A business podcast just for crochet business owners where we learn how to grow your crochet business and set it up for success!
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INSIDE THIS EPISODE
Below is a breakdown of each section in this episode. Feel free to skip ahead to the parts that interest you most. Each section has the timestamp beside it so you know exactly when the subject starts and ends.
Welcome [0:00- 0:20]
How to determine a price for the items you make? [0:21- 9:04]
My engagement in my posts has dropped and I have no idea why! Any suggestions? [9:06- 16:11]
I want to make a blog, but I don’t design. Do you have any suggestions on what I can blog about? [16:12- 21:49]
When picking my brand colors, how many should I pick? [21:50- 22:54]
Should I sell my finished things on Etsy? Is it worth it? [22:55- 30:21]
How hard was it for you to learn how to edit your videos on TikTok? [30:22- 31:49]
How many times (daily/weekly) do you pin your own stuff on Pinterest? [31:50- 37:12]
How do you send out a welcome email? [37:13- 40:32]
RESOURCES MENTIONED
6 Reasons Why you should open an Etsy Shop Youtube video
43 Free Etsy Listing Referral Code
TRANSCRIPT
Hello friends! We are going to be talking all things business, crochet, blog, whatever! Hello, Hello, & Welcome! I am so excited to see so many familiar faces!
I am going to jump right in with the most popular question we ever get!
How to determine a price for the items you make?
We have all had this question more than once! We continue to have this question as business owners on a daily basis. There are a few tips I have for you!
You want to make sure you are in the green! So add up all your cost to make that piece. For a Claire Bun Beanie, I can get a 7-ounce skein of yarn for $4.99 and I can make 2.5 beanies out of that. So $4.99 divided by 2.5 will tell me how much I pay per beanie.
So you can figure out how much all of your materials are, so you know you have to make at least that to not go backward! Then after that point, it depends on who you ask!
Taylor and a few other number people will say you want to pay yourself PROFIT and WAGE. So if it costs me $5 to make the thing, I would sell it for $10 PLUS minimum wage of $7 an hour for a total of 4 hours.
That is what some people do! I don’t do it this way, and it also depends on where you are at in your season of business. It depends on supply and demand.
If you are just starting out, I suggest and what worked really well for me is- have it lower than what you think you want to have it in the long run. You can always raise the price easily.
That will be like social proof that the demand is going up, everybody is buying these.
So raising the price gives good signs, but lowering the price has really bad signs because then you are telling everybody who paid full price for it already got cheated and they are going to want their money back- and that will just open up a whole other can of worms!
Don’t let anyone tell you that you are charging too little! If they are coming at it from a positive perspective, and they are trying to lift you up and encourage you- that’s different.
If they are saying “Hey you charging $5 for your Claire Bun Beanies is messing up my business!” Put on your blinders, pop in some earplugs, and say okay bye because that does not matter at all!
If you are a hobbyist and you sell $5 beanies because crocheting beanies brings you joy and that $5 that you get allows you to buy more yarn to keep crocheting beanies. YOU DO THAT!
I sell my Claire Bun Beanies for $30, and if you and I were at the same market and you were selling yours for $5, we would be speaking to a different target audience.
It doesn’t matter if yours are better than mine, or mine are better than yours- they are going to see that $30 price and think hmm the $30 one is better.
So the people who want to spend $30 will spend $30! The $5 people will go “Sweet! $5 for a messy bun beanie! That girl over there is selling them for $30! What an awesome deal!” Those people would not be my customer anyway.
You are not going to devalue anyone else’s work by charging less for your stuff!
I don’t know where that started, but that is NOT true! If other people feel that way, that is on them. Focus on yourself, your business, your hobby, your family, your joy. Focus on that!
If COVID season has taught us anything- There are plenty of customers to go around! Billions of customers in the world.
It is impossible for one crocheter to supply every beanie to every human on the planet. So there is really no need to all tore up over who is pricing their items what because they are attracting different customers.
That’s the main point, they are attracting different customers, they are not taking your customers. My customers are still going to pay $30 because that is who they are as a person. That is how their brain thinks when they see a $30 ticket item, it has nothing to do with the beanie.
