Yarnies: I need Your Help

Yarnies (and small shops too), I need your help, and want to help you in the process! Midnightsky Fibers sells super awesome knitting patterns for handspun yarns and small amounts of handpainted yarns. They are designed to be quick to knit, not take much yarn, and are PDF downloads.

But here's the thing. I can't make enough yarn to REALLY make TONS of awesome kits, nor do I want to. And the patterns work well for many different types of handspun- thick and thin, coils, novelty, art, singles, plys, small skeins of handpaints...That's where you come in. Help me sell more patterns so you can sell more yarn!


So here's how you can help:
If you make handspun or handpainted yarn, you can sell Midnightsky Fibers patterns. You can recommend them with yarns, make kits with them, teach classes, or just sell the patterns.

There are two ways to sell Midnightsky Fibers patterns: 
1. Wholesale- if you are a small shop and want to be able to print out the patterns to sell, have them in your online shop (etsy, anywhere you need to have an inventory), or include them in a kit, you need a wholesale account.

2. Affiliate- fancy way of saying you refer people to Midnightsky Fibers patterns and get a portion of the sale for each one that you sell. But this is different. You can link to to the patterns as a recommendation (the usual way affiliate works, for places like twitter, etsy, etc) OR you can add the pattern to your shop or blog.

Here is what I am doing to help:
First, Wholesale: There are no pattern minimum purchases. Patterns are instant downloads- no waiting for patterns to arrive, you can keep them digital and sell the PDFs, or you can print them out. Wholesale accounts get their own newsletter about product updates.

Affiliate: Unlike most affiliate programs where you get less than ten percent,  you get 40% of the pattern sale. It's a really easy way to boost sales of handspun yarn too- people like to know what they can make with handspun yarn. Affiliates also have their own newsletter (sign up for the newsletter and I will update you as an affiliate after you sign up), so you will get shop updates of new products and ideas for how to sell the patterns.

There is an entire section about being an affiliate for Midnightsky Fibers patterns. It includes ways to list the patterns, tutorials to walk you through becoming an affiliate, and more helpful information, like pattern recommendations by yardage, so it is easy to figure out what patterns go with what yarn you are making.

Here's how to do it:
Wholesale: Info for wholesale accounts.
Affiliate: Read the affiliate page then sign up at Ejunkie.

Why? Not all yarnies are pattern designers, and even if they are, not everyone wants to or has the time to spend designing patterns for handspun. There is huge competition for selling handspun yarns, so now just making and listing handspun (or even handpainted) yarns isn't enough. While patterns do not generate a huge income for most stores, they are a low cost way to add to sales, and pattern recommendations help encourage people to buy yarn!

What I Have Been Reading (Business, Yarn, and other)

One day I will do a post of my favorite business books that *actually* apply to yarn related businesses.  It seems like most art-business books are focused more art fairs, setting up the business, or how to find inspiration. Helpful, but not generally what people are looking for if they already have a business they are trying to grow. And then there are the other business books that are maybe a bit intimidating to artists- what if you don't want a business you don't have to be present for or don't want to create ten million skeins of yarn? That will have to come later though! One day I will also post a "how to  ACTUALLY price stuff"...with a breakdown and calculator.


The Business of Being an Artist I know most businesses (and artists, especially yarnies) struggle with pricing and the "how tos", trying to figure out if they should price based on what business books say (5 or 10 times mark up? For yarn? All the skeins would be $100!), or if they should price based on the heart. This is more practical... Geared towards visual artists, but does talk about finding a niche versus working in a variety of styles, offers some practical pricing advice, and talks about what people do with artwork that doesn't sell (something I rarely see discussed in business books!).

Artist's and Graphic Design Market  If you are doing more design work, illustration, or other more visual art, you should check this out. It lists opportunities for artists, and comes out yearly.  It is unusual in that it does not just list places to market work like fairs or galleries, but also companies that would buy your work to use on images (like card companies).


Art/Work Geared at beginning and mid level artists, but what makes it intersting/worthwhile is that it talks about the nuts and bolts of business for artists in more detail than most crafty business books (it actually mentions insurance and storage issues, for example), without the legalese of most regular business books.


Science of Shopping I had way too much fun listening to this as an audio book while spinning yarn. Amusing and witty, it is geared as  much at businesses (please for the love of g*d place things where people can FIND them) as it is at customers (ever wonder why displays are arranged the way they are?). While not anthropology, if you like anthropolgy based of spaces (spheres of influence...), especially public spaces, this book will be interesting to you. Makes me wonder how I should be rearranging my website for easy of reading and finding information- and if maybe I have the text too small on my site.

And there has been fiction too:

The Martian Chronicles  What can I say? I am taking a break from Asimov, and already reread Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and a number of other fluffy books over the weekend. Rainy weekends on the boat are good for that (and thank goodness for my Kindle, since it is a total pain to haul so many books around otherwise).

Farm City. Entertaining. Not as good as Plenty, but I suspect I have a soft spot in my heart for Plenty (aka 100 mile diet) since the authors are practically local to me. I have no real desire to farm or grow large amounts of food, my love of post apocalypse books aside. World Made by Hand: A Novel is a pretty good post-disaster scenario book though, in a very non-scifi sort of way, as it takes place years after the government has already fallen, in a community that has reverted to farming.