Why are your crochet patterns free?
Cilla Crochets Business Update February 2022
Discover why all crochet patterns on the Cilla Crochets website are currently available for free and learn about what’s planned in 2022 in this latest crochet business update.
After being inspired by a couple of crochet business owners who have posted about their business statistics, profits, and their future business goals, I thought I would jump on board and share some behind the scenes updates from my crochet business, Cilla Crochets.
Now, if you’ve been following me on my crochet journey for a while now, you may have noticed a change in my business strategy this year, which has led me to writing this post.
If you’re brand new to my website (Hi, and thank you for stopping by! It’s so great to have you here!), let me give you a run-down of what’s happened and what’s changed with my crochet business so far.
I also hope this post helps anyone else considering turning their passion for crochet into a business.
How crocheting made me want to start a business
Firstly, I need to start off by letting you know that I learned my first crochet stitches in 2018, but gave up after a month or so of trying to crochet a blanket (I got bored).
In January 2020, I then picked up my yarn and hook again, and finally completed my first crochet project. It was an amigurumi monkey called Max (from the pattern book Crochet Cute Critters - highly recommend it for beginners!) and I’ve kept this cutie to this day.
My first ever crocheted creation - Max the Monkey from Crochet Cute Critters by Sarah Zimmerman
After completing my first project, I became determined to not give up on crochet again and thought that tracking my progress might help keep me motivated. As a result, I started my Instagram account @CillaCrochets and this crochet blog.
Thankfully, it worked and I’ve been addicted to crochet ever since!
Selling my crocheted creations
During my first year of crocheting, I spotted a potential crochet business opportunity when I was approached by a number of people who asked me to crochet items for them that they offered to pay for. I said yes, and this experience was fantastic.
My eyes lit up with the opportunity to make some extra pocket money from a hobby I loved. I made the items, got paid, and these people received their crochet items. To top it off, they also gave me great feedback. Woohoo, success! Or so I thought…
Not long after, I started to realise the big flaw in my crochet side hustle plan. I had spent hours of my time making these items for people (a minimum of 7 - 8 hours per item) and was only receiving between £20 - £35 per item.
Now, not taking away the cost of yarn, packaging, or postage (I’m a big fan of always offering free postage), this resulted in me earning approximately £2.80 per hour for my time. For anyone not living in the UK, as of today the minimum hourly wage in the UK is £8.91 per hour, so getting paid £2.80/hour is essentially not liveable. It is pennies aka cents.
Now, coming from a business background, I know the automatic solution to this problem is to ‘raise your price’ or ‘lower your production costs’ (e.g. reduce the material costs or time spent making the items). However, I had an issue with these solutions.
The problem with raising the prices of my crocheted creations
Firstly, the option of raising your price is really based on demand for your products and how much the market (your customers) are willing to pay. Being only new to the crochet world and selling products, it would have been difficult for me to compete with other crocheters who are making similar items at much cheaper prices online. I should also mention that this was during pandemic lock-down days when craft fairs were not a thing.
While crocheted items are sold on Etsy for anywhere between £3 - £100s, would anyone actually pay the higher prices?
Also, getting your first sales and being seen on Etsy is a challenge in the first place. Therefore to start out with, I probably would have had to sell crocheted items at a lower price first so I could build up some reviews and start to get noticed, before being able to raise my prices and actually sell these items successfully whilst getting paid a livable wage.
This is not only challenging, but time consuming, and was this something I wanted to spend my leisurely crochet time doing? For me, it was not…
The problem with reducing costs of the crocheted items I sold
Now when it came to the idea of reducing my costs or time spent crocheting items to sell, there were a couple of considerations.
Firstly, I like using sustainable yarns most of the time (cotton yarn is my favourite), and while I could have bought a cheaper acrylic yarn (which I do occasionally), I don’t enjoy crocheting with it as much and honestly the price difference is minimal (my cotton yarn costs me around £2 / skein). Therefore, changing up my materials would not make a big enough difference to my production costs.
The second option of reducing the time spent making these items creates a different kind of problem. Since I couldn’t wave a magic wand and all of a sudden become a much faster crocheter, the only option I had for reducing the time spent on crocheting items was to make different types of items to sell. Items that are quick to make. Items that are not detailed amigurumi…
Just to clarify, amigurumi are my favourite type of crochet makes. In particular, the more detailed amigurumi that take me a minimum of 7 - 8 hours to complete. These makes are what get me out of bed in the morning when it comes to crochet. Did I want to forgo the types of makes that made me fall in love with the craft just to earn a bit of cash? The answer was no… It just wasn’t for me.