One more tip on pricing! Don’t be afraid to send out freebies or work in exchange for other things like trading because that is how you can get your name out there! Especially if you are just starting, go find someone out on Instagram (someone who has the same ideal customer as you!) and message them something like
“Hey I make these baby rattles and I think they are so perfect for your little girl! They match your color scheme, and I think she would be so adorable playing with them! I would love to send you one or two in exchange for some photos and a shout-out on Instagram.”
You would pay the shipping to ship it out to the person, and send them the free rattles, and you package it up like it’s going to the Queen of England, you even throw in a little gift for the mom, spoil that person!
Then they will rave about you to all of their friends and followers! They are going to post photos on Instagram and their followers are going to be like “Oh my that is so cute!” and then go follow you!
This is playing the long game, not trying to make a quick buck. We are building a business that is going to last as long as we want it to last. We want to turn one-time customers into return customers and true fans of your business and brand!
So the little bit of money that you put up for the supplies to make the rattle, then the packaging, let’s say $15 is how much it cost you to do all that. There is no telling how much money you could make off that $15 investment! You will get followers, likes, shares, engagement, pictures- just a big pile of unmeasurable goodness!
It’s not a specific return on investment that you can see like when you turn on an ad on google where it will say “hey you made $600 in sales from this ad.” That is an obvious return on investment, but the money you invested in yourself by sending freebies to someone who can get you stellar images and great shout-outs to a perfect audience has a really big return of investment you just can’t really measure it.
I just know in my heart, you put good in you get good out. That is just how the world works. You put good out there, good is going to find its way back to you.
Don’t be worried about sending out a whole bunch of freebies because you might not get it back. Just have faith in yourself, faith in your skills as an entrepreneur that you know you are going to hustle and you are going to use every image that you get back multiple times.
You are going to use them in your Etsy listing, social media posts, in your emails, in your Pinterest pins, you are going to use these pictures until they are used out! It is going to be worth the time and money you used to send out freebies!
When I get all of my items back from my photography friend, I am going to start giving them all away to people on Instagram (that I haven’t even found yet) and say “Hey I love your style! I love your photos, and your little girl is so adorable! You both are so precious! Can I send you some mommy and me beanies, for a shout-out and some photos in return? I just started this brand new business, and I think you are the perfect person to help me promote it!”
That is what I am going to do, and send it all for free and probably include some earrings or keychain and package it really really cute because that is money I know I will be getting back- because I know who I am and I know that I will hustle and get my money back.
Know yourself, know your skills, make sure you aren’t going backward, and you will be good to go!
My engagement in my posts has dropped and I have no idea why! Any suggestions?
There could be a lot of reasons you have seen a drop in engagement. If you have been speaking to crocheters for years and then all of a sudden you start speaking to your ideal customer who would be the person that would be buying that thing that you are selling.
You are going to see a drop in engagement because the crocheters aren’t going to be attracted to a post that is like “look at this hat that you can buy now”. So if you pivoted and started talking to your true audience instead of crocheters and fellow yarn enthusiasts you might see a drop in engagement.
Be sure you are posting consistently, like every day. I post 6 days a week, I do not post on Sundays. I am in my stories every single day!
You also want to be giving the type of engagement you want to get. If you want comments on your posts that are 4 words or more, you go put comments with 4 words or more on your ideal customer’s posts.
If you are a baby boutique, go to posts where they are picturing their babies- you can find them through hashtags. Go to the hashtags that you are using! If you use #babygirlqueen, click on that hashtag and go leave a whole bunch of comments on other people’s pictures that are using #babygirlqueen.
They are going to be like “who is this?” and click on your account and see your feed and think “oh my gosh she has adorable stuff!” I love her stuff- follow, like your photos, and start leaving some comments back to you!
That is just how it works. You have to give what you would like to receive.
Also, make sure you are putting a call to action in your captions. Make them engaging on their own. Give your ideal customer a no-brainer way of responding.
You can say something like “Where are my fellow iced coffee drinkers at?” then talk about your coffee cozy that you use on your iced coffee that you make and sell in your shop!
You have to give them a super easy no brainer way to respond, and you can do that through a call to action in your caption.
Be sure to respond to every single comment!
