As teens and young adults pick up so-called “granny crafts” crochet business are popping up everywhere as people hope to make a quick buck by selling their handcrafted clothing, accessories, and amigurumi. But as many businesses experience success, many others are left wondering, “What am I doing wrong?” So, I’m here to help you out. I’ll be giving you 7 tips from a person who is right in the trenches and working along side you. And this doesn’t just apply to crocheters. These tips can help anyone selling their handcrafted goods.
1. Market More, Crochet Less
When I first started my business, I had a stock of scrunchies and tie dye t-shirts. I expected them to fly of the shelves, because I had I had no idea how Facebook algorithms worked. (And, yes, this is coming from a Gen Z person) I quickly lost motivation, because no one was buying my products. The thing is, you can’t just post your products and expect people to come to you. You need to come to them. Actively posting on social media, whether that’s every day or 3 times a week, and responding to questions and comments lets your potential customers know you’re still in business. Irregular posting can signal to customers you’re not invested in your business, and who would want to buy from someone who just doesn’t care about their business? Additionally, posting regularly helps you get into social media platform’s algorithms, which then boosts your posts to new people.
2. Create goldfish content
Have you ever wondered why most Facebook reels, YouTube shorts, and TikToks are 60 to 90 seconds long? It’s because people have shorter and shorter attention spans. They don’t have time to watch a 5 minute long post or watch a 3 minute video. They want to be able to absorb the information in a short time. You need to cater to the crowd. You want people to buy your crocheted bags? Make a 30 second video talking about different features. Show different parts of making it, zooming in and out. Play aesthetic music, while you crochet it in the morning sunlight. Good visuals matter. And, while we’re on the topic of music, one thing you can try is to put trending music in your videos. Many social media platforms now have a feature where you can search for videos containing a certain song, so your video might not be even remotely related to what they usually view, but they might see your content because of that music.
3. Use hashtags.
#smallbusiness #crochet
Ever wonder what that little symbol with 4 bars actually does? Hashtags are like digital magnets that group content together. When users put hashtags on their content, it links that video or post to others using that hashtag. This enables others to search by hashtags, similar to music searching. Hashtags also give you insight to what others are posting when they use that hashtag, allowing you to keep pace with others in the crochet (or your craft) space.
4. Use CTA
CTA stand for call-to-action, and it does just what it sounds like. It calls your viewers to DO something, often with a time constraint. Some examples: Order your (product) today! or Get your (product) before they’re all sold out! or simply Buy Now! You would think the public wouldn’t need this urging, but subtle mind tricks like this increase the likelihood that they’ll consider buying your product.
5. Branding, branding, branding
Branding is how your present yourself to the public. What good you sell, customer service, the design of your thank you cards, what you and your company are all about are all components of branding. Like posting, branding needs to be consistent. You can’t have your company vision be non-profit one day and the next day be world domination mwahaha. To find your branding, ask yourself “Why did I start this business? What is my goal? What do I want to sell? What is my vision? My visuals?” questions like this help you find that brand and if you write it down and keep it somewhere handy, you can refer to it and make sure you stay with your vision. If you want to change your vision, fine. But if you don’t, a handy business character sheet can help you keep those subtle changes from creeping up.
6. Price your value.
I cringe every time I see a carefully handcrafted scarf being sold at $10. You need to value your time, the money you spend on the materials, your experience, and the difficulty of the project. Let’s take a simple scarf. It’s made with double crochets, double stranded, and it takes 3 hours of your very valuable time to make. Let’s say it takes 100 yards. And you pay 5 dollars for a skein of 200 yards. Half of 5 dollars is 2.50 cents. It takes you 3 hours to make, so 2.50 x 3 is 7.50. How much do you want to pay yourself an hour? Let’s say $5 per hour. That’s $15 plus 7.50. it comes out to 23.50. You might want to add $4 for shipping, so the total is 27.50. Anybody who doesn’t how much time it takes and how much effort you put into it would say 27.50 is wayyyyy too much for a simple scarf. We’re all used to buying super cheap $5 sweat shop scarfs and some people don’t want to pay the money for a handcrafted scarf when they can buy it $20 dollars cheaper. And you might say, well shouldn’t I price lower so people will actually buy my stuff? NO. Would you rather make three sales at 27.50 and know that you’re not cheating yourself out of money than make six sales and know you could have charged more for that? And people will ask you why your stuff is so expensive. Many simply don’t know why, so a helpful explanation may help them see why. Some will say, no thank you, and some will say, yes because now they know how much hard work went into that scarf. They’ll probably be impressed that you made that scarf and that you’re not backing down with regards to the price. And you’ll earn that same type of respect in the crochet community, and crocheters won’t cringe when they see the price of that scarf. Another thing. People are more likely to buy a scarf that is $39.70 or 41.50 than a scarf that is $40. Why? When we put extra numbers in a price, kind of clouds out the part of the brain that realizes “Oh, that scarf is close to 40 dollars.” When the brain hears just one number, it makes more of a stark difference than if there are 3 or 5 additional numbers in there. Again, subtle mind tricks like this are used all over in the business industry and can really help you in those sales.
7. If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try, Again.
Running any kind of business is hard. And frustrating. And sometimes, you just want to give up. Don’t give up. We’ve all been there: A cranky customer chips away at your nerves, you get tired of your craft, or you realize that you were using the wrong hook and your already halfway through the project. Arrrrghhhh. But no matter what, running a business has some pretty nice benefits, even if it’s learning how to deal with cranky customers. Keep sloughing through the mud, and eventually, you will get to a river. And the crochet community is right there alongside you to guide you.
Many good wishes,
K
