Can you make money with crafts?

I have talked about this topic before, but it always come back up . . . people want to make money with their crafts and hobbies. Since the time that I originally wrote this post, I have learned a few things. Instead of making a brand new post about this topic, I am updating and giving this older post some new life, which by the way is one of my tips about how to make money with crafts hobbies! You do not have to reinvent the wheel. Take what you have and make it BETTER!

First, a little about me and my crafts and hobbies

One thing you need to do is to LOVE what you are doing.  When it starts to feel like “work” then your crafting will no longer be fun. I know this from experience.  When my daughter was very young I made sewn baby hats and blankets for craft shows.  I loved to sew, but it got to be that the ONLY time I was going to the fabric store was when they had polar fleece on sale (which is what I used for the products I was making)  And the only time I was sewing I was making hats or blankets. No more making something for me.

So I decided to switch gears and blog about crafting instead of making hand crafted things to sell. The world of blogging does open up many other opportunities such as working with companies, sometimes in a paid position and sometimes for free products. You need to choose what products work with what YOU do and which ones you want to stand behind and support.  Knowing who you are and what you do will help to guide you.  For example, I have crocheted a few blankets, but I am not going to go and try and get a paid position as a yarn blogger. That is not my main thing I like to do.  Also, I love to share information and teach. That is why I like to help people in Facebook groups that are struggling with crafting questions.

My Facebook Group

By the way, this post contains Affiliate Links to companies I have partnered with, such as Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. You can think of affiliate links like tipping your waitress, only it does not cost you anything extra! Thank you for shopping with my links!

The main reason for updating this older post is because so many people have asked me how I have grown my Teach Me Cricut Design Space Facebook group so quickly. I started my Facebook group on March 27, 2019. Now, after 18 months, that group has over 9,000 member! Trust me, it did not happen over night. Actually in February of 2020 I had less than 3,000 members. So what changed? A couple of things. Covid hit and I think more people were home and thinking as long as they were home why not learn to use their Cricut. The second thing that changed was my mindset. I decided I really wanted to take this blogging thing to the next level and get serious about it. That is when I started to research and implement some of the things I am going to share with you here.

Get a Wordpress website

I cannot stress this one enough. Get a website. A real self hosted website. Do not make the mistake I made and just use a free Blogspot site. When I first started blogging, honestly it was just for fun and a way to share what I was doing. This was before we had Instagram. Heck, even Facebook was still pretty new when I started blogging. Back then we used message boards to talk with people with the same interests. I created a free Blogspot site because I did not want to pay just to post pictures of what I was crafting. It was not until 2020 that I committed to making this blogging thing more of a business and that is when I moved to Wordpress. Click HERE if you want to see my very first post on my new Wordpress site just so you can see the timeline of how things happened for me.

So learn from my mistake. Just get a Wordpress site from the get go. There are plug ins that helped me move everything from my old site to this one. Other plug ins helped me do re-direct links so if you happened to find a really old link for a project to my old site, it would bring you to that same project on this site. I could do a whole blog post just on this topic.

Hosting your craft or hobby website

Find a good web hosting service. Here is another time where you can learn from my mistakes. When I first started this site, we decided to go with Bluehost since we heard other bloggers talking about it. IT WAS SO SLOW!!!!! I don’t know if it was just because my site had so many pictures for all of my tutorials, but it was so slow we could not even upload all of the photos to launch the site, so after about 20 days of trying to get it to work and reaching out to the support and going back and forth with them we pulled the plug on Bluehost and with with SiteGround. This was a game changer. We were able to launch our site within two weeks of switching to SiteGround. Go there now. Use THIS LINK and I make a small commission. (thanks)

Another reason to have a self hosted website is that you can only do so much with the free sties. I was on Blogspot, YouTube and had a free store front page for selling and teaching classes. But everything was on a different platform or place. Now I have it all in one spot. If you want to purchase something I made you can find it under the Shop section of this site. What to take a class? That is under the Classes section of this site. And if you want to find me on social media or join my newsletter that is also all on this site.

Website Design

Now if you are thinking “I am not a web designer! I don’t know how to do this and make a pretty site! I just want to make money with crafts and hobbies.” No worries! When you go to set up your site there are all kinds of templates to pick from. Find one you like and you can adjust it as needed. For my site, my daughter had just taken a college course on website design so instead of paying someone hundreds of dollars per hour to adjust the template I liked, I paid her $25 an hour to do it. You could reach out to friends, family or a local school to see if there is a graphic design student that wants to help you with your site and use it in their portfolio! If you want to see my daughter’s photography site you can find that HERE. Going with a free template will also work if you want to just start doing something. The main thing is to get up and running. Once you are having success you can pay someone to make it prettier later.

Now that I have my site, you can see on the main page I have my social media links. The Facebook one goes right to joining my group. Why did I link the Teach Me Cricut Design Space Facebook group instead of linking to my Facebook Business page? Good question! For me, I wanted to grow my group since that is where the most Facebook activity is. No one really goes to your Business page to see what is going on unless there is a major update. But people do like to hang out in Facebook groups.

Listing and Linking to your site

Next up, I went to all of my social media profiles and changed some of them to professional or business profiles. I made sure that there was a link to my website in my profile description information. You have to let people know that you have something to sell if you want to make money with crafts and hobbies.

I am going to go deeper into using social media in another post since that is a great way to connect with others, both people doing what you do and for finding customers. If you want to jump over to that post right now, you can click HERE. If you want follow me on social media or see how I linked my website to all of my various profiles, you can find that whole list of places HERE. Besides social media, I have also listed my website on Google My Business.

Do some research

Next, I started to do some research on what other bloggers were doing. How did they make money with crafts and hobbies? That is when I found out about BC Stack. The team there goes out and finds the best of the best in their industry, and gets them all together to show you how to get started. The great thing is instead of going to each industry expert to buy their course, BC Stack will get you a great bundle price to download all of the courses. Click on the image below to go to their site and sign up for the next stack release. By the way, I make a small commission when you use my link below, so thank you.

The BC Stack was actually a GREAT purchase for me. It allowed me to see what others are doing that is working. I think I got all of the info for less than $50 in July of 2020, and I am still learning from it. It opened me up to connections and help from other bloggers that were successful with what they were doing. All I had to do was follow their same steps they did for my topic.

From there, I started to connect with people on social media and really expand my reach. I have a whole list of tips and tricks for you on that topic also, but I am going to share those in another post. If you are ready to jump into those right tips right now, you can click HERE.

Get Started Now!

If you are just getting started and you want to learn from me then feel free to poke around my site and see what I am doing. Just change things up to make it fit your personal needs. Use me for inspiration! I know I do not know everything about blogging, but I am happy to share what I do know. You will also learn that if I do not have the answers I will send you to someone that does know. So if you are ready to take things to the next level and start to make money with crafts and hobbies I highly recommend clicking HERE and reserving your spot for the next BC Stack NOW!

Next up, social media and connect with others! Click HERE to jump to that post.

Selling your Crafts

If you are wondering how much to sell your had crafted items for and have always wished that there was an easy way to calculate how much to charge for your product then THIS is for you! The Crafty Cost Calculator is just for you!