Knitting For Profit
If you love knitting and have ever wished you could make money from it, then make sure you keep reading because I
Posts Tagged ‘knitting niche’
How To Publish Your Knitting Book
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
After our discussions about copyright, I thought it was a good time for a post from the other side of the fence – if you are a knitting designer and want to publish your knitting patterns, or a teacher and want to publish a knitting book. How do you go about this, how much does it cost and what sort of copyright should you place over your work?
Becoming a published author is actually easier (and cheaper) these days than you might think. There are a huge range of publishers to choose from, many specialising in the crafting categories, and there are also online do-it-yourself services which are free to join and have a "print to order" service. This means that you don’t have to invest large amounts of money into printing hundreds or thousands of copies of your book before you know how well it well sell.
And coming from a knitting business point of view, your first step when considering publishing your work should be finding out whether there is a market for it! You need to think about who your target market is, whether the content of your book is popular at the moment and will appeal to a broad range of people, or whether it is very targeted and appealing to a smaller niche market.
General, broad appeal knitting books tend to be about learning to knit, how to overcome problems, and general knitting or crochet patterns. Even these tend to have some kind of spin on them to make them unique and interesting. As you already know, I’m a fan of niche markets, especially for this kind of project where your niche product has the potential to come “into vogue” and become a bestseller purely because it unique and different.
A good place to start this kind of research is on Amazon.com, where you can see what the most popular books are in each category. If you look in “knitting books” at the moment, the bestselling pattern books include two for sock patterns, two for knitted or crocheted embellishments and decorations, one for warm weather knitting and one that provides solutions for knitting questions. If you look up knitting books, you’ll find a long list of these books which will give you a idea of what is available and where there may be a gap in the market that you can fill.
Once you have chosen your topic and created your content, you’ll need to decide how you are going to publish, advertise and sell your work. You have three main choices for publication:
Option #1 – Use a publisher to copyright, edit, print and distribute your book. There are obviously a huge number of publishers around the world, some very large with wide distribution networks, others smaller and perhaps more suitable for niche publications. Here are some that have a range of craft titles:
• Martingale (martingale-pub.com)
• Lark Books (larkbooks.com)
• Trafalgar Square Publishing (now part of the Independent Publishers Group – ipgbook.com)
• Sterling publishing (sterlingpublishing.com)
The main advantage of using a publisher is that your knitting book will be more widely distributed, a lot faster than you could ever do yourself. It will be sold into stores and advertised in catalogs, most publishers have reps that will promote and sell your book. You’ll also have experienced editors giving you feedback and ideas. However, you will be giving away a lot of your control over the book, as well as the profits.
Option #2 – Self-publish your knitting or crochet book using a service such as lulu.com or createspace.com (who sell through amazon.com). This way you have much more control over how your knitting book comes together, how and where it is sold and promoted and the copyrights over the book.
If you want to use less restrictive copyrights, and allow people to knit your patterns and sell them, or use your patterns or teaching techniques in their knitting classes and basically get your name more well known by sharing your work as much as possible, then self-publishing may be a better option.
You will get more of the profits, and most of these services allow you to print on demand which means there aren’t high costs involved in start-up. But you won’t get the same level of distribution as with an offline publisher. You can order copies for yourself and sell them offline, and your book will be listed on Amazon and various other online sellers, but you won’t have anyone actively promoting it unless you organise it yourself.
Option #3 – Publish online as a knitting E-Book – if you already have a website, or you know of sites where your book would sell well, you could publish your knitting book as an e-book and purely sell online. This is a great way to start because it costs very little to do, and will give you some feedback and an idea of the size of your market and how well your book may sell when you do decide to publish offline.
There are also online pattern sellers that will list your patterns individually, which means you can control the copyright and distribution of each of your designs individually. Or you could list them on your own website.
There are several copyright options available to you. If you do not want your patterns to be used for anything other than personal use, then you can add the phrase “all rights reserved” to your copyright notice. You can also add exceptions such as “not to be used for commercial gain”.
Personally, I’m not a fan of restrictive copyrights like this. The world is moving towards a much more free approach to sharing information and ideas, and this means that ideas are passed around and reach a far wider audience than if you severely restrict their use. As a designer, your income comes from sales of patterns or books, and lots of sales are made from personal recommendations, so the more people who know about you the better!
You can use a Creative Commons Copyright, which means that you are happy for people to share, build on and perpetuate your work which is much more in the spirit of the knitting community! To find out more about Creative Commons Copyright, have a look at this site which has lots of great copyright information for knitters and crocheters – www.girlfromauntie.com/journal
Whichever method you choose, publishing your knitting book means more exposure for your designs, and helps get your name more widely known as a designer. Being a published knitting designer gives you more credibility, and may help land other opportunities to further your knitting design career.
