Guest Author - Kate Pullen

If you are a crochet designer who has been sharing crochet patterns freely, after a while you may wish to consider charging for some of your patterns.

There are many reasons why a crocheter may want to do this. These include:

• Charging for your time and expertise - Designing and publishing crochet patterns takes time and expertise. While it is nice to share some of these freely with fellow crocheters, many people also need to cover their costs and charging for patterns is the best way to do this.


• Covering website hosting fees – It costs to simply keep a website online. While it is possible to find low cost or free website hosting deals, these often include pop-ups or other kinds of advertising which can sometimes not give a professional image to a website.


• Becoming professional – if a crocheter is looking to become a professional crochet pattern designer, which means that they are making a living – or at least part of a living from their designs, then charging for designs and getting the price right is important.


• Covering costs – websites such as eBay, Etsy and others allow for products to be sold at very low cost, however the listing fees can soon add up.

Where to Sell Crochet Patterns
There are many places where crochet patterns can be sold, both on and off line. Some of these are:

• Yarn stores – local yarn stores are often pleased to offer patterns that have been created by a local person, particularly if they are unusual patterns that offer something a little different. It is important that the designs use yarns stocked by the store.


• Personal websites – it is simple to offer patterns available for paid for download from a website. Pdf files are the easiest foe people to work with and electronic payment schemes such as PayPal make taking payment from people all over the world easy and straightforward.


• eBay, Etsy and Lulu – websites such as these are great places to sell patterns and it is possible to do so quickly and easily. The benefit of selling through these large websites is that they have large international memberships and will reach a vast potential audience for the independent designer. While a fee or commission is taken by the website, this can be a good way to start selling patterns and designs.
  
  Selling crochet patterns and designs can be a rewarding and fun experience.