Accountant Sells $20,000 in Knitting Kits

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Today's story features a DIYer who made $20,000 in 2020, selling knitting kits on Etsy. Why did she succeed when so many other craft sellers struggle? Well, here's a clue right up front. That's what we're gonna focus on in the episode. There are tens of thousands of hand knit items on Etsy.

And while there are plenty of buyers, which is good, there are also a lot of sellers. So what does that suggest to you? Well, to me, it suggests the old adage about the gold rush. And the gold rush, if you really wanted to get rich, or at least you wanted a guaranteed profit, you shouldn't try to strike gold. You should sell shovels to prospectors.

You should be the person who's positioned to succeed no matter what happens. So in this case, many of the people purchasing knitting kits, they're just new crafters learning to knit. They're not necessarily aspirational sellers, although I think a lot of them would be. But the point is that they aren't just collectors. They aren't just someone who wants to buy hand knit items.

Totally different audience, different market. And as you might guess, the accountant featured in this story got smart and decided to sell to those new crafters. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. In this quick action-packed story, we're gonna learn about how the accountant made this work and what you might be able to take away from it as well.

All right, stay tuned. That story is coming right up. [Music]

When Tracy Lee was a kid, her mom taught her to knit so she wouldn't be bored. She picked up the hobby again in college. She decided to try selling her handiwork.

Now this was the summer of 2011, when Etsy was just starting to take off as a platform for selling handmade goods. Tracy launched a shop called Rams Girl Design. With a stockpile of scarves already made, she spent less than $50 to get started, mostly on yarn. She already had a laptop and digital camera and there were no initial startup fees, just a 20 cent listing fee for each item. Even though the financial investment was small, she made a much bigger time investment, learning how to sell physical items online and how to optimize her listings for search results.

This investment has paid off. Throughout the years, she's regularly made an extra five figures a year from her side project. And in 2020, she made $20,000. The biggest key has been a big switch she made in what she sold. You see Rams Girl Design started out selling Tracy's hand knit items, but it expanded into knitting patterns a few years later.

Then she added knitting kits and fiber art swag like tote bags and mugs printed with cheeky sayings. The knitting kits in particular have been a huge part of Tracy's success, especially during the pandemic. Crafting tools in general were popular during lockdown because people were looking for something to do at home and she believes they'll continue to sell well. These kits generally contain everything a beginning knitter needs to get started. Yarn, knitting needles, a pattern and a cotton project bag.

Quality materials and photos are another factor in her success. Tracy just uses her cell phone for most photos and video, but she has a professional light setup to make everything look great. And for her hand knit items, the defining feature is their soft texture. She's picky about yarns and constantly complimented on how soft everything is. Tracy works as an accountant during the day.

So the knitting business has given her a creative outlet and pushed her out of her comfort zone. She's learned new skills like product photography and design. In addition to these new skills and new challenges, the side hustle has also increased her financial security. Tracy and her husband are in the middle of the adoption process and the extra income has covered many of the costs, some of which were unexpected. Like many retail businesses, Tracy's sales tend to be seasonal with the biggest months in the fourth quarter and early first quarter.

July is usually the worst, bringing in around $500, but December peaks at around $6,000, thanks to all the holiday purchasing. Tracy taught herself how to market on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok. She spends about $50 a month on paid ads, but plans to grow that amount this year. She admits that trying to be a jack of all trades has kept her growth a bit slower than it might've been. In retrospect, she says she probably would have hired some experts earlier on in the process.

However, she's just brought on a social media manager and with the time saved, she hopes to work on self-publishing her first knitting pattern book. [Music]

So the kits are key in so many ways because you can build out a system for making them. First of all, like it's a lot simpler to make the same thing over and over, or maybe a few variations of it, a few options, than it is to constantly make custom handmade items. So it's easier for you, but it's also more desirable for a lot of buyers, as you can see. And actually I was thinking about this myself because I've been getting into plants lately and I just bought a seed kit from a small business called plantflix.com.

I don't know the people behind it and they're not a sponsor. I just like their website. I like what they were offering. I was like, oh, this is really cool. This beginner's seed kit is gonna send me all the seeds, gonna send me a tiny little greenhouse and all the instructions I need to grow some seeds, hopefully.

Well, I should come back and let you know what happens because I'll take back my endorsement if it doesn't work out. But so far, so good. So the lesson is there's often more than one market for something, or on a large platform like Etsy or any other really, there are multiple groups of buyers. And I think it's actually much easier to find a market like what Tracy has done than to find people who are looking for those specific custom items. Now, of course it depends on what you want to make, but I would say if we consider our archives of more than 1,700 episodes so far, the most successful sellers tend to be selling something that they can make over and over.

Some exceptions, but that is the rule. All right, I'll leave you with that today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. To find the show notes for today's episode, including links to Tracy's website, anything else I mentioned in the episode, just go to sidehustleschool.com/17021702. Thank you for tuning in today.

I hope you'll do something to get closer towards a goal you believe in, and I hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.