How To Turn Your Hobby to Full Time Income

I know a lady who knows a lady who loves to crochet. For those uninitiated in the world of fiber crafting, crochet is kind of like knitting, but it only uses one needle, not two.

This lady wanted to turn her love of crochet into a full-time business. The problem was, how was she going to make enough money doing it?

Long story short, she built a mailing list.

Everything she does online leads back to her squeeze page where she offers to send a book of free patterns in full color in exchange for an email address.

Conversions on this landing page are sky high – well over 50%.

Why? Because only people who love to crochet land there. She posts a lot of crochet pictures on Pinterest as well as Facebook and Instagram. Every picture links to the landing page and it drives a surprising amount of traffic.

Then she teams up with other crochet artists and they send her traffic, too.

She monetizes her list by offering a PDF version of each of her crochet patterns. She also sells her patterns through Etsy as well as selling items that she crochets.

She shows off her work on Reddit which invariably sends her new subscribers. And she does custom pieces for a hefty price, when she feels like taking on the work.

Now here’s the key to her success: She not only builds a list, but she emails that list every single day with a new pattern.

That’s right, every single day.

Her open rates are impressive and her click through rates are to be envied.

Her emails are short – essentially a description of the item to be crocheted.

And here’s an interesting tidbit: She never posts a picture of the item in the email. In order to see it, subscribers must click the link.

She now has sponsorship on her website from a major yarn manufacturer. She creates videos for that manufacturer, showing people the different yarns and how they can be used.

And she creates her own YouTube tutorial videos that demonstrate how to do particular stitches and patterns, providing her with YouTube advertising income that alone equals what she used to earn in a regular job.

I’m using her as a successful example of list building because many people assume list building is just for certain niches.

It’s not.

No matter what niche you’re in, I can just about guarantee you can benefit from building and regularly emailing your own list.

And if a 68 year old great grandma can do it, so can you.