Crochet Business Resources and Reviews (for Aspiring Crochet Entrepreneurs)
Have you ever wondered about behind the scenes of a crochet business and whether it is profitable? I did so in the beginning and even though I cannot say my crochet business is extremely profitable, I am starting to get the hang on navigating the online business world.
To be extremely honest, I have to admit I am a course junkie, aka I like to binge on business courses. So most of what I actually do earn, I tend to pump it back into education – hear me out first on how this came to be.
*This blog post may contain affiliate links. When you make a purchase through my link, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.*
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For the first year of me trying out this online business, I did not believe in investing any money in learning how to sell online. After all, it was a side hustle and it did not make sense to me at that time to put in too much money.
How I Started Out
At that time, I had a simple free Tumblr blog (which is still active!) and I was simply posting my crochet creations for others to see. For a while, I sold a couple of my final products on Etsy, including a beloved Star Trek Nursery mobile for $200! Then after having bump around for a year without much growth, I decided to invest in my first course, which was actually $68 for a monthly subscription but I kind of chickened out and consumed as much as I could then I quit after a month.
It opened my eyes to the possibilities of doing a digital business online, meaning I did not have to ship out products every time I made a sale. For the $200 nursery mobile I made, because I am located all the way over in Singapore, my postal shipping cost was $20! So I started on my journey to figuring out how to sell digital products online.
In between, I took part in Singapore Comic Con to sell my wares, also tried dabbling in commission work. Now I mostly sell my crochet patterns and courses and I do not sell any physical crochet products any more, though I believe there are many crocheters out there who still love doing this.
Crochet Business Resources and Reviews
Till date I believed I have spent a lot of money on courses, mostly because I feel really truly interested in it (some crocheters just not into the whole business thing which is totally fine too!). Here is my way of putting everything down so that others might learn from it too and also for me to keep track of what I can go back and refer to.
I love some of them who provide initial free courses to start off with and I also love that many of them are courses that I purchase and will often go back and refer to them. Many of the creators also provide free updates (tech changes, marketing changes) which is great to go back again to even after several months. Note that everything I have listed here I have actually tried and there were definitely more, but there were courses that were probably not worth mentioning and did not make this list.
They are listed out in an order that makes sense from beginner to some more advanced topics. So, I do spend some time going through a specific course and then I would generally try to implement it over the next 6 months – like for instance do a traffic course on SEO and work on just SEO for 6 months (of course I still regularly email my VIP subscribers). Or perhaps, if I am working on creating a product, I might go through a product creation course and then work on it for 1 to 2 months.
It can be overwhelming to see them all like this together, but I am learning along the way and I definitely implemented them over a long period of time.
Beginner Business Resources
To be fair, these resources are not necessarily only for beginners but I did start off with some of these, hence why they are placed here. You could get a fairly comprehensive education with any one of these resources.
Crochetpreneur’s Crochet Business Academy by Pam Grice
Pam Grice of Crochetpreneur is likely the most relevant teacher in this list and she teaches both makers who sell their physical products and crochet designers who sell their designs. She has grown her following and her program since I last joined and there is an awesome community inside worth networking with. It is not available all the time and she only opens it during certain times of the year, like right after her Crochet Business Summit but there is a waitlist you can join. Whilst you are in the waitlist, she also sends a free training before you commit to the program so you can get a feeling for her style of teaching.
Rebel Boss by Eden Fried
This is the first time I was exposed to the idea of a digital product business and the first membership I signed up for. She has a free training course called ‘How to launch your digital product fast in 90 days and earn big even with a small audience’. She has grown much bigger since I first followed her (amazing how these online entrepreneurs are!) and she has gone on to organize her signature Rebel Boss Summit and now also her Go Digital on Etsy Summit.
Faith’s Quarterly Breakthrough by Faith Biz Academy
Faith is another online entrepreneur who amazes me, she also is like me, comes from the little sunny Singapore, while most of our audience is based in USA. She has managed to build an online business with avid followers and I love reading her emails regularly in my inbox. Her Quarterly Breakthrough, which has now a self-study option is a great way to get an overview of how your business should look like – from starting your own email list to creating your first digital product to actually selling it! This is only open at fixed intervals so you have to look out for it.
If this is too overwhelming, try out some of her smaller courses first like ‘Sell Printables on Etsy in A Weekend’ or ‘Lightning Fast Printable Creation’, which is useful for when you want to create printables (or crochet patterns!) She has some free digital product creation kickstart templates using Canva available on her site and then join in her email list and learn what she has to say!
