How to Design and Release Your Own Knitting Patterns: Promotion
You can’t just design a knitting pattern and expect makers to find it.
Have you seen how many patterns are available on Ravelry? At the time of writing, there are over 400,000 patterns available for download. If you are a new designer and you don’t promote your knitting pattern, it will fall into the black hole of Ravelry, never to be seen again.
But, if you promote your pattern well, you are much more likely to get sales.
In this blog post, I’m going to share the exact steps I follow whenever I prepare to release and promote my knitting patterns. Try them for yourself next time you launch a new knitting pattern!
Note: this blog post is part of a series. If you missed the other blog posts, read Part 1 and Part 2 here.
Building a Community
Keep in mind that building a community of makers who love your designs is key to your success as a knitting pattern designer. That’s why I highly recommend that you prioritise growing your community at all times.
If you never talk to your community outside of a pattern launch, it is going to be much more challenging to sell patterns. You can’t just post on social media when you’ve got something to sell. Your community wants to know you and your story - they will buy when they connect with you.
The following tips will work with a smaller community (I’ve been using them since the beginning), but they will work exponentially with a larger community.
I only sell my patterns through Ravelry, so that’s what I’ll be talking about in the following article. Feel free to apply some of these tips to other platforms, should you wish.
Pre-Launch
Photoshoot
Don’t be afraid to be your own model, especially when you’re starting out. I really like when patterns are modeled by their designer because I can immediately tell that it’s their pattern.
If you’re afraid that you don’t look like a stereotypical model, that is a good thing. All bodies are beautiful and deserve to be represented. Makers are sick of seeing similar-looking women modelling almost every knitting pattern - they want to see themselves reflected in the pattern photography.
For my first two patterns, my husband, Ulysses, took all of my pattern photos (and I took a few cheeky photos of him modelling my Rilo hat, too!)
I took this photo of my handsome husband, Ulysses, with a super basic camera against our neighbour’s wall!
Once I started releasing more knitting patterns, I started working with my good friend Joy from Simple Soulful Film who is a photographer and videographer. I love working with her because she completely understands the photos I’m trying to achieve and it feels good to support her small business too.
If you know any photographers, I recommend collaborating with them and if not, you might be able to coax some good photos out of your loved ones. Do you have any friends with beautiful Instagram profiles? They would probably take great pattern photos for you!
Remember that the sole purpose of these photos is to make your design look fantastic and show your audience the details. Make sure you get a photo of the front, back and sides of your design, as well as any close-up photos of special details. I also like to include a photo or two of the design when it is not being worn, e.g. on a hanger.
Ravelry Prep
Fill out as much of your Ravelry pattern page as you can in advance. Save it as a draft, so that you can hit publish when you’re ready. Some people like to publish the pattern page in advance to drum up excitement around the previews, but I prefer to publish the pattern page on launch day and use social media for previews instead. Experiment and do what works best for you!
When you are setting up the pattern page, you will see that Ravelry offers a “tester code” that you can offer to your test knitters ahead of launch. This will link their project pages to the pattern page before it even goes live. As soon as it is published, the project pages will be instantly connected to the pattern. It’s a great feature!
Add your pattern sample as a project in your Ravelry notebook. Write a little teaser about it and share photos and the full details about it. The goal is to get your Ravelry friends interested in your upcoming pattern. You can also use the tester code to link your project page to the pattern.
blog
Write a draft of a blog post that you will schedule to release on launch day. Share the story behind your design, any important details the maker should know and link to the pattern asking them to favourite it and add it to their queue - these actions will help your pattern to reach Hot Right Now on Ravelry.
Email the company whose yarn you used to let them know that you’re releasing the pattern. Include details about yarn usage, sizing, launch date and any other details they might find useful in promoting the pattern. Also, share a link to a Dropbox of your pattern photos so that they can share it on social media when the pattern launches. If you are planning a giveaway to celebrate your pattern launch, ask if they would be willing to contribute yarn towards the prize. Some yarn companies are very happy to do this.