Charge your worth
I realise this all may sound rather negative towards crocheters who sell their creations, but please understand that this was just my personal experience. I’m all for people selling their makes and I know lots of crocheters who do and make a great side income by doing so.
All I would say is, if you’re considering selling your makes, please charge your worth and pay yourself a minimum hourly wage (at least). If this is something that interests you, I highly recommend checking out Nicole Chase’s blog post which includes a free Crochet Profit Calculator download.
Discovering crochet designing
After making the executive decision to stop taking crochet commissions and selling my makes, I also discovered crochet designing.
I had already been dabbling with crochet designing a little with the release of my first two crochet patterns, Succulent Strawberries and the Beaming Banana, when I started to really notice how I thought crocheters could make some decent cash from their hobby.
Why I want to start a crochet business
Now, before going any further, I need to explain that I’ve always had a bit of an entrepreneurial bug. My grandparents owned their own businesses when I was young, and I admired the freedom and control they had over their own time.
Since then, I’ve gained two business degrees (a bachelor and a masters), I’ve worked in business since I was 17 years old (I’m now 32), and my last full-time job was working in a business incubator supporting startups which I did for around 7 years.
Being my own boss is something I’ve always dreamed of, but I had never found something that I was passionate enough about to turn into a business. That was, until I discovered crochet.
In saying all of this, I'm also well aware of how turning a passion or hobby into a business can also take the joy out of it. And I really never want that to happen with crochet, so I have approached it somewhat with caution.
But long story short, the prospect of me being able to do something I absolutely loved and get paid for it filled me with so much excitement that I was already on the hunt for that next entrepreneurial spark of inspiration. And I thought crochet designing might be it!
Selling crochet patterns
With crochet designing, I could combine three things I loved - crocheting, mathematics (yes, crochet patterns require quite a bit of maths), and graphic designing (the actual writing up of the patterns). Then these PDFs could be sold as many times over without me having to do too much work. The dream of passive income, am I right?
So off I went…
I released several crochet patterns for free at first, started a mailing list, continued building my social media presence, and then in the summer of 2021 I launched my Etsy and Ravelry stores with my first ever pattern for sale.
Bernie the Bunny was the first crochet pattern available to buy from my Etsy and Ravelry stores. She is currently unavailable, as I am in the process of changing the pattern template. She will be back on my website available for free soon.
Two days later, I had two sales! I was so extremely excited that I was on to something good - my next big thing! I was literally jumping for joy when I heard my phone ping with those sales notifications.
Then I heard…
Crickets.
No sales.
For months…
So my passion died a little bit. For the business idea that is, not for crochet.
I went a little quiet on my social media accounts and with my email community, and I started to doubt my ability. Not my crochet ability, but my marketing ability, my ability to take decent photos of my creations, and of course my ability to design crochet patterns that people actually wanted to pay money for (not just get for free).
It also didn’t help that crochet friends I’d made online, some of whom were at around the same stage as me a year earlier, had sky-rocketed into crochet design stardom while I remained at a stand still. Or so it felt - damn the bloody trap of social media comparison! I also need to say I’m extremely happy for these people, many of whom have become really great friends of mine, it just made me compare myself to them (It’s a trap! Don’t compare yourself to others. We all have our own journeys 😉).
Joining the Amigurumi Design LAB
Then I spotted an amigurumi design course (Amigurumi Design LAB) hosted by Veronica at Garnknuten. Now, I already knew how to design amigurumi, but I needed a confidence boost, I needed inspiration, and I thought there was no harm in getting some tips from another more experienced crochet designer. Whilst I was hesitant to part with my cash for a crochet course, I knew I needed to do something to reignite my passion. Looking back, I’m so glad I did it and have absolutely zero regrets.
The course confirmed that I was on the right track design-wise, but it also gave me some great new processes that helped me step up my crochet designing game. It taught me a new creative process to go through before I even picked up my yarn and crochet hook to start designing a new amigurumi.
My crochet design process. This is Kira the Koala - her pattern will be released very soon.
I got some great photography tips which have helped me take much more professional photos of my creations (although I feel like this will continue to be a constant learning curve for me). And the biggest win was getting some crochet pattern Canva templates that were designed by Veronica, which I then tweaked and redesigned to create what is now my new pattern layout (with my new branding).