Quick and Easy Knitting Pattern Ideas
Monday, May 4th, 2009
There is some great knitting ideas in this quick post to show you some knitting pattern books that have small, fast or easy-to-knit projects.
Great for using up yarn, and music for the profitable knitters ears with many projects able to be completed in a day or less.
They may fit your niche already, or you could alter them slightly to make them suit using different yarns or colours, or adding decorative elements. All are great for knitting ideas and inspiration.
This is by no means a definitive list of fast-to-knit knitting pattern books but it hopefully gives you some knitting ideas and inspiration. I have contacted the authors and publishers to see if they are happy for the finished projects to be sold, but have not received responses yet, so please wait for an update here, or contact them yourself before going ahead and using these patterns for your knitting business!
I have used Amazon links for the pictures so you can get an idea of their price too.
Judith Durant has created a range of these great pattern books with knitting patterns that use only one skein of yarn.
This is very useful if you are Knitting For Profit because you don't have to worry about dye lots or running out of yarn, and they are relatively small projects so they are fast to complete.
"Speed Knitting" by Kris Percival has fast and easy to complete projects, easy for beginners and fast for experienced knitters. Part of the trick is using chunky yarns and big needles which makes the whole project come along a lot faster.
"Last Minute Knitted Gifts" by Joelle Hoverson has a good range of easy projects all able to be completed in under 10 hours. She uses a wide range of colours and textures which will give you great ideas for making your products stand out. [UPDATE] – Joelle has let me know that you can't sell pieces you knit from patterns in this book, but it might still be a good one to have a look at for knitting ideas.
"Weekend Knitting" by Melanie Falick is a popular book that includes projects designed to be knitted in a weekend or less. There are lots of unique designs such as a flower-shaped washcloth and little egg-cozies, plus projects covering a range of knitting difficulties too. [UPDATE] – The publishers replied and said that you can't sell items you knit from Melanie's book, but you could contact the designer of each item individually and ask for permission.
"One Skein" by Leigh Radford is another book of fast-to-knit projects that use only one skein of yarn, mostly patterns for fashion accessories and decorative pieces for homes. There are also projects designed to use up all those leftover bits from other projects.
I will hunt around for some free fast-knit patterns too, and include them in a future post!
How To Build Your Knitting Website – For Free!
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
The Internet can provide knitterpreneurs with a fantastic opportunity to find customers from all over the world. So how do you start your knitting business niche website, process payments and get your customers to find it – all for FREE?
There are so many ways to create a presence on the web these days it can all get a bit confusing – do you start a blog? a website? an e-commerce site? a craft-mall store? an E-bay store? And then how do you get people to find you – on search engines? From advertising or promotions? Through links and recommendations? Is your head spinning yet??
Don’t worry! In this article I’m going to show you how to decide what sort of site you’ll need for your knitting business, and where to find the resources to build it easily, and for FREE. But the first thing you need to do before jumping in and starting your site is to sit down and do a bit of planning – this will save you a lot of time and headache!
The first step is to decide what you want your knitting website to achieve. Think about the following questions:
• Do you just want an online catalogue so people can get more information about you and your products? (Like an electronic business card)
• Or have you found a knitting niche that you want to become well known in?
• Do you want to be able to make sales online? Can your products be shipped around the country or worldwide?
• Is your goal to get people to find you online? Do you want lots of traffic to your knitting website? Do you want to be found through search engines?
• Or are you going to be mainly promoting your knitted products or services in the real world (like at markets and fairs or in stores etc)?
• Do you want to keep in regular contact with your customers? Do you have lots of good information about knitting or crochet that you can share with them?
• How much time do you want to spend on this project? Do you want to ‘set and forget’ or are you willing to make a long term commitment to updating it?
Following are the three main types of knitting website you can create, and depending on your answers to the above questions, you’ll find that one will stand out as the most suitable for your knitting business.
A Static Knitting Website – often used as an online catalogue, these websites are called “static” because their content does not tend to change. They are designed to give people information about you and your knitting business and products, and they are the easiest site to set up and maintain because once you’ve got all your information and pictures there, you don’t need to do anything but get people to visit it!
Many static sites rely on off-line promotion for their traffic, in other words, they are great to list on your business card or in advertising so people can go and find out more information and see your complete range of knitting online.
You can create a great static knitting website for free on services like weebly.com. I created a sample site there today and it was really quick and easy, and looks great. Have a look at http://gentletouchknits.weebly.com to see what’s possible in about half an hour! This site was completely free as it is hosted on weebly, there is also the option to register a domain name and host it yourself (but this means you will need to set up a hosting account – which is easy and cheap, but not free!)
The main disadvantage of static sites is that search engines seem to prefer “dynamic” sites like blogs, whose content is regularly updated. This means that your static site may be more difficult to get listed high in search engine results, and if thats the main way you want to get traffic, then perhaps a blog is a better option.
