Long, long ago, you decided you were going to start a crochet business.
As a crochet business owner, one of the first questions you asked yourself was: “where should I try to sell my stuff?”
Etsy?
To friends (or strangers) through Instagram?
Farmer’s markets and craft fairs?
Lots of people out there are trying to tell you where the best place is to sell crochet stuff.
Here’s the sad, but honest and helpful, truth: it’s not the same place for everyone.
The best place for you to sell your crochet stuff is unique depending on:
- what you make
- where you live
- your personal sales style and table display
If you have ever sold anything, you know this is true: you attract a certain kind of customer. And the crochet artist set up right across from you at the farmer’s market attracts DIFFERENT customers. And even though you’re both “crochet” people, you both still sell stuff. To different audiences.
What does that mean for you? If someone out there is telling you “here’s the best place to sell your stuff,” be wary.
You can’t just copy someone’s strategy and get the same results! You have to experiment for yourself.
So here’s the most efficient way to experiment so that you work out all the kinks as fast as possible:
- If you haven’t already, download this cheat sheet for new ideas of where to set up. You’re probably missing lots of opportunities around you, and most of them DON’T REQUIRE VENDOR FEES.
- Buy this tracker and track your sales.
- Look over your log, and only then, it will be OBVIOUS which gigs are best for you and your personal offerings.
I would have NEVER thought my best-selling item at a rock climbing gym would be blueberry and lemon amigurumi keychains!! Seriously, who would have predicted that?! Wouldn’t you think, like I did, that chalk bags and hacky sacks would be the bestsellers?
I only realized this from trial and error, AND careful tracking of my sales. If I was just trying to remember off the top of my head what I sold and where, I wouldn’t be able to tell you accurately. (Or, if I was so blindly stuck on selling chalk bags at rock gyms, I wouldn’t have been open to the truth.)
You have to record your sales. And then, every once in a while, look at them as a whole.
Here’s another really cool thing I’ve noticed after starting to track my own sales data: Week nights are better for me at climbing gyms than weekends!! Who would have guessed that?
If you had asked me before I tracked my sales when I thought they would be highest, I would have guessed weekends. I would imagine that weekends would be busier and therefore give me more traffic, and more sales.
But even if that were true, more traffic doesn’t equal more sales.
More relevant traffic gives you more sales.
So, who knows why my sales are better on weeknights versus weekends? Maybe it’s a different crowd on the weekends who comes to climb, people who aren’t as interested in shopping.
It honestly doesn’t even matter. The result is that I don’t spend a lot of my time going to set up on weekends: I spend that time with my family instead.
So, because I tracked my sales with this tracker, with ALL of the details, I found out that rock gyms on Wednesday and Thursday nights, selling fruit-themed items give me the best income for my precious time spent sitting at a table. I’m talking a couple hundred bucks for 2 hours.
And, you already know this, that’s probably not going to be true for you.
So here’s what you have to do:
- Take your stuff around to different places, on different days of the week and for different types of events.
- Track what sells, how, and where.
This tracker makes it a breeze to keep up with the tons of factors that predict better sales.
Dear friend, start using this tracker NOW. I use it for my business every day. It works with Google Sheets, so you can access it on your phone and quickly fill it in right after you tear down, spending only a couple of minutes after each gig.
It’s so easy to forget or ignore the actual numbers and go for the events and markets that are screaming at you on Instagram to be a vendor with them, and then charge you 200 bucks (i.e. the low-hanging fruit where you probably won’t make back your vendor fee).
Seriously, do your business a favor, try some alternative options for vending from the cheat sheet, and then start tracking your sales.