Lessons I’ve learned about starting a crochet business
While this was all going on, I also started researching more and asking more questions in my crochet community interviews about turning crochet into a business. So far, the biggest lessons I’ve learned are as follows:
Diversify your sales activities: To make a full-time living out of crochet, you need to diversify your sales activities. For example, you might earn money through ad revenue from your website, selling crochet patterns, selling made crochet items, running online crochet classes/courses, selling physical items such as crochet kits or crochet accessories, as well as getting commissions from big yarn brands or crochet magazines. Long story short, the goal is not to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to making a living from crochet. While you can make a decent side income from focusing on one of these activities alone, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to make a full-time income by focusing on only one thing.
Prioritise your time on activities that provide longer term gains: Time is of the essence when you’re building a crochet business, whilst still relying on your day-job to pay the bills. As a result, prioritising your to-do list is so important. Figure out what activities are going to provide you with the biggest gains longer term and focus on these. Also, don’t choose too many tasks to add to your to-do list, be realistic. For example, don’t try to be on every single social media platform at all times, pick 1 or 2 and solely focus on these for limited periods of time each day. Another example: set yourself a goal of designing a certain number of crochet patterns per month (again, be realistic). Once you know what these priority tasks are, set yourself a schedule, chip away at these priority tasks and schedule them in advance. You don’t have to do everything all at once.
Stop comparing yourself to others: Everyone has their own styles, techniques and design ideas. They also have varying amounts of time to spend building their crochet businesses and different home lives. We’re all different. Some people will relate to you, will like what you do, and will want to buy from you, and some people won’t. It’s an inevitable part of business and of crochet. You won’t be able to please everyone, and don’t try. Be you. Build a community that connects with the real you, not some made up version of you. It’ll be more genuine and way easier to stay consistent, relevant, and connected to your audience and your customers. Showing up (literally showing your face) and being transparent is also a huge part of this.
Reach out to the crochet community for support: For those that are not new here you would have seen me write this before, but the crochet community is honestly a godsend. Most crocheters, despite their popularity, are more than happy to help each other out and offer advice. Whether you find your community on Facebook (groups or via your own Facebook page), on Instagram, Ravelry, TikTok or wherever, it doesn’t matter. Find people who are further ahead than you and ask them for advice or ask them about their own personal experiences. Most crocheters and crochet business owners are more than willing to help each other out. It is such a wonderful supportive community, and I really can’t thank all my wonderful crochet friends enough for the help they’ve given me over the years.
Find your niche: Now, coming from a business background and before I knew too much about crochet, I thought crochet in itself was a niche (it still is in the wider scheme of things). However, in the crochet world, you still need to find your niche. If you’re a designer, it’s about the types of patterns you design. Kwannie Cheng from Studio Manya who designs miniature amigurumi is a perfect example of someone who has found their niche. So is Ellie Richards from Foxy Crochet who designs absolutely stunning peg doll inspired amigurumi. Both designers have found an extremely specific niche with the crochet designs they release. You can even see it reflected in the yarn colours that they use.
What else has helped me move forward
Other than the crochet design course and doing some further research around the topic of crochet businesses, I did something else…
I reached out to a few good friends for help.
Two friends of mine are qualified business advisers, and since December 2021 I’ve been meeting with both of them individually once a month (for free) to help keep me focused, on track, and help me to figure out the goals I have for my crochet business.
I also reached out to one of my more successful crochet friends on Instagram (who has a crochet business and is earning money) to see if she was interested in having a video call to chat about crochet business. Since then, we’ve been meeting monthly to talk about our goals, bounce ideas off each other, and we’ve been keeping each other accountable. It has honestly helped me so much, and I couldn’t recommend finding an accountability buddy more!
The big changes for Cilla Crochets in 2022: Free Crochet Patterns
This brings me finally to the big changes I made at the end of last year, and to my goals for Cilla Crochets for the next six months (until the end of June 2022).
The biggest change you may have noticed is that I temporarily paused my Etsy and Ravelry crochet pattern stores and have since been offering all of the crochet patterns I design for free. They are available from my website, or if you sign up to my newsletter you can receive the free PDF crochet patterns to your inbox each month.
The reason I have done this is due to the one goal I have set myself for the next six months: to grow my reach within the crochet community.
So for the next six months (at least), all I am focusing on is building my connections within the crochet community and getting my name out there in the crochet design world.
I want people to know what to expect when they engage with any of my crochet content - whether that’s a crochet pattern, a resource or a blog post. And for me, the best way to get my content out there is by offering it all for free.
The caveat is that people who would like to access my PDF crochet patterns must sign-up to my email list, which means I can continue to communicate with them to share new crochet patterns, news, and resources with them (also for free).
Of course, this also gives me the opportunity and freedom to explore my design creativity and not to feel the pressure of making a particular type of pattern just because I think it will sell well. It also gives me the opportunity to explore various avenues of the crochet world and not to be confined to a niche.
