tested method of sticking with a set product line, I started crocheting what I wanted to make and not what my customers expected to see from me. I would only have available to buy what I had already made, and there was no telling what that might be until I listed it in my shop.

This sounds like a great solution right?

The Orders Stopped Coming In

Wrong. This turned my shop into a jumble sale. Now no-one new what to expect from me or what to come to my shop for. They just never knew what was going to be on offer. I started getting fewer sales because of it. After all, if you know what kind of thing you want to buy, you don’t go rummaging around in a jumble sale for it, you go to a shop that you KNOW will sell it – that wasn’t me.

So what could I do?

I knew I had to do something. Needing that extra cash hadn’t changed, but the way I was going about trying to make that extra cash wasn’t working. Changes had to be made, and they had to be dramatic.

I Stopped Selling My Crochet

It was time to have a sit down and have a proper think.

I love to crochet. I love to create different things all the time, I love to create my own designs.

What fits all of these criteria?

Crochet patterns

I started designing and selling my own crochet patterns. This allowed me to create different things all the time, and I only had to do the work once, but I could sell the pattern pdf over and over again. This has made me far more profit than selling what I made ever did. And I make sales while I sleep with virtually no input from me after the initial set up.

I found my love for crochet again, and I found it so much easier to make sales from my patterns than selling what I made. Plus it was much less work to make each sale. My love for my business was back and I was making more profit than ever.

Now I Want To Help You

I want to help you to rediscover your love for crochet while increasing the profit you make in your business. That’s why a created my Beginners Guide To Writing Crochet Patterns. This video course walks you through all the necessary steps you need to write your first crochet pattern and successfully test, publish and sell it.

Writing your own crochet patterns gives you back control over your crochet. It gives you more freedom to choose what you make and when you make it. You are not nearly as chained to your hook when writing crochet patterns as you are when selling what you make.

Writing my own crochet patterns gave me back my love for crochet, it also massively increased my profits and gave me more time in my day.

There are many ways to make money from your crochet, but selling what you make doesn’t have to be one of them

When you are ready there are 3 ways that I can help you:

1. Listen to my podcast for more crochet tips and advice
2. Sign up to my newsletter for weekly crochet selling tips and resources sent straight to your inbox
3. Check out my free Facebook group for daily tips, resources and support