Ready to make some extra money from your knitting skill and don’t know where to start? Wondering about how to start test knitting for someone? Have the patience to teach and inspire people to knit?
We all need to start from somewhere, and here is a 5 step process to get you going.
Step 1:
Make a list of skills you have and things you can do
- Can you help editing (as in visual editing) knitting patterns so that the patterns are easy to read and look good?
- Can you proofread and edit knitting patterns?
- Can you test knit and if so, what knitting techniques would you prefer?
- Can you proofread and edit knitting related articles and blog posts?
- Are you fluent in knitting charts? If so, can you offer to translate charts into written instructions and vice versa?
- Can you offer your help if someone can’t find a mistake in their knitting projects?
- Can you teach someone to knit?
- Are you good at maintaining Etsy store or a Ravelry account?
- Can you help with different tedious tasks knitters need to do like seaming, blocking, weaving in ends, sewing zippers, attaching buttons, preparing, etc?
Step 2:
Choose the best of the best from that list.
Imagine doing it day by day, from sun up to sun down… You have to enjoy the task, right? Right.
Pick your 3 most favorite tasks and move on to Step 3.
Step 3:
Come up with different ideas, who might need your selected services.
You can try Google search for this.
Here’s something to get you going…
Most commonly offered service is test knitting. Who would need it?
- yarn companies who publish their own free and paid patterns
- knitting pattern companies who sell patterns
- individual designers
These same people might also need proofreading, editing, maintaining Etsy and/or Ravelry. They also might need help with chart generations and/or written instructions.
Now that you have a list of people who might want your services (this is called your “target market” or “your ideal customers” by the way), you need to think where to find them.
Step 4:
Make a list of places where you can find these people.
Come on, you’re a knitter – think. Again, I’ll help you start…
- What’s your favorite yarn company?
- Where do you get your knitting patterns free or paid?
- Who’s your favorite knitting designers?
- What knitting blogs and sites do you visit?
- What’s your favorite yarn shop?
Hint: think “Ravelry” (it’s a knitting gold mine)
Step 5:
Time to get busy and start contacting
This is the hardest part. I don’t plan to fool you like it was super easy for me. While the task is simple, it’s not easy to just reach out to people.
But you have to do it. How bad do you want it? Think of why do you want to do this, and is your “why” strong enough?
It was for me. And although I received a lot of “no”s, it was still a great experience. Knitters are basically very nice 🙂
Just draft your initial email saying (shortly) who you are, and why you’re contacting. Keep in mind that someone on the other end might be extremely busy, so keep the text as short as possible. If you don’t get a response in few days, send a follow-up email (yes, it’s even harder to do than the first email) – this means that you’re serious, and you mean business.
Tip: make sure you don’t have any grammar errors in your email (I use Grammarly for that). It’s kind of bad if you have a mistake in your writing, but you’re offering editing services for example 🙂
I hope this post gave you some ideas how you can get started and earn some extra income from your knitting skill.
I wish you all the success and happiness 🙂
