Last time, we looked at the no nonsense figures of how much money designers make from their patterns sold on LoveCrafts, Etsy and Ravelry. Making the most profit, doesn’t mean a platform is the best to use. Today we are sharing the pros and cons of each platform, so you can decide where best to focus your time and make money from your passion.
This post is also accessible in a video format, which is below.
Etsy
PROS
- Large audience with worldwide opportunity
- Audience expects to pay for services
- Can sell patterns digitally or postal
- Quick to set up a listing and listings can be cloned
- Can set up coupons + will push to emails.
CONS
- Lots of little fees, hard to keep track of how much you’re actually making. Very confusing. On one sale I had a fee for
- VAT: auto-renew sold, Processing fee, Transaction fee, Regulatory operating fee, VAT transaction 7p, VAT processing fee, Listing fee – auto renew
- Fees amount quite high
- Saturated market and even AI listing taking over
- Very SEO competitive and difficult if you don’t have that knowledge or costly to hire someone. Hard to just be seen.
- Listing fee which you have to pay if you sell or not and this can become expensive if you have a few listings.
Ravelry
PROS
- Aimed directly for fibre arts. Clearer for buyers to find what they want.
- Can mark pattern within lots of niches such as construction, ethnic designs, age and size and function such as hat or home wear.
- Can create a dedicated and loyal following of buyers
- Buyers can keep your pattern in a library and organise.
- Email support if struggling to set up
- Can create coupons
- Low selling fees
- Buyers are encouraged to upload their make and this is helpful to others.
- No listing fee
CONS
- Is becoming saturated
- Can be confusing to set up a listing
- Don’t always get a reply from email team-small team
- Some people go on there to filter to free patterns, so you feel obliged to create free work to gain customers
- Ravelry lost some of its audience a few years ago after a website re-design was inaccessible.
LoveCrafts
PROS
- Wide audience
- Both indie and commercial patterns
- Attracts audience as primary focus is selling wool and tools, so gives indie designers opportunity to be seen in a commercial setting
- Listings can be imported from ravelry, so nice and quick with just a few amendments.
- No listing fee
- Can link their wool to listing. This is another way to try and get noticed on their wool listings.
CONS
- Really saturated and select listings highlighted
- Pushes free patterns and audience might only come for this, which means creating work for free to get noticed
- Highest selling fees. Gives indie designers opportunity but actually geared towards the big sellers who can claim 20% VAT charge back.
- Buyer has to click on that specific yarn linked and you still might not show up, someone else might.
We’d be interested to hear your opinion of which platform you prefer to sell and buy on.
Little Miss Drop Stitch 