Blog by Number By Suzi Whitford of Start a Mom Blog
Suzi is another awesome blogger with many useful resources to learn from, the easiest of which to follow is her Blog by Number course that literally takes you through how to set up your blog. I actually started off my website on Squarespace way before I took up this course so the technically aspects of setting up Wordpress might not have been relevant, but then again I revamped my clinic website using Wordpress (please no more Wix) and I went back to review her resources again! Join in her free mini course titled ‘The complete 12-month plan you need to start and grow a profitable blog online!’ and get hooked on her teaching!
Website for Setting Up Crochet Blog
So, I will mention here I did initially start off with a Squarespace blog because I did not want to deal with all the confusion with Wordpress plugins.
Squarespace
Squarespace allows your articles to rank on Google (using relevant SEO techniques) just as much as Wordpress can (because I have ranking articles) and it is definitely extremely easy to use. I have actually dabbled with using Wordpress, which has all the awesome tech and integrations to be honest, for my clinic website and I must say, it loads really fast but I still cannot get my head wrapped around figuring out plugins. It gets to be an issue though if you want to eventually run ads because certain ad networks like Monumetric does not work with Squarespace users (I had to find out the hard way).
Email Marketing Resources
Some would argue you should start off creating products, some would say you need traffic to your website first while others would say start collecting email subscribers first. Personally, I would just start email marketing as soon as possible because that is kind of the business model I am looking at. If you are look at ad-driven income, then perhaps you might want to work on your website and traffic first!
Mailerlite
This is the email service provider I used right after Mailchimp (yeah it did not make the list). If you are just starting off, this is perfect because this ESP is free up to 1000 subscribers. They allow access to all the regular broadcast emails and email automations, the latter of which are chargeable in Mailchimp. It is also super user friendly and easy to set up with drag and drop options for creating landing pages, inline forms and emails.
Flodesk
The current email subscriber I am using because of the affordable price plan. Flodesk only charges one flat fee monthly regardless of how many subscribers you have on your list, which can be pretty enticing when your list starts getting bigger and the costs rack up when you use other email service providers. There are some basic funnels you can set up inside and very pretty emails that you can create, which is great if you are very into graphic design! They do offer a free trial to try out this service first before you decide to commit. If you use this click, get my exclusive 50% off your first year using Flodesk! However, it does not have a very robust tagging function and I am seriously thinking of upgrading to a better ESP, so stay tuned to this list for any updates!
Email Service Matchmaker by Dama Jue
This training talks about Dama’s email journey through the 5 most popular email service provider and how to choose the right one for you. I would suggest this training is probably for folk who have been doing a fair amount of email marketing for a while before watching. I actually decided to get this short training to decide whether to switch from Flodesk to Convertkit. She did goes through a lot of other options though which are a bit more advanced if you are doing more complex email marketing. So this is not for you if you are just starting off, even if the training is low-cost.
Email Marketing Superstars
One of my most recent finds that is simply illuminating, I got this when she first launched. It is very comprehensive and covers techniques for beginners, intermediate and advanced email marketers. She also has some awesome bonuses inside as well. If you are sometimes like me, strugggling with figuring out how to increase your email list and how to nurture your folks with value-packed emails, then this will certainly help you. I am still working through it! If you use these links to purchase, you can (pssst) secretly get $100 off!
If you found this useful, remember to pin the image above to Pinterest so that other may find it and benefit from it too!
Traffic Resources
Like I mentioned above, if you are looking to work on a blog that is ad-driven, then traffic is one of the most important (or more like THE most important) thing to work on. It can be tiring to keep chasing pageviews all the time, so perhaps try affiliate marketing or creating your own products. Here are some of my favourite resources to increase traffic to my site which have worked out pretty well!
Easy On-Page SEO and Easy Backlinks for SEO by Debbie Gartner
Try these out first before moving onto Stupid Simple SEO below which is more in-depth. This is definitely much more cost effective and helps you get started on getting your blog articles Google-ready. Keyword research is something that is covered more extensively in Stupid Simple SEO.
