Optimise your patterns for sale
Published on 11 October 2022 6 min read
Looking to boost your pattern sales? From being featured on our social media platforms to Pattern Of The Month and becoming an affiliate, check out this handy guide packed full of great tips on how to optimise your patterns!
Featuring your patterns on our platforms
Social media
We have social accounts for LoveCrafts on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, with a thriving community of makers. They love seeing new patterns and inspiration, so we try to feature loads of designer patterns across our channels, every single day! We also occasionally run social takeovers with makers on Instagram, especially during Indie June!
Make sure you’re following us on Instagram and Facebook and that you’re tagging us when you release new patterns, that way we’re more likely to see your awesome designs and you have a better chance of being featured, especially if it looks like the kind of thing our community loving! You can also use the #LoveCrafts as we're regularly featuring makers from here too.
We also like to make sure the patterns have all the right details, including high quality images, so that the customer has the best experience possible. Check out our tips on photography and optimising your patterns.
Find us on social media!
Email newsletter
Over a million crafters receive our emails across the world, so having your patterns featured in an email is a fantastic way to boost your sales!
Most of our emails have a balance of fantastic offers and inspiration – some of our customers love great promotions so they can make more for less, so we’re often sourcing the best deals from our suppliers! Other makers are looking for ideas and inspiration for their next project, which is where you come in! We’re always featuring patterns from our designers and we love hearing about any patterns you think our community will love! For the best chance of being featured, keep us updated about new collections and releases you have coming up.
Keep an eye out for more opportunities around seasonal periods like Christmas and Easter too! We recommend uploading your patterns on site with plenty of time before the big event, and don’t forget to optimise them as much as possible for that extra search juice from Google!
Featuring your patterns with Pattern of The Month
We see so many beautiful new designs uploaded every month by indie designers, so we introduced Pattern of the Month as a way to give the new patterns (and their designers) more love!
How it works
Our team of makers pick 10 newly posted patterns, for both knitting and crochet, that have caught our eyes each month. We’ll then add them to a LoveCrafts collection on which our makers can then ‘Favourite’ to vote for.
What turns our eye you might be wondering? Well, the team takes into account: “makeability” of the pattern, quality of photography, seasonality and we like to make sure to cover a range of skill-levels and garment types with the selection.
Winners
The winning designer (one for each craft) will get a dedicated feature for their pattern in an email newsletter the following month, plus some promotion on our social media accounts. We’ll also add a special ‘Pattern of the Month’ badge to their pattern’s photo on site for the following month. Yippee!
Past winners of Pattern of the Month have experienced a huge increase in sales as a result of the extra exposure the competition brings.
Our affiliate programme
Anyone with a website, blog, social network, email newsletter or any other kind of online traffic source can earn more by redirecting customers to LoveCrafts by signing up for our free Affiliates programme:
Sign up/login to be a LoveCrafts affiliate here.
You can earn up to 15% commission on all orders that you send through to us!
How it works
It’s really straightforward! The process is as follows:
- Once you’ve signed up, you’ll get a special affiliate url that’s unique to you
- You can then link to us, on your website, blog, forum, email or social media using that special link
- Once somebody clicks on your affiliate link, they end up on LoveCrafts and we track what happens afterwards
- If they place an order within 30 days of clicking, without coming to our site via one of our own ads, email or an organic search, then the order will be registered within your account
- On the 25th of every month, we then pay out all of the commissions earned, once you reach a minimum of £20 ($27) in earnings.
Why you should join
- High conversion rates – our site is easy to use, with great prices and regular offers
- 30 day cookie window – plenty of time for your referrals to place an order with us
- High commission rates
- Regular monthly commission payments
- An easy to use affiliate portal
- Regular promotions just for our affiliates
- Bonus commission offers, rewards and competitions
Your community profile
Our community is really the beating heart of LoveCrafts. Where makers share their projects, provide inspiration for others, and follow friends and designers.
You automatically have a profile on the LoveCrafts Community when you create a designer account with us; however, it’s a good idea to spend a few minutes updating the details there and checking in with your followers. Why? The community is a great place for customers to get to know you and your brand a bit better, see more of your designs, and engage with you directly (should you want to).
By this, we mean an active profile is one which has a photo and a bio, with regular projects added, is following others, and is favouriting other projects, yarns, patterns, and comments. It is an opportunity for you to develop your own brand on LoveCrafts, and an opportunity for your customers to engage directly with you. The more active you are, the more you will appear in their feed! It’s ideal if your customers can find you and your patterns as easily as possible.
What can you do with your profile?
You can request feedback on ideas for new patterns, colourways, or projects, gauging interest before you publish in order to maximise sales.
You can comment on projects made from your patterns and encourage feedback from your followers — don’t underestimate how important (and flattering!) that is to your customers! Your encouragement is key to increasing the number of projects for your patterns – and remember, projects using this pattern appear on the pattern page (see example here), and the more projects a pattern has, the more likely it is to sell.