When you post on Instagram, sit by your phone for 30 minutes to an hour and respond to every comment you get with 4 words or more! This is going to boost your engagement! It is also going to start training people to leave you comments with 4 words or more.
The algorithm only counts comments of 4 words or more towards your engagement.
Shares and saves (the bookmark icon) will beef up your engagement.
If your ideal customer is a girl mom and she is wearing a messy bun every day and you post a really cute picture in your stories or your feed- say you have a scrunchy that you sell and you have a picture of you or someone else wearing the scrunchy with a saying like “messy bun, getting things done!” and then giving some encouragement for moms who are really busy. Then she is going to share it because other people she surrounds herself with are just like her and they need to hear the encouragement from your post!
Then if you post something with a tutorial or with really good information like tips and tricks your ideal customer would want to save for later, they will bookmark (save) them!
If they save a post that gives you more points than likes, comments, and shares! Bookmarks are what Instagram wants people to do right now. I realized when I get a whole bunch of bookmarks on a post I get a bunch of new followers. I am assuming it’s because Instagram is showing it to more people because they are being told it is doing a good job.
You want to post videos!
I can’t stress this enough! You can do animated words on Canva, a stop motion video like I did in this post, a time-lapse video of you crocheting something or cleaning your craft space.
Videos are boss right now!
Almost every time I post a video the analytics are through the roof! Some of my videos have gotten 22,000 views!! If I posted a picture of that it probably would have gotten like 600 views on a good day, 300 on a bad day a 1,200 on an excellent day.
If I look at the statistics and look at how many new followers I got, videos always get me more followers than photo posts. Even my best posts that get like 2,000 likes (which that like never happens for me!) I got maybe 4 new followers.
In my video posts, I have gotten like 67 new followers! So if you are wanting to grow and serve your ideal customer well, video is the way to go.
My last little tip, if you do not have the IG Crash course, it is a bullet point list of do’s and don’ts for Instagram. It has tips like “don’t edit your caption within 24 hours of posting it”. That is something you might not know about, and all that is in the IG Crash Course.
I want to make a blog, but I don’t design. Do you have any suggestions on what I can blog about?
Yes! I don’t know who your ideal customer is, but I am going to assume you sell finished pieces! You can build a blog around your business based on your finished pieces.
Wild Grace is my new Etsy shop, that I am going to drop in January 2021. My ideal customer is a Boho millennial baby girl mom. She cares very much about what people think, she holds appearances really high on the scale, she has a very cute decorated house because when she has people over she wants them to think “oh wow your house is so cute”. She has a mid-luxury vehicle.
That’s all the stuff I know about her, so if I wanted to build a blog around her I would talk about how to take pictures of babies and I would be sure to use lots of my pieces in the photos that I am showing on how to take photos.
I could post about how to wash your Bitty Boho Bibs because if they buy Bitty Boho Bibs from me I want to show them how to wash them. Post how to store your babies’ winter beanies so you can get to them easily.
Anything that I am selling in my shop, I will give them blog posts on how to use, store, or clean that thing.
If I sold tiny Christmas stockings in Wild Grace, I could make a post on 10 ways to decorate with a tiny stocking this Christmas- that speaks to my ideal customer because, one, they are in the boho style that she likes, but two I am showing her how to decorate her house! She cares very much about how to decorate her house, she decorates for every season!
So if I gave her a list of 10 ways she could decorate using these stockings she is going to love that, and she is going to buy them.
Also, I am just serving her! Even if she goes to the dollar store and gets little felt stockings for $1 but uses some of my tips to decorate her house with, she is still going to look to me as the person who served her in that way.
Find out who your ideal customer is, pick a product line that speaks to that ideal customer specifically, then teach her how to use, clean, and store that product on your blog.
You always want to tie your posts back to your products/business, like 80% of the time.
If every now and again you are making posts to just serve your person that is fine. But 80% of the time you want to be pulling it back to your business, like full circle without saying over and over “hey go buy my thing”.
Serve them and they will turn into true fans of your brand!
If you want to focus on other crocheters but you are not a designer and you still want to have a blog you can talk about the different yarns that you tried. I call it being a crochet influencer.
