Soukaina Collections Crochet Pattern Business Income and Traffic
Welcome to my new income report for November 2019. As a reminder, last month, I made my first sale on Etsy AND my first affiliate commission as well. That was a great month…
I really don’t know what makes me happier, my first commission and my first crochet pattern sale or what happened in November? It was a really great month for Soukaina Collections. The business is growing, slowly but surely. I’ve reached my goals two months in a row, yay!
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.
Why do I write an income report?
I love gathering these numbers in my accounts analytics to find out the health of my business, and I love to see it growing day after day, like a little tree!
Before we start, if it’s your first time on the Soukaina Collection crochet patterns and handmade blog, here is the 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). I also 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, ten months later, I’m driving more than three thousand visitors to my blog, my Etsy shop (crochet patterns for babies) gets hundreds of monthly visitors and most importantly real sales, I make some Internet money (and growing). I’m super happy with my results. 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 register to an email service provider.)
Please note that I really started working on my blog since July. That means that I’m really working on my crochet business for five months now.
Why do I write income reports?
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 handmade 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 6 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 haven’t sell any finished crochet handmade items offline lately because I’m focusing on my online business.
Ok, enough talking…
Here’s what you want to see:
1) Money:
Income: $55.53 (Last Month: $31.19)
Etsy Shop: $54 (Last Month: $24.30)
Amazon (affiliates): $1.53 (Last month: $6.89)
Expenses:
Etsy Seller Fees: $10.00 (Last month: $5.56)
SiteGround Hosting: Free
Profit: $45.53 (Last Month: $25.63)
2) Traffic:
Important Growth Metrics:
2,135 Visits (Unique User)
4,295 Pageviews
(Last Month: 1,932 Visits & 3,901 Pageviews)
Traffic for each main source:
Google: 489 (Last Month: 504)
All Free Crochet: 586 (Last Month: 852)
Ravelry: 231 (Last Month: 297)
Facebook: 319 (Last Month: 167)
Pinterest: 304 (Last Month: 121)
Instagram: 0 (Last Month: 0)
Twitter: 3 (Last Month: 2)
Other: 203 (Last Month: 618)
My Comments:
1) Money:
It seems a long time since I’ve made my first sale on Etsy and my first affiliate commission!
November was a great month. The business is growing
As you can see, this month is way better than last month. And what’s really important for me now is that now I know that people love my designs. This is the most important thing for Soukaina Collections right now…
Etsy Shop: I have now twenty items in my Etsy shop, I think I have almost mastered this SEO thing, it’s pretty easy with Erank.com. I can find the right title and tags for my new listings in minutes, and I’m happy with the rankings there so far. My Etsy traffic has almost doubled, I’ve added links to my Etsy shop on the blog, and even on this traffic and income page. I’ve also added an “I sell on Etsy” banner in my blog sidebar.
My goal with the shop right now is to add more beautiful designs. I’ve found that my shop visitors really like my pink baby dress, so I’m on a mission to crochet more of these cute baby dresses and more complete sets for babies (dress, hat, and booties). Most of the money I’ve made was from running sales, so I’ll stick to it, especially at this time of the year.
Amazon: last month, my father told me that when you do business online, you are super happy when you make your very first sale, but after that, if you make one sale or just a couple of sales during the month, you’ll be wondering what went wrong. It’s exactly how I feel with my Amazon commissions this month. In fact, I’m thinking about trying Adsense to see if there is some improvement.
2) Traffic:
I must say that my traffic didn’t increase that much this month. I only posted four blog posts (new patterns), while I should be posting eight per month. The truth is that this month has been a little chaotic. There are so many things to do when you run your business online. Happily, I have a plan and a strategy.
All free crochet sent me less traffic than last month. It’s because last month I posted the pink baby dress there, and it got a lot of views. I didn’t post any new dress this month, I wasn’t able to keep up with my schedule. I really need to create more baby dresses and complete baby sets. I believe traffic will increase significantly when I do that.
Facebook sent a lot of traffic my way. I almost doubled my traffic.
Ravelry: same as All free crochet, a little less traffic this month. Some people tried my patterns, and many have some of my designs in their queue. Still no sales on Ravelry, Etsy seems to work better for me. Ravelry send me some good traffic, so I can’t complain.
Pinterest: My traffic almost tripled. This is due to the fact that now, I have a Pinterest strategy (I may work 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’m still learning the ropes, but what I’ve done so far seems to work. I need to create more images.
Overall, November was a great month for Soukaina Collections. My traffic didn’t increase as I expected, but my Etsy shop is growing.
3) Goals:
Did I reach my goals?
Increase overall traffic: slightly increased.
Publish 10 new blog posts: I only posted four.
Reach 2500 sessions: I got 2938 sessions!
More Etsy sales: Yeees!
Make more affiliate commissions: I failed on this one!
Get an email marketing automation software: hmm, I didn’t, I’ve been so busy this month.
Focus on the brand: I did that as well. 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, everything and everyone under the sun, etc., I changed the descriptions on my Etsy shop and my Pinterest account: I created modern baby crochet patterns. This is clear, I’m not trying to create every kind of design for everyone, but what I create baby designs. This is what I do and what I want to be known for.
My main goal for December is: Focus on the Soukaina Collection brand, start designing more complete baby set patterns and grow the business.
Thank you so much for reading.
If you have any questions or comments, just write below, and don’t forget to share this post on Pinterest.