These 2 mentioned are SEO ebooks, one is called ‘Easy On-Page SEO’ and the other is ‘Easy Backlinks for SEO’, in addition, she also has a course called ‘Easy SEO Revamp Course’ for intermediate and advanced bloggers where she teaches you how to make use of Google Search Console to check out which articles are ranking on your site. There is also a bundled SEO package that includes everything (this is what I got from her.) She has a free SEO intro course worth digging into before you start grabbing her paid SEO resoures.
Stupid Simple SEO by Mike Futia
This is without a doubt, one of the best courses I have taken because I can see tangible results after going through the course and implementing the steps recommended. The full course is pretty costly but he does offer a self-study version during Black Friday each year which is more cost effective – I actually waited till that time to get it. If you want a taste of his teaching style first, go check out his free SEO mini course consisting of 5 bite-sized lessons designed to make SEO stupid simple for any blogger.
One Year of Content in One Month by Ana Skyes
After figuring out how to write and research your blog post, the next challenging part is to create the content. This is where is course was instrumental for me because it kind of helped me churn out 40 articles in the span of 1-2 months (mind you this was pre-AI). It was pretty quality articles which were subsequently ranking on Google not just rubbish I was throwing together previously. This challenge helped me stay on track and also help me figure out my content clusters, very useful and very encouraging, also affordable – highly recommend. You can check out her free course on Starting A Blog to see her teaching style first.
Pinteresting Strategies by Carly Campbell
If you are looking for another source of traffic apart from SEO, then look no further than Pinterest. To be honest, I am not super regular and consistent with my pinning. I do prefer those set and forget it strategies like SEO (though that technically requires regular tweaking as well) but I do know a lot of crochet bloggers who swear by Pinterest. I used to use Tailwind but after trying out Carly’s Pinterest course, you can get traffic with just pinning manually with the native Pinterest scheduler, which allows you to schedule a month in advance which is actually pretty useful on its own already. She also always keeps the course updated and recently just updated it for 2023 as well. Consider trying out her Pin Template Starter Kit, which includes 11 gorgeous pin templates, her perfect pins checklist and some of her best tips that you can implement for better pins immediately.
Product Creation Resources
If you are like me and love creating printables (crochet patterns included), the learning how to create digital product if pretty important. Unless you intend to just rely on ad revenue. Either way, you would still need to learn how to create graphics for your blog or website.
Canva and Canva Pro
Apart from using Google documents or Onedrive to type out your patterns, try using Canva to level up the pretty graphics for your pattern. I love adding in different pattern templates inside Canva, to input both the pattern itself, terminology, step by step pictures and sometimes tutorials. The basic free Canva has more than enough material for you to work with, but I do subscribe to Canva Pro because the extras are pretty useful.
Printables by Number and Course by Number by Suzi Whitford
Yes, the same blogger behind Blog by Number above, she has a lot of wonderful resources. If you are thinking of creating printables and courses, then these will be super useful. I learned about the intricacies of funnels in her courses and she has this extensive section in Printables by Number on how to work on your Etsy store if that is what you prefer. Also if you purchase one of her cheaper ebook products, it will send you down a funnel where you can get her courses for a discounted price!
Elite Blog Academy by Ruth Soukup
One of my largest investment when I was really thinking about learning marketing. It is a really fantastic course with a tight knit community but I have to be honest, it is quite costly. Having gone through some of the other courses listed here, there are better resources that are more cost effective (like the others I mentioned). It was a great overview of online marketing in general and I did pick up a lot on paid ads even though I don’t really use it nowadays.
Copyrighting Resources
Storytelling That Sells: Easy Ways to Create & Use Stories That Convert by Karon Thackston
I have come across quite a few copywriting courses but somehow this is the only one that I felt was worth mentioning, it is also one of her bestsellers. Inside she teaches how to make use of storytelling to nurture your email subscribers, really fantastic work, I felt it help me to engage my followers better in my emails!
Sales Page Resources
Felt this was worth mentioning because sales pages and checkout cart pages are super important when you have your own website. All these are taken care of for you when you are on Etsy but when you decide to do everything on your own, then these resources do become important.
Squarespace
The easiest was to make use of my existing Squarespace subscription to create pretty sales pages, after all the page editor is simple to use and it can create some beautiful pages. If you want to try out Squarespace, they do have a free trial as well to test it out. Some bloggers love to use Lead Pages which has a higher conversion rate and a great tracking system but I have decided to just keep to my Squarespace pages for now – they turn out even better than the Thrivecart ones which I will talk about below later.