Since I have 101 different ideas on how I can potentially monetise my crochet business (e.g. website ad revenue, affiliate links, selling patterns, selling crochet goodies, online crochet courses etc.), I can’t do it all. Instead, I’m giving myself this time to explore what I like and what I don’t like whilst also offering value to those people interested in my crochet designs.
Lastly, the reality is that I would need to have a big enough audience to share any products or services I do decide to sell with. Otherwise (and unfortunately) it’s not worth the potential pennies I would make from monetising these any of these activities just yet.
All in all, by June 2022 I’m hoping that I will have learned more about my own personal aspirations and the direction I want to go in with my crochet business.
I have also broken down this big overall goal even further by selecting key platforms to focus on with key metrics to track and specific goals to work towards during this period. For the sake of transparency and to give you some further insight in case it’s of interest, these platforms and their related figures are outlined below.
Cilla Crochets Website Goals
My website goal is to build the traffic coming to my website by consistently releasing one new blog post per week (one new post per month will be a new crochet pattern release).
The reason I’m focusing on website traffic is to see if I can reach a reasonable level of traffic to consider incorporating paid ads on my website. Often the bigger advertising agencies all require a minimum number of pageviews per month for bloggers to apply to join.
I’m still uncertain if this is a route I want to go down as I feel it doesn’t provide a great user experience. However it is an option I would like to explore further, but currently it wouldn’t be worth my while due to the amount of traffic I get to my website. Thus, the goal is to up the traffic to my site and then decide if this is something I want to do.
To keep track of my progress I monitor the unique pageviews to my website each month using Google Analytics. My ultimate goal is to reach 10,000 unique pageviews during June 2020.
To give you an idea of how steep this goal is for me, my January 2022 website unique pageviews were 1,582.
Just as a side note, I prefer to track unique pageviews (the number of individual people visiting my website) as opposed to pageviews which counts all visits to my website. For example if one person visits your website 100 times, your pageviews statistic would count this as 100 visits, whereas unique pageviews would count this as 1 visit (because it’s only one person).
If you’d like to see where I’ve come from since launching my website (and setting up Google Analytics), I’ve added a graph below showing my unique pageviews per month thus far.
Unique pageviews of the Cilla Crochets Website
Email List Goals
Most marketers will tell you that an email list is your most powerful asset for sales when it comes to digital marketing. While this is true, my goal is to build an email list of individuals who are genuinely interested in crochet and provide them with relevant, helpful, free content to help inspire them on their crochet journeys. I don’t just want to bombard them with sales emails even when I am selling something. This helps build my credibility and also the relationship I have with people who are in the Crochet Crew (my mailing list). Ultimately, it helps build trust.
To encourage people to sign-up for my mailing list, I offer free PDF crochet patterns and/or resources each month, and as I mentioned, I do not spam my audience once they sign up. I hate spam emails and I am making the assumption here that other people do too. And no matter how much I’d like to sell something, I don’t want to lose quality contacts over a lack of quality content being provided by me. So my focus is on providing quality content and continuously improving this content each month, whilst also increasing the number of individuals who are signed up to receive emails from me.
Later on down the line, when I do decide to monetise my business, these people will be the first to hear about it and we would have already (hopefully) built up a relationship by this point of time. They will also know what to expect when (and if) they buy from me, from having experienced the type of content I provide for free. And of course, even if they don’t buy from me, they will still continue to receive free content from me each month, which is still providing them with something of value. It’s that whole saying of “give before you get”, whilst having no expectations that the ‘get’ will happen.
The metrics I track relate to these 2 goals are:
The number of people who are signed up to the Crochet Crew (subscribers)
Providing free quality crochet content (open rate & click-through-rate)
For the first goal, I measure and track the total subscribers signed up to my mailing list. My goal is to reach 1,000 subscribers by the end of June 2022, which is a pretty big goal but I’m hoping it is achievable. I currently have 457 subscribers as at 22 February 2022. And to demonstrate how my email list has grown over time, I’ve added a graph below.
As for continuously improving my crochet content, how I measure this is by tracking my email open rates and email click-through-rates. The email open rate shows how many people who are signed up to my mailing list at that point in time are opening my emails - this tells me a lot about the title of my email and also about the days/times that are best to send my emails. The second statistic tells me how many people have clicked on links within my emails. This helps me figure out what content is popular, what is not, and learn from the behaviour of my subscribers.