A Knitting Blog – like the one you are reading! A blog is a website that is regularly updated with “posts”, rather than static pages with information and product listings. It can be a great interactive way to keep in contact with your customers, and also a good way to get listed quickly and prominently in the search engines.
There are lots of places where you can start a free blog, the two I have used are blogger.com (which is owned by Google, and some say is faster to get listed and ranked because of this), and wordpress.com, and if you’re looking for convenience you can also create a blog through weebly.com. All are easy to use and quick to get started.
Blogs can be very personal and friendly, and will help you create an ongoing relationship with your customers. They are also a good way to dominate a niche market. But you do need to keep them up to date, so in that sense they are an ongoing commitment where a static site requires less maintenance.
A Knitting Shopping Site – This is similar to a static site, with listings of your knitted products, photos and descriptions, but it is also able to take orders and process payments.
There are a couple of ways you can do this. The fastest, easiest way is to set up a shop front through one of the online craft malls like etsy.com (I will do a whole post about craft malls and which are the best value, so look out for that one very soon!).
These are great because there is already lots of people searching on there for handmade products, so you’ll probably get some good instant traffic. These services usually charge a listing fee or a monthly access fee, as well as a percentage commission on every sale, so they’re not free. And most of the time you won’t really own your own site, so you might be limited in design or layout, and with some your store won’t get listed in search engines.
The other option is to add a shopping cart to your already existing static website. There are services like romancart.com or paypal.com which provide you with order buttons to place next to your knitting items for sale. Payments are then processed by secure servers. These two services are free to set up, but they do charge a small percentage commission per sale.
Now, you don’t need to limit yourself to just one of these types of site. Many people start by building a static site, then adding a shopping cart, then adding a blog. By doing this you get the benefit of all three models – and this is of course a long term plan.
If you are new to the online world, just start by going to a site like weebly.com or blogger.com and have a play around. You can’t break anything, and the best way to learn is by having a go – you’ll have your knitting business up online before you know it!
Let me know how you go with these sites in a comment below, or if you have found any other good free services for creating websites, blogs or shopping carts that other knitters may find useful, please share your experiences with us!
Niche Knitting Yarn Review – Bamboo Yarn
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
One way to make your products unique and specialised for a niche market is to use unique yarns with special properties. A good example is Bamboo Knitting Yarn, which is now becoming very popular.
Bamboo Yarn will give your knitted pieces some fantastic natural advantages that will immediately make them great niche product for babies or people with sensitive skin or allergies.
This amazing natural fibre:
►Gives a beautiful, soft silky yarn that is lightweight and has a lovely lustre
►Does not pill as easily as some yarns
►Is Hypo-allergenic and Anti-bacterial, making it ideal for babies and people who have sensitive skin and can’t wear wool or other fibres. It’s antibacterial qualities also make it an excellent knitting yarn for socks!
►Is lighter than cotton and makes breathable garments with a lovely drape, comfortable for summer wear
►Makes UV protective garments
►Has high moisture absorption and anti-bacterial properties, making it a good choice for washcloths and hand-towels
►Is Ecologically friendly – bamboo is a totally renewable resource, the plant does not have to be destroyed to be harvested, and regrows very quickly. Bamboo plants are very resistant to microbial attack and so do not require chemical sprays. The whole distilling and production process is non-polluting and produces natural and eco-friendly fiber without any chemical additives.
►Is totally plant derived so is suitable for vegans who do not want to wear animal fibres
►Is totally biodegradable
The only down-sides of pure bamboo yarns are that they need to be hand-washed, and they do tend to split while you are knitting with them. Some brands seem to have more knots and imperfections in the yarn than others.
Using Bamboo or wooden needles (not metal needles) is one way to avoid splitting.
Also have a look at the many blended bamboo yarns, which will give you the wonderful properties of bamboo, and reduce the tendency for splitting. Silk/bamboo blends are popular for a really beautiful shiny finish, and a bamboo/cotton blend for great natural look and absorbent properties.
If you are promoting your bamboo-yarn products as antibacterial, it is best to use 100% bamboo yarn. If you really want to use a blend, then make sure you use one with at least 70% bamboo content to ensure the finished garment still has these antibacterial properties.
Some 100% bamboo yarns that are available:
►Bam Boo by Classic Elite
►Bamboo by Southwest Trading Company
►Just Bamboo by Sirdar
►Bamboo Tape by Rowan
If you have used any of these and have some feedback, leave a comment and let us all know what you thought of it! In the meantime, I’ll keep scouting for other new yarns and blends that will help your knitting business stand out from the crowd!
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About Liz
Welcome! My name is Liz and I am a work at home mother of two. I am also the author of the new book “Knitting for Profit”. I have created this blog to give you more great information, ideas and resources for making money from your knitting passion! [more]
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