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Soukaina Collections Crochet Pattern Business Income and Traffic Report

Welcome to my traffic and income report for December 2019. This is the last report for 2019. I know, I know, I’m a little bit late, but I was so busy this month… I had many exams (I’m still in secondary school), and instead of crocheting as I should be, I was revising day and night! But overall, it was another great month for my crochet pattern business.

I didn’t make any new post for three weeks now, but the business is still doing good, I made many sales this month, and you know what? I really love gathering these numbers in my accounts analytics to find out how my crochet business is doing.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, if you make a purchase through one of my links, I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Before we continue, if it’s your first time on the Soukaina Collection crochet pattern blog, you may want to have a look at my backstory…I started crocheting and selling my finished crochet handmade items in the real world two years ago (you can learn more on my About page), and in February 2019, my father advised me to start a blog and create my own patterns.

I then registered my domain with my father’s SiteGround web hosting (after a long brainstorming session that lasted several days in order to find my domain name, but I think it was worth it), and I learned how to create a blog with WordPress, and how to drive traffic to my blog with social media and SEO.

This is how my brand Soukaina Collections was born.

Today, a few months later, my crochet blog gets close to four thousand monthly visitors, my Etsy shop (crochet patterns for babies) gets hundreds of (happy) monthly visitors and most importantly, I make many sales, I make some Internet money (and growing). I’m super happy with my results, and a few months ago, I would never imagine that it would be my turn to write monthly income reports for my readers and (soon) subscribers (when I find some time to sign up to an email service provider)!

Actually, I really started working on my blog since July 2019. That means that I’m really working on my crochet business for six months now.

Why I’m writing an income report?

Income reports are well known in the blogosphere, and I’m doing this for several reasons.

First, that was suggested by my father, and he knows what he is doing when it comes to market an online business (he started doing business online in 2007).

Secondly, the purpose of these reports is to teach my friends, readers, what I do to market my crochet pattern business online.

Lastly, I strongly believe that putting my results and progress online will motivate me even more because I actually have to put some real numbers for you to see. Plus it may increase traffic to the blog a little bit as well (I’m wondering if people are still reading those income reports? Will see.)

Ok, so I plan to publish a new income report here every month for at least a few months.

What can you expect to see here?

My results, failures, and progresses.

You’ll get some insights, experiments, and strategies that may help you to create or grow your own crochet, knitting or craft DIY Handmade business. Before you read further, I think you’d want to know how I’m going to start making some money.

I plan to make money on my blog with affiliate marketing (Amazon and other affiliates), Ads (I think I’m going to try Adsense soon, or I may just wait until I reach 25,000 sessions and apply with Mediavine), and as you probably guessed: selling patterns on Etsy, Ravelry, Lovecrafts and anywhere I can.

I will add MailerLite email software soon because getting your email marketing right is really, really important when you are selling online.

Online You can choose to go with paid traffic, or you can decide to go the “free” route (well, it’s not really free because your time has a cost), with SEO and Social media. You can decide to focus on selling paid patterns or giving your patterns for free and make money from advertising (Adsense, Mediavine, adthrive, etc.) and affiliate marketing or do a mix of both.

This is my complete business plan (more on how these different strategies are working for me below). Oh, and I want to stress out that there is no “one size fits all” way of marketing your online business. Like in a real brick and mortar business, everyone runs his business as he wants.

In this report, you will only find the online traffic and income side of my crochet business. I put the offline part on hold anyway. I didn’t sell any finished crochet handmade items offline lately because I’m focusing on my online business.