I think I would love to be a crochet influencer! I would do posts like top 5 worsted weight brands and why. I would take different people’s patterns like the Claire Bun Beanie and I would write “I made this beanie, in these 5 different yarns. I followed the pattern exactly and this is what I found!” You can link that pattern, better yet you put an affiliate link to the pattern so you can get paid for directing people to that pattern.
You don’t have to be a designer to have a blog. You can be like a crochet influencer. You can review hooks, tote bags, yarn winders, different yarns like store-bought, indie dyed yarns, all of the things from a crochet influencer’s point of view.
I think our community could really use that! I know that designers could really use that because I could say hey I have a new pattern coming out I would love for you to promote it on your blog!
You could have Wecrochet, Joanns, and other yarn companies reach out saying “hey I love your blog” once you start getting a lot of views and making waves.
People are going to start reaching out to you! They will want to send you things for free in exchange for promotion on your blog. I think crochet influencers would be super fun!
When picking my brand colors, how many should I pick?
I don’t have a specific, scientifically tested, tried and true number to give you here but I can tell you what I am doing inside Wild Grace.
I have 8-10 colors that I sell in Wild Grace. 4 of those colors are my main branding colors. Really dark gray, maroon, yellow, and green. Those are my main branding colors, and they are also 4 of the 8 colors I offer in my shop.
Anna from @TheKnottyBoss can probably give more advice on this topic!
You want your brand to reflect your personality, and to draw in your ideal customer like a magnet. The fewer choices you can give them the better.
Should I sell my finished things on Etsy? Is it worth it?
I have a whole video series on Youtube, showing you how to set up an Etsy shop, and I also have a video on reasons why you should open an Etsy shop and it has some really good points in there that a lot of people don’t think about when opening an Etsy shop like the affiliate program they have!
So if you want to check that video out you can find it here!
I believe everybody that sells handmade items should be on Etsy! The only exception is if you are already getting too many orders and you can not keep up!
If you already have a good system that is super easy for you and your customers, like your own online shop and all your orders, are being directed there and you are getting 20 orders a day, your turnaround time is 10 weeks, and you have no room or desire for more orders.
If your business starts to grow and you want to make changes like getting helpers or doing something to speed up your process somehow that’s great!
But if you are at a point in your business where you are completely satisfied with the sales you are getting and you don’t want any more sales, then don’t open an Etsy shop.
But if you do NOT have another online shop, you should get an Etsy shop!
If you are currently taking orders through Facebook, text, and Instagram, and you are just getting orders from a million directions and you are trying to organize it all yourself, that is overwhelming.
That is holding you back. That is taking a lot of time and mental energy that could be spent making orders- you need to open an Etsy shop.
Etsy does not cost you anything upfront if you use an Etsy shop referral code from a friend. You can use mine for 40 free Etsy listings!
This means you do not have to pay the .20 cent listing fee for up to 40 listings as a brand new shop.
All other Etsy fees come off the top.
So when you sell an item Etsy is going to take off any other fees before they pay you. So if you sell an item for $10 and the fees are .70 cents you will get paid $9.30.
Etsy is a great platform to get you organized and help you streamline, and, since Etsy is a search engine, you can set up each listing to be optimized to show up in search results, which will get you a whole bunch of customers!
I posted 1 listing on my Wild Grace shop just so I could make a tutorial on how to do it, and I forgot I made the listing live and it sold!!
I was not expecting that and the only reason I even checked my Wild Grace shop was to make that youtube video!
It sold because of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I had the right title, keywords, and tags, and stellar photos which I got from sending some freebies to someone on Instagram!
Etsy is a great place to get more sales and get organized. It fixed a whole bunch of problems like not getting paid upfront, not getting someone’s address, not getting paid for shipping.
I am team Etsy.
Yeah they charge fees and yeah they change things all the time, but guess what- so does social media and we are all still here.
Social media changes its algorithm all the time. You get what you pay for, and Etsy you pay fees and you get a lot in return. They have Etsy commercials running on TV right now! Etsy is doing a lot to get more people to shop on the platform.
How hard was it for you to learn how to edit your videos on TikTok?
The way I learned was by watching tutorials on TikTok. People would have videos saying “hey do you want to learn how to do… this is how you do it” I would save those tutorial videos and learn to do it later.
