Learn how to make real money blogging about crochet | The Unraveled Mitten

We went over how to start your blog and then we talked about how to write the perfect blog post and now we are going to talk about what you really want to know. How do you make REAL money with your new crochet blog.

*this post contains affiliate links, if you click through and make a purchase I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. 

I am sure if you searched blogging on Pinterest lately you have seen those blog posts that start off something like “I made $10,462 in my first week blogging and you can too!” Those posts drive me CRAZY because for the average blogger starting out that is just not going to happen.

It takes time, patience and little bit of luck to grow a blog into a money-making machine. I have been doing this for almost 2 years and I make a good part time income from my blog and I think that is AWESOME.

The one thing to remember is, don’t get caught in that comparison trap. We are all in different stages of our business and we all took different paths to get where we are.

Let’s get started.

There are infinite ways to make money online these days but we are going to cover: ads on your blog, affiliate income, selling digital pdf crochet patterns and creating paid crochet courses.

Ads on your blog

This is the primary income source from my blog. Lets get some vocab out of the way first.

Pageview: when a person visits a certain page on your blog, it counts as a pageview. So you’re here looking at this page on my blog, that equals 1 pageview. If you jump to the other 2 articles in this blogging series that is 2 more pageviews.

RPM: This stands for “Revenue per Mille.” Mille is french for 1000. Ad networks use this number to determine how much you get paid.

You get paid based on how many pageviews you have on your site any given day. Basically the more people that visit your site and look at your ads, the more money you make. So if your RPM was $5 and you have 1000 pageviews on your site that day you would make $5.

When you are first starting out I recommend applying for Google AdSense (make sure you have content on your site and a privacy policy in place before applying or they may decline you…. Ask me how I know!). It’s a little bit of a pain in the butt because you have to place all the ads on your site yourself and the RPM’s are dismal so you don’t make much money but it gets your visitors used to seeing ads on your site. That means less complaints when you move to a bigger ad company and have more ads.

I use Mediavine for my ads. I don’t have to do anything, they place all the ads for me. My RPM’s with Mediavine have been in the $13-$15 range since I signed up. Which is really awesome because with AdSense I was averaging only a couple dollars. Signing up with Mediavine was a turning point in terms of income for me.

They do have minimum requirements though, you need to have 25k sessions (about 30K pageviews) in one month. You can find this number is your google analytics. If you don’t have google analytics, get it, I promise you need it.

Affiliate Income

We talked a little bit about this in our last two posts.  Affiliate income works by signing up for a brand’s affiliate program and promoting their product via a link on your blog. When people click on the link and make a purchase you get paid a small commission! Awesome right!

I use affiliate links in my intro to my patterns (like if I am talking about the yarn I used or my new crochet hook) and in my pattern material list. Affiliate links are not a huge money maker for me but every little bit helps, especially when your just starting out.

Amazon Associates is a great place to start with affiliate links. You can find other affiliates usually by going to the brands website and scrolling all the way down to the footer, typically there is a link there with their affiliate program information.

Selling Digital Downloads of Your Crochet Patterns

My crochet patterns are all free on my blog but I offer a printable PDF version of them for a small fee on Ravelry. Sometimes people want a nice printable version without all the ads. I also spend time formatting them so the print nicely and I also use a large font size so they are easy to read.

Having these PDF’s available is quite lucrative! I’ve made up to a few hundred dollars on these a month!! So it is definitely worth the extra 15-30 minutes it takes to format a PDF and put it on Ravelry.

Typically I price these at $2.50. I have a couple that are $5.00 but they include sizes that are not available on the blog.

I make my PDF’s in Microsoft Word by clicking File > Export > Create PDF. Its easy peasy.

I place links in my blog post stating there is a printable ad-free pdf version available for purchase on Ravelry or wherever you choose to sell them.

Ravelry is a must have, in my opinion, and then there is also Etsy, Craftsy, Love Crochet and probably more. I and a lot of the other bloggers I know get the most of their patterns sales from Ravelry.

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Making Money by Creating Courses

This is a new thing popping up in a lot of other niches but there is only a few people doing it in Crochet! I think we will be seeing alot more of this in our niche in the next few years.

Bethany from Whistle and Ivy just launched her plaid course (yes this is my affiliate link 😉) and of course there are Craftsy Classes about crochet too!

In a paid courses you usually get exclusive patterns and video instruction and maybe even some bonuses. You can make these courses yourself using your video setup and know-how and then you can host them on sites like Teachable, Thinkific and Skillshare.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

The sky is really the limit in terms of making money with your crochet blog, you don’t know until you try it out. If you have money making idea for your blog, do your research and also don’t forget to ask your audience what they want to see or if they would be interested in your idea.

When it comes to making income from your blog it is best not to put all your eggs in one basket. It is going to be more beneficial for you in the long run to pull income from a few different sources rather than relying on just ads, or just affiliate income.

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How to make real money with your crochet blog! Learn how I make income for my family doing a job I love! | The Unraveled Mitten

I hope you’ve been enjoying this series!! Is there any other ways you make money with your crochet blog?

Next up we are going to go over how to actually drive traffic to your blog! I saved the best for last, this post will be packed with tons of info.

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5 Comments

  1. Thank you, this is all great advice as I am a new blogger. You say in this blog that you were going to do a blog on how to do SEO and drive traffic to a blog site. I can’t find that anywhere on your site? Please advise 🙂

  2. Thank you for the advice. I’ve been wanting to do this for years and also I would like to design patterns as I’ve always made my own up. I came across your blog through Instagram. x

    1. Thank you so much for these. They have been very helpful. I would like to start a blog of my own but have a question, how to do make money if I’m not making the patterns? If I’m just offering free patterns from other people just in my own color patterns or few tweaks? Thank you.

  3. Hi Heather!
    Thanks so much for the shoutout!
    We’re so glad that you’re happy with your switch to Mediavine! We know we’re pretty darn happy to have you.
    We’re here to help you optimize your site in all the ways, so please check out our blog and help docs and reach out to us with any questions: publishers@mediavine.com
    — Susannah at Mediavine

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