Crocheting Meets Jewelry - My Latest Bracelet Tutorial

After a bit of creative tinkering I've come up with yet another pattern.  This time it is a combination of two of my favourite hobbies, crocheting and jewelry making. 

But a little about my latest pattern.  I've been going through a bit of a creative period lately, and coming up with all sorts of different ideas for things.  This one was inspired by a crochet trim pattern I found in an old pattern book.  It didn't have any beads or an edging of any sort but developed into a new bracelet.  

The first couple bracelets I made were all one colour and pretty blah.  They had potential but needed a little extra to add a bit of proverbial spice.  I played around a bit and added some beads to the ladders.  Not bad I thought, but still not quite enough.

 

So as I was finishing off one bracelet and I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate the edging of my other crocheted bracelets.  Now I was cooking with gas as my grandfather used to say! 

And then I was searching through my stash of beads and found the butterfly charms I had ordered from eBay years ago.  That led to what I really think is the best version of this bracelet yet.

I've added the pattern to my website as instant downloads.  I've called it Beads and Ladders Crochet Bracelet.  I know some people find individual websites sketchy so I also have it for sale in my Etsy shop as an instant download and as an email I can send to you.  It's also available at Amazon and should be hitting the digital bookshelves in all the other retailers like Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, etc. very soon.  My distributor is in the process of submitting to these retailers. 

 

The coupon code will only work on my website.  The others either don't allow for discounts or are too general to be applied only to my patterns.  Sorry but it's the best I can do.

 

Love the bracelet?  I have the exact butterfly bracelet for sale in my Etsy shop right now!  It's one of a kind so you'd better act fast before it's gone.

 

Self-Publishing Your Patterns and How-to's (Pt. 5)

Ok.  So this posting isn't so much about self-publishing but more like how to go about generating a little more revenue from your patterns.  The way to do this is through affiliate programs.  Now there are lots of websites and blogs out there that can give you a whole lot of information about this topic, but here's the jist of it.  You can make money from generating sales through your blog or website.  You get a percentage of the sale as long as the purchase is made within a given period of time.  It usually is a few days, but depending on the company could be longer.  Each affiliate program is different and you'll have to read their TOS (Terms of Service) for the details. 

So here is what I'm doing...I joined the iTunes affiliate program to promote my patterns even further and make a little extra on each sale.   See this link

on the left hand side? That's a direct link to my patterns I'm selling through the iBookstore. Pretty cool huh?

Now also with this I can promote other people's patterns too.  According to my blog stats, the majority of folks are coming to my site to see my knitting patterns.  Therefore, it would serve me well to add a widget where all sorts of knitting patterns and how-to's are listed.

And there it is!  It really is super simple to do.  iTunes gives you the code and all you need to do is copy and paste it where ever you like on your blog or website.  It takes care of itself from there.

So how did I become a member of the iTunes affiliate program?  First I had to join LinkShare.  Once I was accepted into their affiliate program I could then pick and choose what companies I would like to work with.  They work with a bunch of companies selling all sorts of stuff online.  LinkShare then compiles everything into one place. It makes it easy to work with and collect the money that I earn.



And what's even more cool, if you click that box right above here and join their affiliate program, I can make money from your referral! You can do the same on your blog or website too! It's just the gift that keeps on giving.

And it's not just iTunes that has affiliate programs. Amazon does the very same thing though they run their program themselves and not through any other partners.  If you're interested in joining that one you can try this link...become an Amazon Associate.

These are the ones that I've signed up for but you may want to look for others.  I would love to get a little feed back on this and if you have any suggestions to other programs, by all means, let all of us know!  Give your suggestions in the comments section.

Self-Publishing Your Patterns and How-to's (Pt. 4)

A while back in Part 2 of this series, I let everyone know that I was going to give Amazon Prime a shot. For a publisher, this is listed as the KDP Select program.  Here is my update on the outcome.  I let my ring tutorial run for the three month period and was disappointed in the numbers of borrows that I had on it.  I've now taken it off of their system and added it to Smashwords to get it listed in all the other formats like Barnes and Noble, iBookstore, Nook etc.  I'm going to let it run for the three month period and see how my overall sales go.  I've done very well over the last three months on Kindle and I'm not sure if offering my patterns for free on Amazon Prime helped with boosting my sales or not.  All I can do is give it a test and see how it all turns out.

