A few questions for the pattern designers:

[kestrel5287]

ok, I am thinking of writing up some of my patterns and attempting to sell them to put into a fund for the baby on the way. So I have a few questions for pattern designers:

 

1. How do you decide what to price your patterns at?

2. If you've had your patterns officially published, how did you go about submitting them, and is there a general pay rate or is it varied depending on the publication?

3. What type of patterns seem to sell the best for you? (eg. bags, hats, scarve, kitchen items, etc.)

4. How do you distribute your patterns when selling online, via email, snail mail or do you make a PDF file?

5. Do you do any kind of advertising for your site? If so, has it been successful/what was the most successful?

6. Do you have anymore tips or advice for someone who is just starting out?

[knottyappletree]

I'm struggling with a lot of the same kind of questions. If you go to http://www.gettingloopy.com you'll find that she (Mary Beth Temple), hosts a blog talk radio station every week. She interviews professional crochet designers. You can call in questions directly to the designers or join the chat room. I just e-mailed Mary Beth a couple of days ago to request a show on: the business end of designing, publishing books, how much income to expect etc.....

She e-mailed back and said she loved the idea and she was going to try to put together a one hour show. Although, she said it may take awhile to put it all together. Feel free to send your questions to her, I'm sure she'd appreciate the input, she may even cover them in the upcoming show. The next show will be this Tuesday, times vary with time zones.

 

P.S. Congrats on your pregnancy!!!!!

[crochetsal]

Krystal, I take into account how much time the pattern took to create, the finished size and difficulty level of the piece, and also what similar type patterns (ie: afghan, difficulty level) are being listed as when pricing my patterns, though I have seen some that are a bit higher than what I would ask.

It's hard to tell which type sell more for me, since there's a variety. I would say dolls and toys, afghans, kitchen and holiday stuff are the bigger ones.

I do offer snail mail patterns, but rarely get requests for such. When sending via email, I send as PDF's.

I've done advertising a couple of times. The first was a small ad in Crochet World. Surprisingly, this didn't seem to increase traffic to my site, usually when I read a magazine, I tend to visit most of the sites advertised. The next time was just a classified type in Crochet World where they list web sites, it didn't do much for traffic either.

The best advertising (and I'm not just saying this) is the Banner ads, and even the Marketplace here which is very reasonable. That seems to have increased traffic. And now with the changes Amy and Donna have done, you can list sales and have a small picture in your signature which you can change at any time.

 

Sally