Where is the best place to sell your knitting patterns?

As a knitwear designer you want to be selling your knitting designs to be in the place your customers go to first. But where is that?

Whether you are a knitter or a knitwear designer, it is likely that you have several different places you go in order to get your knitting patterns. But it is also likely that there is one place you always start with. The one place you go first before you look anywhere else. Yes?

Well, that’s true for others too. I have a first stop too.

As a knitwear designer I get to be part of conversations with other knitwear designers. And it can be quite interesting and thought provoking.

A common discussion is about where designers sell their patterns. As with essentially every industry on the planet, the best place to sell your patterns are where your customers are.

So I conducted a mini survey. I asked this question on both my Facebook page and in a large Facebook knitting group:

As a knitwear designer you want your designs to be in the place your customers go to FIRST. Why? Because they have had a good experience with this website. Otherwise they wouldn’t keep going back. And certainly not first. And this is also where they are likely to have had the most success in finding what they are looking for. So you don’t want to be in the second or third place because chances are they won’t even get to that website.

But knitters also want you to be where they go FIRST too. Why? Because no one wants to spend ages going to multiple different places to find what they are looking for. It’s the pattern search equivalent of being passed around the customer service team at a call centre. Your design might be exactly what they are looking for.

So where do most knitters look FIRST?

In response to my survey I had 7 responses on my Facebook page, and 47 responses on the Facebook group (before a moderator turned off comments). For 54 responses in total.

Want to know the results? A few surprised me.

Yep, Ravelry took 63% of the vote. That probably doesn’t surprise you.

So, if you are or wish to be a knitwear designer, then Ravelry is still the best place to list your patterns. Followed by a post on Pinterest which links back to the knitting pattern of course.

What was interesting to me though is that Etsy was not mentioned. Even the few people who gave a list of places to look at never mentioned Etsy. Not once.

Obviously I do not recommend listing your patterns only on Ravelry. For example, I myself have some of my free patterns here on my own website, and I also list my patterns on Gumroad for those who are unable to use Ravelry. However all these external sources are linked on the Ravelry pattern page. If you are looking for alternative places to list them then other options you may wish to consider are LoveCrafts, eBay, and (not mentioned but similar to Gumroad) Payhip. I won’t say not to use Etsy, but do consider that you need to pay a listing fee to list your pattern on Etsy. The other options I just mentioned only charge a small commission fee. So no sales, no fees.

Where do you go to FIRST for your knitting patterns?