How To Create a Craft Blog

Starting a blog is one of the best ways to build an audience, get your ideas out into the world, and possibly make some (or a lot) of money while doing what you love. 

Getting started and taking the first steps can feel like a huge challenge. Building a website, planning your content, and finding the right business model are just a few of the tasks you’ll need to do to succeed.

Don’t worry! By the end of this article, you should have the knowledge and tools you need to feel confident and prepared to start your craft blog today.

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What Is Your Blog About?

Since you are here, the answer to the above question is obvious – your blog is going to be about crafts! It is great that you have a topic in mind for your blog, but to have a successful blog requires a little more depth. You need to have an idea of what you want to accomplish with your blog. Do you want to start a blog about affordable crafts? A blog about knit and crochet crafts? Or a blog about upcycling crafts?

It becomes easier to focus and produce something noteworthy when you know what type of content you want to create.

There’s a quote that fits this situation perfectly:

"If you try to be everything for everybody, you will be nothing to no one."

Establish Your Niche

When creating a new blog, you need to find your niche. This is the corner of the market that you have the most knowledge about, the place you can establish yourself as an absolute authority. If you try to take on JOANN all at once, you will find yourself pushing a boulder uphill with little chance of getting anywhere fast.

Your goal should be to try and find a subject narrower than “crafts”, but broader than “how to make a paper mache parakeet”. If the topic is too broad, it is next to impossible to stand out. If the topic is too narrow you will run out of things to write about or never find an audience big enough to sustain your blog.

Some examples of niche craft blogs are:

• Upcycled Crafts Blog - Pillar Box Blue
• Crochet Designs Blog - The Stitchin' Mommy
• Craft Reviews Blog - Craft Critique

Name Your Blog

Once you’ve found your niche, it’s a great time to start brainstorming a web domain name for your blog. You’ll want to pick a name that’s brandable and available. Use our domain name tool to check if your name is available. If it is, scoop it up before someone else gets to it first.

Brand Your Blog

The strongest and most memorable businesses are built on a solid brand. When developing your brand, think about what your business stands for. Customers and clients are looking for companies that have a compelling brand, as much as they are shopping for high-quality products and services.

Creating a logo for your business is vital for increasing brand awareness. You can design your own unique logo using our Free Logo Generator. Our free tool will help you brand your business with a unique logo to make your business stand out.

Finding Your Audience

Having a good sense of who is going to be reading your blog is one of the best ways to know what type of content to create, how to shape it, and, ultimately, how to grow your following. With a clear understanding of your niche, understanding your audience should come more naturally.

Finding your target audience - the people you want hanging out on your blog - isn’t only statistics and demographics. It requires a deeper understanding of who these people are and what they want. Your target audience are the people you’re writing to when you write your blog.

Are you writing to first-time crafters who have never touched a ball of yarn before, or are you wanting to help experienced crafts enthusiasts hone their skills? Regardless of what the main focus of your blog is, thinking about those you want reading it will have a big effect on the tone you use and the content you write.

Create a Persona

One way to understand your audience is to create a persona of your perfect target audience member. This essentially means creating a mock-up of the ideal person you hope to reach with your blog.

Here is an example of a target audience persona:

Having a persona for your perfect audience member helps you to visualize and understand who you are writing for and provides important direction to your content.

Be Your Own Persona

Another popular way to find your perfect target audience is to be your own persona. Many of the best products and services come from scratching your own itch. It’s possible you’ve searched for the perfect craft blog to read, came up short, and decided to create it yourself. This makes you the perfect audience member for your own blog.

This can be a great strategy for creative highly effective content. If you’ve noticed a meaningful omission in blog content, chances are you are not alone. By writing personally satisfying content you are likely to reach an audience in search of the same things.

Where Is Your Audience Hanging Out?

No web content exists in a vacuum. While you should strive to create uniquely entertaining content for your blog, your target audience is almost certainly already out there reading other blogs, engaging on specialized forums, and using social media. Finding the sites where your audience already mingles is a great way to discover what topics they are most interested in, what language they are using, and what valuable content you can add to that mix.

Some examples for your craft blog may include:

• JOANN.com
• CountryLiving.com
• GoodHousekeeping.com
• DIYNetwork.com

Visiting these sites is also a great way to begin engaging with your audience before your blog has even gone live. Jump into conversations on forums and in comments sections and get to know the people you’ll be writing for. This is a great, organic way to build relationships and direct people to your blog in its early days. Sharing your passion with like minded people will make them more excited and passionate about supporting you in your blogging endeavor.

How Will You Present Your Work?

