The best money-making crafts to sell

Picking the best money-making crafts to sell online isn’t just about picking the craft, but also optimising it. Despite that, it’s easier to make money with some crafts than others.

What are the best money-making crafts to sell online?

You need to decide whether you want to sell lots of items online at a small to reasonable profit per item, or just a few items at a large profit per item. Most crafters focus on the first case, so to find the best money-making crafts, you need to sell whatever lots of people are buying, in whatever styles and colours they’re looking for. That means you need to know the trends.

Where can you find the main trends?

Etsy Trends 2020 and Pinterest 100 are great places to find the latest trends for what people are looking for and buying.

Where can you find the colour trends?

As well as Etsy’s colour trend for 2020 (chartreuse),  the major paint companies each announce a colour of the year. For 2020, these are:

• Pantone – Classic Blue
• Benjamin Moore – First Light (pale rosy pink)
• Dulux – Tranquil Dawn (pale grey-green)
• Behr – Back to Nature (pale green)
• PPG – Chinese Porcelain (blue)
• Sherwin Williams – Naval (deep blue)

But what are some practical ideas?

Here are some of the best money-making crafts. They’re made with reasonably priced materials, they can be fast to make, they fit the trends, and they’re likely to sell well online. Don’t forget you can apply the trending themes (outer space, international style) and colours to any of these.

• Unisex / gender neutral / diverse

  • Babies’ and children’s clothes

  • Party materials – anything from tablecloths to invitations

  • Educational posters and artwork

  • Mason jar money banks

• Environment

  • Climate change protest or education posters, signs or artwork

  • Reusable cotton or recycled plastic shopping or produce bags

  • Any of these with an outer-space theme

• Health & wellness

  • Handmade journals (can be customised and environmentally friendly)

  • Themed colouring books

  • Non-medical face masks

  • Handmade soap with antibacterial oils

  • Mason jar soap or tissue dispensers

  • Mason jar candles

• Pets

  • Scratching posts

  • Pet clothing

  • Bumper collars for blind pets

  • Pet memorials (can be customised and environmentally friendly)

  • Pet beds

• Outdoor activities

  • Survival kits

  • Paracord bracelets

• ’80s and ’90s themed

  • Hairclips

  • Scrunchies

And especially now, with the UK in lockdown, don’t forget about kits. Millions of people have extra time on their hands, so the best money-making craft to sell online right now may well be a kit. Let them make it themselves – it could be just what they’re looking for!

How can you make more money from your crafts?

To make any money at all, you need to streamline your process so that you don’t waste money or time (you can then make your hard-earned money work for you in a savings account). 

Some examples of costs that can cut into your profits are:

• expensive tools or materials;

• inefficient manufacture and marketing; and

• expensive shipping.

Once you’ve identified the best money-making crafts and streamlined your process, you should increase your items’ perceived value, and people will be willing to pay more. Here are the best ways to make more money from selling your current crafts online.

Improve your marketing material

Make sure your website looks professional, your product descriptions sound appealing, and your photos make your crafts look amazing!

Offer free shipping

Even if your product is reasonably priced, people won’t buy it if shipping is too expensive. Add a standard shipping cost to the price of the item, and offer free shipping. It costs them the same, but who doesn’t want to get something for ‘free’?

Improve quality

Even without spending more time on a product, if you use better-quality materials than your competitors (and tell your customers about it!), you’ll be able to charge more. If you buy in bulk, it doesn’t cost as much as you think, and you’ll stand out from the crowd.

Stick to themes

We’ve all met someone who’ll buy anything with a rainbow on it, or who loves everything about dinosaurs. If you make themed sets of popular items, you might be able to sell a whole set!

Offer personalisation

Depending on your craft, you might be able to charge extra to personalise it with someone’s name, town, country, photo, or something else.

Make ‘limited editions’

Scarcity, even if it’s artificial, increases the perceived value of an item. Make a limited edition of one of your popular items with a particular twist. But don’t lie: if you say you’ll only ever make ten of something, don’t then make a thousand. Small businesses live and die by our reputations: they can take years to build, but only moments to lose.

Takeaway

So, what are you waiting for? You know the best money-making crafts to sell online, so get started!