Ok, enough said…

Here’s what you want to see:

1) Money:

Income: $51.60 (Last Month: $55.53)

Etsy Shop: $51.60 (Last Month: $54)
Amazon (affiliates): $0 (Last month: $1.53)

Expenses:

Etsy Seller Fees: $9.27 (Last month: $10.00)
SiteGround Hosting: Free

Profit: $42.33 (Last Month: $45.53)

2) Traffic:

Important Growth Metrics (Unique Visitors):

2,495 Visits (Unique User)
4,295 Pageviews

(Last Month: 2,135 Visits & 4,644 Pageviews)

Traffic for each main source:

Google: 1011 (Last Month: 489)
All Free Crochet: 679 (Last Month: 586)
Ravelry: 256 (Last Month: 231)
Facebook: 134 (Last Month: 319)
Pinterest: 414 (Last Month: 304)
Instagram: 0 (Last Month: 0)
Twitter: 1 (Last Month: 3)
Other: (Last Month: 203)

My Comments:

1) Money:

I was so busy during December that I only made one blog post for my latest crochet baby dress. Overall, traffic increased a little bit, but with only one post for the whole month, it’s not that bad.

Well, this month I don’t have many things to say because I didn’t do anything new.

Etsy Shop: I now have twenty-four items in my Etsy shop, I’ve added a few bundles. My Etsy traffic is doing well, I got 575 visitors this month on Etsy alone. I’m now in the process of adding links to Etsy in every single blog post. I’m going to update my older blog posts and add a few more internal links as well, I’ve read that this helps improving SEO. As for the money, last month was better, but this is because I only made one post this month. I was too tired to crochet between two exams.

Amazon: Hmm, no Amazon commissions this month. I’m really thinking to start with Google Adsense to add a couple of dollars to my monthly income, but I don’t want my blog to look like an ad factory. I think it can’t be worst for zero lol.

2) Traffic:

I must say that my traffic didn’t increase that much this month. I only posted one blog post (my baby dress).

Google: the search engines seem to love my blog and designs. My Princess Sally baby dress is now in Google images results for the keyword crochet baby dress free pattern and a few other keywords. I even saw it at the top of Google results on the first page in the images! That’s really awesome.

All Free Crochet: traffic increased, I think it’s because of the new Laila baby dress. I really need to create more of these cute baby dresses and complete baby sets.

Facebook: traffic dropped a little bit because I haven’t been active there this month.

Ravelry: same as Facebook, a little less traffic this month. Some people tried my patterns, and many have some of my designs in their queue. As for sales, I didn’t make any. Ravelry send me some nice traffic, so I can’t complain. Later on, I’ll try to create a design exclusively for Revelry (and Etsy) to see if I can make a couple of sales there.

Pinterest: traffic is increasing. I’m still working on my Pinterest strategy (I may write about how I promote my blog on Pinterest soon). As I said before, Pinterest is a long term strategy. So I need to be patient. What’s important is to pin consistently, daily and take great pictures. I’m trying my best to raise my game on these two. I’ve registered with a free Tailwind account as well and registered with five Tailwind Tribes. I like it, there’s a community of crocheter there, and people save my pins, so it’s working, and I’m super happy with that! I’m still learning the ropes, but what I’ve done so far seems to work. I need to create more beautiful images.

Overall, December was a great month for Soukaina Collections, I think I ‘m now in the growing phase of the business, I really need to be active and do a little bit MORE of everything.

3) Goals:

Let’s see if I have reached my goals for December…

Increase overall traffic: slightly increased.
Publish 10 new blog posts: I only made one new blog post this month!
Reach 3000 sessions: I did, 3270 sessions!
More Etsy sales: Almost the same amount of sales!
Make more affiliate commissions: I failed again this one!
Get an email marketing automation software: I was too busy to even think about it!
Focus on the Soukaina brand: I did, I refined my branding strategy or my positioning in the market, now instead of creating crochet design for babies, kids, women, men, for the home, etc., I changed the descriptions on my Etsy shop and my Pinterest account: I create modern crochet patterns for babies. This is clear, I’m not trying to create every kind of designs for everyone under the sun, but I do baby designs. This is what I do and what I want to be known for.

My main goal for January is: Create a new baby dress or maybe a complete baby outfit, focus on the Soukaina Collection brand, grow the business, and most importantly, I want to make my customers happy with lovely designs.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my report.

If you have any questions or comments, just write below, and don’t forget to share this post on Facebook or Pinterest!