My goal in regards to these two statistics is to keep a consistent open rate of above 35% and a consistent click-through-rate of above 7%. Although I will always strive for higher rates than this by regularly adjusting my content according to subscriber behaviour, these two figures are still extremely high for standard email marketing results.
For reference, Mail Chimp states that the average open rate for hobbies when it comes to email marketing is 27.74% while the average click-through-rate is 5.01% - you can read the article here if it’s of interest. It is also common for these two rates to decrease as your subscribers increase, simply due to the nature of email marketing. This is why my goals are to sustain certain levels rather than to increase the rate for each statistic.
If you’d like to see how I’m currently doing and how these figures have changed as my audience has grown over time, I’ve added a graph below. Please note that some months are missing in the below graph solely because I didn’t send emails during these periods (you’ll see that I’ve started being a lot more consistent in most recent months).
Cilla Crochets Email List - Open Rate and Click-Through-Rate
Instagram Goals
As for Instagram, this is my main chosen social media platform. It’s where I started my crochet journey online and it’s also where my biggest audience is. So instead of spreading myself too thin, when it comes to building a social media presence, Instagram is my focus.
While I still do have other social media profiles (Facebook, YouTube, TikTok etc), these are secondary. I do what I can when I can on these platforms, but Instagram has my undivided attention.
Linking in with my overall goal of growing my reach within the crochet community, my goal on Instagram is to essentially grow the number of followers I have. But of course to do this, my content also needs to continuously improve and connect with my audience.
While there are 101 analytics I could be tracking on the platform, my biggest focus is on tracking my number of followers and my goal (I write as I hold my breath) is to reach 10,000 followers by the end of June 2022. So far, progress has been slow and it’s looking more unattainable as time goes on (I currently have 2,559 followers). However, I’m not giving up! We shall just have to wait and see…
Before I move on to the last platform I’m focusing on, I should also say the most important statistic you can track on Instagram is your engagement rate (number of followers vs. how many people like/comment/share/save your content). The reason I say this is because even if you have 50,000 followers, if only 0.1% of those followers are engaging with your content (that’s 50 followers), it suggests that there must be something wrong.
One of the reasons this could be happening is because people aren’t relating to or enjoying your content. Instagram’s algorithm may also be at fault and your content may just not be getting seen by your followers. It could also mean that something is wrong with your followers, for example maybe you have a lot of bogus spam accounts that follow you or you’ve purchased followers. A low engagement rate with a high follower count essentially sends alarm bells that something is wrong.
In comparison, a high engagement rate with a low follower count is much more valuable. It says that the people who are following your account are interested in your content and what you have to say. It is also more likely that they are the right kind of people you want to engage with.
All in all, I do also keep an eye on my engagement rate, which helps me curate my content accordingly, but I don’t worry about it too much unless I see a particular post/reel/story that has an out of the ordinary result (e.g. extremely high or an extremely low engagement rate). This then leads me to try and figure out why that might be the case (e.g. was it the content type? The time or day that I posted? Was it a hashtag I used? Was it due to something I wrote or the picture I used? The investigation list goes on…). If it’s a good result I’ll try and replicate this, and if it’s a bad result I try to reduce it. It’s as simple as that. No formal tracking necessary.
Pinterest goals
Lastly, Pinterest is a very new one for me, but is one I’ve added to the list to help me garner more website traffic. While I have had it for a while, I haven’t used it as much as I could have. Whilst I have set myself an analytical goal on Pinterest, I don’t know for sure if it’s the right metric for me to track. So my biggest goal over the next six months in regards to Pinterest is to use the platform more and learn as much as I can about how to use it effectively.
While this blog post has probably been my longest blog post to-date, I do hope it helps explain why I have started offering all of my crochet patterns for free. I certainly feel a lot more organised now than I ever have before, and I feel so much more focused and connected to my goals than ever before. I’m also enjoying the creative freedom and am happy to report that I’m not losing any enjoyment from my time spent crocheting - an extra bonus.
If you’re considering starting a crochet business or side hustle, I hope my experience and review of goals, statistics, and what I’ve learned so far helps you in some way. If this is you, before I go, let me share the two blog posts that inspired me to write this one.
Firstly, crochet blogger Cheryl from Crochet 365 Knit Too posts her income statements occasionally on her blog. In particular it was her September 2020 statement that got me thinking. You can check it out here.
Secondly, Veronica from Garnknuten posted a Crochet Business Report 2021 which also inspired me a lot to be completely transparent with my goals. You can read Veronica’s post here.
Anyway, enough business crochet chat from me. I hope you enjoyed the post, and would love to hear what you think. Now it’s time to actually crochet… 😉
Until next time, happy crocheting,
Cilla x
