Can you wake up in the morning and honestly say you love what you do? If not, it may be worth turning a love of crochet into a business.
Many people running crochet businesses stumbled into it by accident. You have an advantage over them: you can research the niche you want before committing to it – baby items, heirloom blankets, or something else entirely.
Find out whether people are buying
Are people willing to buy your hats, sweaters, scarves and blankets? And if so, where are they buying them?
These are answerable questions. Search for what you intend to make and look at what already exists. Are there many sellers, or few? What are they charging? Do their listings show evidence of actually selling, or are they sitting unsold?
A market with plenty of sellers is usually a good sign rather than a bad one – it means demand exists. A category with nobody in it more often means nobody buys.
Choose a niche
General crochet sells poorly; specific crochet sells. “Handmade items” competes with everything. “Crocheted christening blankets” or “amigurumi of your own pet” competes with almost nothing and reaches people who are searching for exactly that.
A narrow niche also means repeat work: you get faster at the same shapes, and your material costs become predictable.
Price it properly
This is where most handmade businesses fail, and it fails quietly.
Add up the yarn and materials for one item. Time yourself honestly making it. Decide an hourly rate you would accept. Add the two together, then add the selling fees and postage.
The number will be higher than you expected and probably higher than similar items are listed for. That is the actual arithmetic, and selling below it means paying for the privilege of working.
If the resulting price is unsellable, the answer is to make something quicker or something people will pay more for – not to accept less per hour.
Consider what else sells
Finished items are the obvious product and the worst-paid per hour, because time is the input and it does not scale.
Patterns, classes and written work all scale better: the effort is spent once and sells repeatedly. Plenty of people who set out to sell blankets end up making more from selling the pattern for the blanket.
Start small
Make a handful of items and try to sell them before investing in stock, branding or a market stall. The first few sales will tell you more about the market than any amount of planning, and they cost very little to find out.
