The real reason your craft business isn’t making enough money is almost never your prices, your platform or how crowded the online space is. In most cases it comes down to the business model you have in place – and most creative business owners never see this until someone points it out to them.

Often creative business owners (like other business owners!) are so entrenched in the day to day grind that they struggle to see where the issues lie that are stopping the money coming in consistently enough.

My super power is being able to see what you sometimes can’t, and in this blog post I’ll cover some of the bottlenecks and gaps I see in creative businesses when I’m working 121 with clients.

Let’s dive in.

youR business model is working against you

Sometimes when we set out to build a creative business we can go about it in a slightly cock-a-hoop way without even realising.

It actually makes sense that we (often unknowingly) build creative businesses slightly back to front. After all, we have a creative hobby or passion that we decide we want to make some money from, we’ve likely already reached a great standard with that creativity, and so we decide to turn it into an online business.

We do so by bringing what it is we make to the online space, and we start sharing it with people in the hope that it is interesting and enticing enough that people will want to buy from us.

This is a bit of a back to front way of doing things. A more successful route to setting up a business to get to faster success is to figure out who we’re going to serve first, and then decide what it is that those people need from us the most. Then we create for those people with that need.

So to better position your craft business, it is important to:

a. clearly define who it is you actually want to serve (and the more you niche down the better)
b. understand what it is those people want most from a business like yours
c. create for the audience and their need

Example

Let’s say you love crochet, and it has been your hobby for years. You’ve been crocheting all sorts of gorgeous makes, and you’re pretty darn good at crochet, so much so you now design your own crochet patterns.

You decide you’re going to show up online and sell your patterns. So you start showing up on Instagram as your first online space. You’ve got stacks of patterns you can share – after all, you’ve been designing them for yourself for years.

You start pulling your catalogue of patterns out, and one week you’re sharing a pattern you’ve designed that’s for a gorgeous advanced level shawl, the next week you’re sharing an easy beginner pattern for a teddy bear, and the week after that you’re sharing a pattern for a vintage inspired table cloth.

It’s all a bit random. You’re just targeting crocheters as a whole, and sharing everything you’ve got.

What you’re doing is trying to serve an enormous ocean with a dilute message.. The lack of knowing the niche you serve, and what you’re specifically going to help them with, means your business and the patters you’re selling are not really speaking to any one.

You start to feel deflated because you’re not seeing any results. And that causes you to start questioning if your patterns are really any good (they are), or if the online space is too crowded (it isn’t), or if anyone will really be interested in what you sell (they will be if you get this right).

If you came to my live, free live business fix sessions I’d suggest you start to tighten your net. Choose one type of audience you’re going to speak to (for example beginner crocheters, or advanced crocheters). Decide what you’re going to be known for by that audience (perhaps focused on crochet clothing patterns, or on crochet toys, or on crochet home wares). Then consider the type of crochet pattern you’ll create in that pattern collection – will it be toys all made with eco yarn, or crochet home wares with a vintage or brightly coloured theme.

The point is clarity around these issues helps your audience connect better with you.

The creative ladies I work with who’ve had the most success in their businesses know the one person they’re serving, they know the core thing they’re serving to that person, and they have some sort of a ‘brand’ with their makes and their business overall.

why niching down makes it easier

Niching down like this makes it easier for people to decide if you’re for them. It also helps capture a community of people who love the whole style and brand of your creativity, and it also makes it easier for you to build and share consistent messaging around that one thing you do for one specific type of person.

If you struggle to get clear on who you should serve and how, you can get insight and feedback from me inside my free monthly business fix live sessions. Details about those lives are here.

what you’re choosing to sell

A creative business can make money in lots of different ways.

• You can sell finished physical products – shipped to door, sold at markets, fulfilled through print on demand. You can sell digital products – patterns, tutorials, templates, downloads.
• You can teach – workshops, online courses, memberships.
• You can blog and generate ad revenue.
• You can build a YouTube channel and start to get revenue from it
• You can run a membership.
• You can do a combination of all of the above and more.

Each of those business models has different income potential, different time demands, different audience requirements and different risk profiles.

The problem isn’t that one business model is better than another. The problem is that most creative business owners fall into a particular model by accident rather than choosing one deliberately – and then wonder why it isn’t working.

Not only does the business model have to work for you, it has to work for your audience too.

You need to be able to effectively manage the business model you choose, and your audience needs to be engaged with that particular type of model.

This doesn’t always happen.

In 121 coaching sessions with creative business owners it’s not unusual that early on I have to help the owner pivot with the model they’ve chosen. It’s either overwhelming them too much, they’re not able to be consistent with the entire model, or it’s not connecting with people and bringing enough money in.

