Crocheters are notorious for under pricing their amazing creations. We tend to think that no one will pay us for our time, that sales can’t be made at higher prices. This isn’t true, and actually pricing your crochet cheap is losing you sales.

When you are first starting out selling your crochet, you probably are just looking to make a bit of extra cash and are not thinking about how to price your crochet in order to give yourself a salary.

When you do start thinking about it, you will feel that no one is going to pay much more than you are already selling at as you are already struggling to make sales.

But have you thought that your low sales are because if your low prices?

Why Low Prices Mean Low Sales

Think about when you go shopping at the supermarket for your weekly food shop. You’re browsing the shelves and you have 3 pricing options

• Supermarket value brand
• Mid range brands
• Expensive big name brands

What do you think when you see each one?

Everyone wishes their budget stretched to all of the big name brands, you see and hear their slogans everywhere, their ads are on TV at prime time slots. So they stick in your head as being the best brands because everyone knows about them.

We all wish we could reach for them and have them in our shopping trolley every week. Those who can afford them every week will never even consider reaching for the more budget friendly brands because they must be lower quality and don’t have that luxury feel to them.

What do you buy that you would never consider swapping for a budget brand?

Why am I talking about food? Because the same reasoning applies to your crochet.

The low price indicates low quality workmanship or low quality materials. If it’s a low price then it’s just not as good as the higher price brands – we have been conditioned to think this way our entire lives thanks to the power of advertising for those big brand names. When your potential customers see your low prices items and then sees much higher priced versions of your crochet on Etsy – well, you just became the supermarket budget brand. Just not as good as the higher priced shops and must be lower quality in some way.

Low Prices Means Low Sales

You are loosing sales with those cheap prices because you are too budget, too low shelf for those with the money who only buy quality products, and the price tag those quality products come with.

By pricing cheap, you have declared to anyone who sees your products that you are the budget brand, therefore of a lesser quality in some way than someone who sells at at higher price point, so if the budget can stretch then your potential customers should try and go for something a bit more pricey to ensure that they are getting something good and that will last and that will be made with quality materials.

You’ve just lost yourself a tonne of sales just with your cheap pricing.

Potential customers will look at your product photos and think “oh wow, that looks amazing. Just what I want” then they will look at the price tag and go “oh, that’s cheap. What’s wrong with it?”

When was the last time you associated a cheap product with high quality?

You don’t. If you go shopping at the discount store, you tend to be pleasantly surprised when anything lasts more than 1 or 2 uses. If you buy a kids toy from there, you don’t expect it to last long before it breaks. But if you buy from the specialist store and shell out that extra cash, you expect it to last a good deal of time and if it broke quickly, you would be demanding a refund. You wouldn’t be expecting a refund from a cheap toy at the discount place.

You get what you pay for after all.

Apply these concepts to the way you price your crochet.

Why should anyone expect your products to be made of high quality materials, with great skill or that will last a long time if you are pricing like a discount store.

If you don’t place value on your products, why should your customers?

What Is Your Pricing Strategy?

Pricing low is not a strategy that will get you more sales. It will get you a few sales from those who are on a budget but want to treat themselves. But you will make very little profit, and you certainly couldn’t class what money you do make as a living wage.

Ultimately pricing low will lose you sales and you could have made a much bigger profit margin that would have made that sale worth your time.

The reason that you are not making sales is not that your prices are too high, it’s that you are not advertising your crochet to the right people. You are not getting in front of the people you will buy from you at the right price

Getting sales is not just about your pricing, its about talking to the right people the right way. It’s about getting your branding right so you attract the right customers to take a look at what you have to offer

If you want to attract the customers that will pay the higher prices that you NEED to charge – you have bills to pay and a family who need your time, and higher prices mean that you can take on fewer orders to meet your income needs. Then you need to start talking to those who will pay and change your branding to match

Never justify your prices. No one needs an explanation, they are what they are and you have the right to set them any way you choose.

If you want to dive deeper into pricing, how to price in a way that will make you a liveable income from your crochet and the psychology of sales, then check out my masterclass on Pricing For Profit. An instant access video class that you have lifetime access to.

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 Crochet Sellers Support Group to connect with others on the same journey as you as well as regular checking in and tips from me