Traditionally, when most people think about a blog they picture written content on a page. However, there are several different ways to present your ideas on your blog, depending on your subject matter and target audience. Every blog will thrive with different formats, so it’s important to think carefully about how to best showcase your content before you start.

There are several effective methods of presenting the material on your craft blog. They include:

Evergreen Articles

As the name suggests, evergreen articles are composed of content that lasts. These articles are designed to have a long shelf life and continue drawing readers to your blog over time. They are typically long-form, text-based articles that delve more deeply into a particular topic.

A tried and true option for evergreen content on a craft blog is reviews of crafting supplies and equipment. You can review things that you use for your own craft projects as well as things that you know that your audience is interested in. From crochet needles to yarn, paper stock to glue, you have a lot of options based on your niche. Anyone looking for reviews of the things you cover on your blog will find your knowledgeable opinion useful for making purchasing decisions, year after year.

Videos

While the video format is not new, the explosive growth of YouTube and the advent of new and innovative video-based tech like Snapchat and TikTok have shown the true power of video as an online medium. While you may think that creating video is much more difficult and expensive than writing your content, you have access to all the technology you need to make high-quality video content right on your smartphone.

A craft blog is a perfect place for video how-tos. You can make videos that show your readers how to make different crafts and how to use different tools and crafting methods. The type of videos you make will be based on what your blog focuses on, such as how to crochet, how to knit, how to make dioramas, etc. Any area you explore in your blog will give you plenty of ideas for video content you can incorporate – content that your readers are bound to find useful.

News-type Articles

News articles or other “announcement” type content can be a great way to gather new readers. One benefit of news content is the short-term but powerful increase in search volume during an event. While this bump may be temporary, it can be a great tool for grabbing new readers who end up coming back for more.

Writing about current events or new happenings also means there will typically be less competition for readers. Other blogs and media sources are all getting the information as it develops. Since the base of knowledge available is smaller, this gives you a good opportunity to add your own flavor to the article.

The downside to news-type articles is that they tend to lose popularity much more quickly than evergreen content. While the interest for an event may be very large one day, the next day people may already be moving on to the next shiny object.

Craft companies are always releasing new and “improved” products to make more sales. Some of those products are amazing, while some offer little to no improvement over the existing products. Whatever your opinion on new products, you can create news-type content based on the upcoming releases that interest you or your readers. You can even start with news articles announcing upcoming products, and then create reviews of those products when they come out!

Image-heavy Content

While most people expect to be reading when they visit a blog, image-heavy content can be very appealing and break up your text-focused posts to keep people’s attention. Depending on the topic of your post, displaying multiple images per page on a single subject can give your audience a better sense of what you are trying to convey.

While some topics may take to images very easily, like a car blog or a celebrity gossip site, others may require some deeper thinking to make this strategy work.

You should have no shortage of images for your craft blog. After all, your blog covers real-world products and materials that you work with by hand – which means you can take your own photos to use on your site. As you dive into new areas in your niche, you can record your explorations with your camera so that later on you can add those images to your blog to better illustrate what you are writing about.

Mix and Match

The best craft blogs incorporate a variety of content types to appeal to an audience. You will likely discover that you prefer some formats over others, but before you settle into a pattern you should try to explore each content type to get a feel for what they are like. As you stretch yourself by trying out images, video, evergreen content, and more, you will gain valuable skills that will help you keep things fresh for your audience.

How To Make Money From A Craft Blog

One of the main reasons people start blogs is to generate some sort of profit. Whether you’re looking for a few hundred dollars per month or a job-replacing income, blogging is still an excellent way to make those dreams a reality.

There are a few great ways to make money from a craft blog:

Display Ad Networks

Display ads are the simplest way for websites to generate any sort of income. Ad networks, like Google Adsense, are fairly simple to be accepted into, and implementation onto your site is streamlined and clean. If you’re just beginning to see some traffic to your blog and want to turn this into dollars, display ads are where most people start.

There are a few downsides to display ads, however. The first is that some feel they detract from the user experience on your blog. Most people have been to a site where large ads pop up and block the content in the middle of reading. This can be distracting, frustrating, and even drive people away from your blog. While it’s possible to clean up and control the type of ads you use, it can be a constant battle to balance effective ad placement with aesthetics and readability.

The other main downside is that they don’t pay a lot. These networks generally use a pay-per-click (PPC) model which, depending on the niche, can pay anywhere from $0.01 to $1.50 per click, most on the lower end.

While display ads are a great way to make your first dollars, you’ll want to make sure any negatives they bring are worth the profits they provide. Once you develop a solid following, you can consider moving on to more lucrative and effective profit-making options.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing programs like Amazon Affiliate have become much more popular over the past few years, as they take the payment model from pay-per-click to cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This means you can refer as many users to an advertiser’s product as you want, but will only get paid when the user makes a purchase.