More times than not better results lie inside a more simple business model. That means rather than choosing to be everywhere and doing all the things, you choose one model that you can manage and you go deep getting that model in front of the right audience.

I see all sorts of inconsistencies with business models keeping creative business owners stuck. There are many ways to run your business and sometimes this results in you chasing everything (online and off), it’s simply too much to manage to bring you good results.

you’re relying on the wrong platforms

I spent almost three years pinning daily on Pinterest before I had to admit to myself that I was in the wrong space. Hours of work every week for almost nothing in the way of return.

It’s an easy mistake to make. There’s so much noise out there. So many people telling us how these platforms can be amazing – and we dive into them because we feel that if we don’t, we run the risk of losing out on an audience there.

Pinterest is great for creative businesses. It’s great for some other businesses too (hair, beauty, fashion, finance, food, home decor etc.). Not so good for a business fixer like myself. Gah.

I know ladies who have invested time and effort in Instagram, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, Tik Tok and Pinterest all at once. And then got nowhere.

The issues are two fold.

1. You need to be sure that wherever you’re going to invest your time showing up, that there’s a willing and active audience for your niche in that space. Not just an audience who want to show up and chat. But an audience that wants to buy.
   
   I’ve had creative ladies in my community who’ve invested equal time in Instagram and Facebook, posting the exact same content to each every day. Many of them got the results on Facebook that they never achieved in the same way on Instagram. Yet so many people thing Facebook is dead. Wrong.
   
   I’ve also had ladies who’ve had a blog and others who’ve had a YouTube channel. Some have had great success with a blog, others with YouTube.
   
   All of these platforms can work if the right audience is there for your crafty business.
   
2. You can’t be everywhere. Even if your audience is. And especially if you’re a solopreneur. Those businesses that are posting everywhere all the time are ones with a team that can support that strategy. You’ll burn out trying, and still not get the results you want and need.
   
   It’ll be much better if you choose a couple of key spaces you can commit more time to. Choose spaces not on the basis of where you like to be, but where your audience is most active and engaged.
   
   When you start being more present in the best spaces for your business, and you use those spaces more deeply, it can lead to audience growth, more engagement, and more money in the bank.
   
   Trying to be everywhere is likely to bring you to your knees, and keep you broke.

you’re focused too much on the wrong things

This one might be a bitter pill to swallow! However it’s something I see pretty often when I’m looking at and working with crafty businesses.

You love to create, right? Of course you do. Understandably.

But there has to be a good balance between creating, and that word that makes lots of people squirm – selling.

If you already have a tonne of products available in your online store, but no-one ever really hears about them because you refuse to show up and sell, that’s likely to keep you broke.

It’s a real trap creatives fall in to – spending all their time making and none of their time selling.

Only today I had to bring this to the attention of the ladies I coach in a group live session. I asked how many were showing up and selling something every single week. A few raised hands. But even then when I went to look at one or two of those businesses, they’d managed to gather themselves to speak about a new product once over the course of 7 days.

It’s not enough. However much you don’t want to be, you are the marketer of your business. Your products need to be marketed to sell. Your audience needs to hear about your products regularly so they can made a decision to buy. It’s on you to make sure this happens.

You cannot rest on your laurels and hope Etsy or Ravelry will bring customers to you, or that the entire world will suddenly drop on your online store.

Every single week you should, at the top of your to do list this, have this one task: show up and sell this week. You might just find in doing so, you’ll start to see more money coming in.

THE BUSINESS ISN’T SAFE

A few weeks ago one of the ladies I coach reached out to me in distress because suddenly and without warning Etsy closed her store for an apparent violation.

There was no violation. She’s run that Etsy store for years and does so properly. However. The store was gone, without notice, and now, some weeks down the line her appeal has not yet made any difference.

She was selling daily on Etsy. You can imagine how devastating losing that store must have felt.

Fortunately she’s a savvy business owner, and has a back up website, so she can redirect her audience to that site to keep sales coming in.

It was a big hit to take though, and one that really hurt.

The moral of this story is that putting all your eggs in one basket is putting your business at risk. It doesn’t matter if it’s just one social space you’re relying on, or one marketplace platform like Etsy that you’re selling from. It’s not enough. You must protect your business at all costs.

This is why, as a bare minimum I recommend every female founder has in place:-

• A website (in addition to a marketplace platform if they have one)
• A mailing list (one of the only assets you will own that will safeguard your business)
• Two social media platforms (in case one goes awry)
• A long form content space (such as a blog, podcast or YouTube channel)
• Pinterest (if good for your niche)

I’ve already mentioned that you should not be everywhere. But there still needs to be enough layers in your business ecosystem to offer some protection so that when things go wrong, which they do, and more often than you might think, your business can survive.

you don’t have a real customer journey

This very much ties in to you creating more and more without any clear way of communicating all your offers to your audience.