Do you have an email list yet? If not, I highly recommend setting one up! If you do, send an email to your subscribers teasing the upcoming pattern about two days before the release.
Influencers
I haven’t done much of this, but I think it would be great to send your new pattern out to makers who are influencers in the community. If they have a large-ish community that you think might be interested in your patterns, offer them the pattern for free in advance. Ask them if they would talk about it with their community or offer it as a giveaway prize. There are lots of ways you could collaborate and get your pattern in front of a new audience!
Giveaway
On the day before launch, set up a 24-hour giveaway on your most popular social platform. Offer the pattern (and the yarn, if the yarn company agreed) as a prize.
Launch Day
Ravelry
Hit publish on your Ravelry pattern page, adding the PDF so that it’s ready for sale. I’ll talk about pricing properly at some point on the blog, but here is a summary of my thoughts: far too many designers under-price their patterns. If you have tech-edited and test-knitted your pattern, you should not be afraid to price on the higher end of the scale.
Go back to the project page you previously made for the pattern sample. If you click edit, you will see that you can share your project with relevant Ravelry groups. Don’t spam the ones that are irrelevant, but share with a few that make sense. You can also post in the forum if you are an active member of a Ravelry group, but make sure that you follow the group rules to ensure that you’re not spamming.
If you have written a blog post about your new pattern, you can link it to your project page so that whenever people visit the pattern page, they will see a reference to that blog post.
On your designer page, add the new pattern to any relevant bundles that you have created. I like to make the pattern photo the new bundle cover photo to draw even more attention to it.
Coupon Codes
Some designers like to offer coupon codes for a limited time to encourage more sales and get more views to climb the Hot Right Now page on Ravelry. I’d suggest a max of 15% for no longer than a week. Try to include a weekend in the promo time as most designers tend to get more sales on weekends. Communicate the code regularly on all of your social platforms until it’s no longer available.
Email the yarn company again to say that the pattern is now live and provide them with the Ravelry link. You can also share your discount code, if you’re using one, so that they can share the promotion with their audience.
Send your email subscribers a short email with a link to the live pattern, promo code details and some gorgeous photos to draw them in. Ask them to favourite and queue the pattern.
Social Media
Post about your pattern on all of the social media sites that you use, making sure to be most active on the platform that you have the biggest, most-engaged following on.
Don’t be afraid of using Instagram Stories to post several times on launch day about the pattern! Just be sure to vary the content so that it doesn’t get boring for your followers. Social media is about telling a story, so tell that story! Talk about the techniques, the inspiration, where the name came from etc.
Use Pinterest to pin from the Ravelry page as well as any blog posts that are about the pattern. Use test knitters’ photos to vary the imagery.
Where you can, be sure to tag the yarn company and anyone else who was involved in the creation of the pattern - model, photographer, test knitters, tech editors etc. so that they get credit and can engage with you to increase the visibility of your social posts.
Giveaway
Select your giveaway winner and arrange the prize.
Post-Launch
Social Media
Continue to share the pattern very regularly on social media for at least a week after launch. You need to keep the momentum going.
Don’t forget to continue promoting the pattern occasionally in the months following the launch - otherwise, your audience will forget about it.
Blog
A week or two after launch day, share a blog post showcasing all of the projects your test knitters made. Sales will inevitably slow down after the launch week, so seeing the design on lots of different people can inspire more sales.
Send a link to that blog post in your email newsletter with another link to the pattern sales page. You should make it easy for them to click onto the Ravelry pattern page to purchase.
Review
A few weeks after the launch, it’s wise to check in with yourself and see how the launch went. Did you make as many sales as you hoped? What worked well? What needs to be improved? Keep note of these reflections so that you can improve on the launch process for your next knitting pattern.
Discussion
Which aspect of promoting your pattern do you struggle with the most? Share your experiences with our community, The Sisterhood, in the comments section below.