You can repurpose the content you make on TikTok and post it on Instagram, youtube, and Pinterest to send people to you!
TikTok‘s on Pinterest are doing really good right now. Same with Instagram Reels, they are doing really good right now too.
Repurpose the living daylights out of the TikToks. Save them to your device and use them everywhere you can.
How many times (daily/weekly) do you pin your own stuff on Pinterest?
If I pull up my tailwind account I probably have 600 pins scheduled to go out this month!
I post about 10 pins a day. Listen, I don’t know what I am doing, but I have 1.7 million views a month on my Pinterest account right now.
I have heard people say those views are hogwash, but I have watched them go up which tells me I am doing something good. I used to be at 1.4 million views now I am at 1.7, so that tells me what I am doing is working.
Every time I make a blog post, I make 10-15 pins for that one blog post (I know this is madness, not everyone does this!) then I go schedule all of them on a million different boards.
Pinterest only wants you to post fresh pins. They don’t want you to pin old pins that are already on the platform.
So anytime I make a new Instagram post, I turn it into a pin. I open the image in Canva, create it into an optimized size for Pinterest and turn them into pins. So yeah a whole bunch of pins comes from this lady, but Tailwind makes it super easy!
If I want to pin 15 pins all for the same pattern, using Tailwind I upload all 15 images, I put the URL I want it to go (either my blog or my Etsy) and that link will automatically change the title of my pin to match the listing title.
On my blog posts, I make a highly keyword-optimized meta-description at the top of every blog post which would be something like “Learn how to crochet a super cute rainbow rattle for your baby out of 100% cotton yarn. Full video tutorial included!”
That is my meta-description. That is what will show up when people search on google “crochet rainbow rattle”.
I copy and paste that as my pin description, and then throw in a few relevant hashtags. I don’t even know if hashtags work on Pinterest, but I will throw a hashtag on each of the posts each one being a different hashtag, and that’s it. A few minutes on Tailwind and I will have all that done!
Update: Pinterest says hashtags are a NO GO. So you DO NOT need to post hashtags in your Pinterest descriptions.
A friend in the chat said Tailwind Create, and she loves it.
I haven’t got to play with it yet, but I want to learn it so I can share it with all of you. So far my method is working for me. I currently use Canva, and you can schedule pins through Canva now too!
Also, video does really well on Pinterest!
So if you make videos for your Instagram because you are trying to build up that engagement and it’s a time-lapse of you crocheting something, post it on Pinterest, use it on your Etsy listing, and you will start getting some sales!
You can put up to 15-second videos in your Etsy listing as well, which I highly suggest doing!
For every piece of content you make, reuse it at least 4 times and up to 10 times! Repurposing is an entrepreneur’s best friend!
How do you send out a welcome email?
If you have a free Mailchimp account you can create 1 automated email which means it will automatically send it out for you whenever someone signs up for your email list. I suggest using that as your freebie and welcome email rolled into one.
So soon as someone signs up to your email list they should get a thank you gift, either a coupon code or a freebie.
When I talked about my IG Crash course, that is a landing page so you will sign up to my email list and I will send you a freebie for signing up to my email list, which is my IG crash course PDF, and then you are automatically on my email list and you will get my welcome email a day later.
I have a paid Mailchimp account so I can set up multiple automations, with the free account you can only have one. So I suggest having your freebie and welcome email in one and having one landing page.
My advice is to create one killer freebie that your ideal customer will benefit from having, and you can tell people if they want your freebie to sign up to your email list and it will be sent automatically.
Then your welcome email will say here is your freebie, welcome to my email list I am so excited that you are here, here is a little bit about me.
The formatting is completely up to you! Mailchimp has some free templates that you can use.
What I did, was when I get a welcome email from someone else/business and it just knocked my socks off I replicated that to use for my own welcome email format.
So if you get an email from someone and the way it looks knocks your socks off, pay attention to why. Look at how it’s organized, and try to replicate that on your own. I use and recommend Mailchimp.
Thank you guys so much for hanging out with me! I hope you are all loving the Tuesday Talks here on Instagram! I am loving it! I will be in your inbox tomorrow for Wrap Label Wednesday!
I will see you on the Gram, and in the Facebook group-
Bye friends!!
Ashley