Your primary goal should be to keep customers on a journey with you, buying multiple times over a duration.

One off sales will not grow a business. Every customer that comes to you and buys once then disappears, is an opportunity to make more money from that you’ve left on the table.

It’s always easier to sell to those who have already bought from you, than to keep chasing new customers every day.

So you should consider having a proper creative business customer journey in place, an example of which is below.

example

There are many variations of a customer journey that crafty business owners can introduce. The point is to make sure you have one in place. Here’s an example for a crochet business owner selling patterns:

• Free pattern → Customer finds a simple crochet pattern through a Pinterest pin or Instagram post. No sign-up needed. Just a nice freebie that makes her go “oh, I like this designer’s style.”
• Email opt-in on website for a pattern pack → She loved the free pattern, so she heads to the business owners website and pops her email in to the sign up box to get a bundle of 3 more free patterns. Now she’s on the business owner’s list.
• An email fires off to introduce a low-ticket single pattern → A one-off purchase, £4–8, for a design that sits well with the patterns already chosen. Low risk, easy yes.
• She purchases the single pattern and is immediately shown a pattern bundle as an upsell → She’s made a few of the designer’s patterns now and trusts the sizing and instructions, so goes ahead and adds the bundle to her cart.
• Some time later the customer receives an email with a special themed bundle that cannot be bought anywhere else (example: “Autumn Amigurumi Collection”) it has a discount that makes it a good deal over buying single patterns, and it pulls the customer in to another purchase.
• Further down the line the customer is told about the amazing membership or pattern club → She wants a steady stream of new designs without hunting for them one by one. A monthly sub gets her new patterns dropped every month, plus maybe a private Facebook group or Discord for support and finished-project shares.
• The customer is also shown a course or masterclass that can help her skills → She wants to level up her skills, not just buy more patterns. A paid class teaches a technique (colourwork, a tricky stitch, garment shaping) that she couldn’t get from a pattern alone – she jumps on board.

The customer now has the opportunity to make multiple purchases from the crochet business. And the business owner starts seeing more money coming in as a result.

Sadly, many crochet business owners stop anywhere between steps 1 and 3 above, and never get around to setting up email automations to help the customer move more deeply into a journey. They never send messages to customers to let them know how they can progress through a journey more deeply. Every skip like this leaves money on the table.

pricing

Pricing is one of the most talked about topics in creative businesses, and one of the most misunderstood.

Most creative business owners think they have a pricing problem. They don’t charge enough, they know it, and they feel stuck because they’re convinced their audience won’t pay more.

But here’s what I actually see when I dig into a creative business that isn’t making enough money. The pricing isn’t the problem. The business model is.

If you’re spending two hours making a physical product and selling it for £18, the answer is not to charge £25. The answer is to question whether a physical product that takes two hours to make should be the thing your business is built around at all — or whether a digital version of that same skill, sold once and downloaded a thousand times, might be a better fit.

If you’re giving away free patterns and getting traffic but no income, the answer is not to start charging for the free ones. The answer is to build the next step of your customers journey – offer a paid pattern, a bundle, a membership – so that the people who love your free work have somewhere to go next.

Pricing sits on top of your business model. Get the model wrong and no price point will ever feel right or make you enough money. Get the model right and pricing becomes much more straightforward.

the fix

If your craft business isn’t making enough money, here’s where to start.

Not with a new product. Not with a rebrand. Not with a new platform or more content or better photos or a different pricing structure.

Start with your business model. Get clear on what type of creative business you’re actually running, who you are running it for, what you are building for them that they want and need, and whether the way you’re spending your time matches that model.

Then ask yourself honestly – do you have a customer journey in place? Is there a clear path from free to paid, from one purchase to the next, from a new follower to a loyal buyer? If not, that is the thing to sort out before anything else.

You don’t need to overhaul everything in your business at once. You need to pick the one thing that’s most broken and fix that first. In my experience, for most creative business owners that one thing is clarity – clarity on who they serve, what they sell, and how they take a customer from finding them to buying from them more than once.

Get that right and everything else becomes easier.

i’ll help you fix your business for free

Every month I run a free live Business Fix session on Zoom, open to female business owners — coaches and creatives. We dig into what is actually keeping your business stuck and work out what to do about it.

No slides. No pitch. No waffle. Just a proper conversation about what is not working and how to fix it.

If your craft business is not making enough money and you want some straight talking input on where to start, come along.

Save your seat at the next Business Fix Live session here.