Gumroad
One of my first attempts at creating a tripwire for my website leads to a gumroad page. It is still active because I have not taken it down (because honestly I can’t remember where I set it up) and once in a while, I still make sales there. They have a free account which is great to get started but they do take a hefty cut of each sale (10%). It is super easy to set up and I was using this for quite a while happily.
Sendowl
For me personally I did not try out this software for my own products but many bloggers do use Sendowl for their blog hops and bundles, because they have an affiliate marketing software to pay out all the affiliates. So, I would say the extent of my experience was because of my need to join in when I was an affiliate for blog hops or bundles organised by other bloggers. It is pretty basic to set up and easy to payout affiliates but the checkout pages are definitely not as robust as Thrivecart below. It starts off for free for 3 months and then $9 per month after that.
Thrivecart
This has got to be one of my most worth it buys, it is costly but just a one time fee and it is currently where all my courses are housed in. There is a course hosting section inside Thrivecart called Learn and it has saved me a ton of recurring fees with other platforms like Teachable or Thinkific. You can also create leading pages within thrivecart and checkout pages as well. A very detailed and robust software, which would be even more fantastic if it integrated with my Email Service Provider (hence considering switching from Flodesk). Also, if you need more help with the Thrivecart landing pages, you can grab some of Thrivecart templates from Suzi and John Whitford, so you can get set up as quickly as possible.
Affiliate Marketing Resources
This is something I just started dabbling in. Previously when I tried inserting my affiliate links inside my blog and I could not even retain my Amazon affiliate account, I think I renewed it twice with no success. Only after I started investing in these courses that I started to see some income coming in. It is not super fantastic for now but I love how I am actually making progress! You know what they say, blogging is a marathon not a sprint!
Journey to the Centre of Amazon by Debbie Gartner
Debbie Gartner is someone I absolutely love learning from and I am still on her email list and I love hearing her educational recommendations. After I finished her SEO books (her bestsellers), I moved onto this next as I wanted to try out affiliate marketing with just Amazon first and see if I could just get a bit of improvement. So far she has got me hooked on affiliate marketing and the majority of her income is really from just that. Download her free PDF on 7 insider tips to earn more on Amazon Associates first to see if you like her writing and teaching style.
Affiliate Sales Surge 14 Days Challenge by Ana Skyes
To be honest, I have not gone super in depth for this challenge because I want to set aside a time frame to exclusively focus on affiliate marketing but having tried out Ana’s One Year of Content in One Month Challenge, I’m sure this would be fantastic too. I went through it briefly and also perused her Affiliate Programs Masterlist, which has 770+ high-paying affiliate programs and I can’t wait to go in depth and finish up the challenge! To get started on her education, try out her Free Email Course to Make Affiliate Sales and download her free 99+ High-paying Affiliate Programs Cheat Sheet – great free resources!
Facebook Groups
Decided to just include in this section as it may be helpful for crochet business owners for for pattern writers or designers. These facebook groups have been instrumental in helping me get to know other bloggers and crochet designers and a great way to network. Most of the bundles or blog hops I get involved in are shout-outs in these groups so do join them and be respectful inside! Don’t join all at once, try joining one group at a time and see the interaction inside, there are often great crochet business tips inside by very seasoned bloggers that I love to read about too.
Facebook Groups for Marketing
Crochet and Knit Blogger Social
Crochet Designers – Events, Blog-hops and Round-ups
Crochet Bloggers and Business Owners
Crochet Marketing Designers
Crochet Business Chat - Crochetpreneurs Making Money with Crochet
Crochet Designer Support Group
Facebook Groups for Pattern Testers
Crochet Pattern Testers
Elite Crochet Pattern Testers
Conclusion about Crochet Business Resources
Now that I have listed all the best resources I have gone through, it really has been a lot! This is also a way for me to keep track of what I have purchased so that I know I can always go back to it when I want to focus on those sections again. Most of these course creators make a constant effort to update their courses as well because online marketing is an evolving industry. I must be totally upfront and say that a lot of what I earn back from my crochet business really goes back into more education and I have not had to use my savings or my own earnings (from my clinic) to pay for any of these resources.
Having said that, if you are looking to make a full-time income from crocheting, I have to honestly say that I have not reached that stage but I am loving the journey and I am loving the interaction I get with my followers and supporters! These folks have taught me how to do that without being awkward or being a sleazy sales man that I absolutely do not want to be so I have to confidently say, apart from crocheting, now online marketing is another deep interest of mine!