Both advertisers and publishers benefit from an affiliate marketing setup. The advertiser pays nothing until a sale is made and the publisher enjoys much higher commissions than the pay-per-click model.

Your craft blog can take advantage of the Amazon Affiliate program early on to start bringing in some income. The barrier to entry is quite low and you get paid a commission for every sale you facilitate through your blog.

When you write about different crafting topics, it is quite easy to include links to various products that you like and that your readers can use to make similar crafts. Readers expect links and find them helpful so that they do not have to do all the searching for what they need on their own. Every time one of your readers clicks on a link to Amazon from your blog and makes a purchase, you get a small cut of the sale.

Many craft blogs start with Amazon Affiliates as their first source of income, and many stick with it for a long time. A small blog can make a few dollars per month, while a larger blog can bring in thousands with this income-generating model.

Sell Digital Products

Digital products are the online entrepreneurs’ dream. You create the item once, then sell it as many times as you can, with little to no cost of reproduction. This means that you can scale your business to infinity.

Examples of digital products are:

• Ebooks - A piece of writing, generally in PDF format. These can contain literally anything that your audience would want. They can either be true book-length all the way down to a few pages of content. Depending on your niche, audience, and subject, these can run from $1 to $100 per sale fairly easily.
  
  
• Gated Content - This is content that is served on your website just like any other article, except that is behind a “paywall”. If you are creating content that you don’t want to be released to anyone but your true followers, you have them sign up for an account on your site and charge them a subscription fee for access. Generally, authors charge anywhere from $5 to $200 per month for access to gated content.
  
  
• Online Courses - If you can teach a skill that your audience wants to learn, you can create an online course to sell to them. These courses can be formatted in whatever way makes the most sense to you, but most nowadays are video courses. Online courses can sell from $10 to well over $10,000 per course, obviously depending on the subject matter and audience.

A great example of a digital product that a craft blogger could sell is a book of patterns for crafts. If you like to create your own patterns, you can make a collection and sell that collection to your readers in the form of an eBook. You could also develop an online course for making crafts in your niche based on feedback from your readers on what they want and need. A well-produced course in crafts could sell for $100 or more per sale.

Sell Physical Products

Selling physical products is the original money making strategy. You gather an audience that is hungry for something, you sell it to them, and everyone wins. You don’t have to be an inventor, designer, or manufacturer to sell products. Sites like Alibaba and AliExpress import already-made items into the United States and sell them for a markup.

The two main methods for distribution of these items are: dropshipping and self-fulfilled.

Dropshipping is a method where you advertise a product on your site that you do not own. Once you make the sale, you inform the manufacturer, who will handle the shipping and handling to the end user. While this is simple because you don’t have to worry about storing or shipping any items yourself, you’ll find that the margins can be quite slim.

Self-fulfilled sales are much more of a hands-on approach to sales. You buy the item from the manufacturer, store it, then ship it to the end user once you have made the sale. While there is much more work involved, you’ll find that the margins per sale are much higher.

Product sales through a craft blog should be fairly straightforward. After all, you are probably making crafts regularly as part of your blogging process. You can sell those crafts to readers who are fans of your work. Since they are coming from you directly, you can charge a premium for them. You can also create branded crafting supplies and sell them to your audience. You can typically purchase or print products like these for just a few dollars per copy and sell for a significant mark up.

While it can be very profitable when done well, selling products is not generally recommended for the beginner blogger. It’s best to secure an audience that you know will be receptive to the product before making a large investment in product development or acquisition.

Create A Service

Providing a service is another very basic money-making plan. If you can provide a service that you know your audience needs, you have a viable business on your hands.

Whether this service is delivered through a one-on-one interaction with the user, through a piece of software that you develop, or by directly completing a task for the user, this is a great way to monetize your skillset and your blog.

If your craft blog focuses on crafting skills, you may offer your services as a teacher for your audience. You can teach classes and/or seminars in person and charge a significant amount because of your reputation – established by your blog over time.

Your blogging will position you as an expert in your niche, which means people will come to you eagerly for your knowledge and skills. You need to be careful to avoid overcommitting yourself if the demand is high, but you can learn pretty quickly how much you can take on by putting on a seminar or two. Just remember, your blog is the main driver of your reputation and what creates the demand for your services – so stay focused on creating great content regularly.

Next Steps To Get Your Craft Blog Started

Now that you have the strategies in place to build and grow your own blog, check out our free course: How To Start A Blog.

This course includes all the essentials on how to get your blog out of your head and onto its own website. Starting a blog is simple and inexpensive, so there’s no reason that you shouldn’t start today!

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