I also discovered that I had downloaded a program to convert Word documents into PDFs for free and never shared it with anyone.  How rude of me, I know.  Anyways, it's called PDFConverter Desktop 1.0 Beta and is a file that you download onto your computer and use offline.  Since I already have spoken so highly of OpenOffice (still free and AWESOME), I will tell you how to use PDFConverter in conjunction with it.  I haven't tried it with Word so I don't know if it will work.  Let me know if you've had any success with it.




Just a quick heads up; PDFConverter doesn't actually give you a nice icon or anything to click on to run the program.  It just magically appears as new options in the OpenOffice program.  I have no idea how that works but it does.

As promised here are the instructions:

1) Click File

2) Click Export PDF

When you are at this stage you can set permission passwords and such. You may want to but if you are going to upload it to ebook distributors or send it as attachments to your customers, you'll want to avoid this. I just click Export.

3) Name your file and click Save. Now your done.

Pretty simple huh?! That's why I like it so much.

I like how simple it is to use these two programs together. It is very easy to set your page layout to look the way you want. Sometimes the spacing can be weird and the photos will be forced onto the next page while the instructions are on the previous page. This drives me nuts and I always fix this. The program saves the file so it looks exactly the same when it is made into a PDF. Some online converters don't do that and you end up having to change the layout of the document over and over again. It frustrating and a huge time waster.

So that's all I have for now.  I'll keep everyone posted on how my publishing journey goes.  Good luck to all of you out there.  I'd love to hear how you are doing.

Self-Publishing Your Patterns and How-to's (Pt. 3)

This is not so much of an informational post, but more of a general update.  In my last post about my publishing adventures, I was a bit disappointed with the outcome of my pattern sales through Smashwords.  Well, now that the quarterly report is out my tune has changed.  Turns out the tracking of the number of copies sold only pertains to the copies sold through Smashwords directly and not the other devices I'm selling on.  So it turns out that I've now sold 8 copies through Apple and 1 through Smashwords.  Granted this isn't the as well as I'm doing on Kindle, but still, a sale is a sale.

I was also recently contacted by a woman who bought her copy through Barnes and Noble, so I now have nothing bad to say about the service at all.  Patience is a virtue after all and I got to practise it yet again.




I did notice when I was going through my patterns through the retailers that the search terms may be a cause of my low sales numbers.  I've updated my category listing and keywords through Smashwords and now have to wait for them to be updated everywhere else.  Hopefully this will help.

I've also decided to try offering my slipper pattern for free.  If you are interested in other free books that are on Smashwords, you can try this link www.free-ebook-downloads. It will give you all the free ebooks in the art section.

To start at the beginning of my self-publishing journey, you can go to my first post in the series The Art of Self-Publishing Your Patterns & How-to's.

Self-Publishing Your Patterns and How-to's (Pt. 2)

Like many things in my life, self-publishing is a continual process and I keep learning new things as I go. My latest project Simple Seed Bead Rings You Can Make was the biggest and most elaborate that I've taken on yet. It is so big, as a matter of fact, that my "simple" little how-to grew large enough that it required a table of contents. All of my previous patterns were short and sweet, but my ring tutorial gave directions to make 5 different rings, with some of them calling back on previously learnt techniques. With the digital format, it's very simple to create a clickable link in the document that allows the user to go right to the point that you are talking about. 

For example, I demonstrated how to to add an extra row of beads to a ring. In another design, part of the pattern calls for the reader to ad an extra row. Instead of having to write out the instructions again, I created a bookmark to the instructions I wrote previously and create a link in the document highlighting the words "ad an extra row". Now, if the reader already knows how to do it, great! They can pass by it. But, if they forgot, or haven't done it already, it's easy to find in a simple click.

It is very easy to set up bookmarks and a table of contents (ToC as it's called). I found this article posted in the Amazon forums on how to format your book that is sure to help. It is written for those using Word, but if you are like me and don't have this program, not to worry. I found a program called Open Office. It is a free program that you can download from their website.  It offers all the same features as Microsoft Word. The bookmark feature that you need to automatically create the links and Table of Contents (ToC), operates in the exact same way.

Another very valuable lesson I learnt with my latest project - Shrink your photos! My new tutorial has over 100 photos and when left them in their original size, the document I created was so huge is was almost embarrassing. I recommend that you make your photos no larger than 300 pixels square. The eReaders shrink your photos even further but this size will give you enough to work with and still be manageable. 

After I realised my photo mistake, I went back to edit and save my photos twice. The first was to crop them to eliminate any extraneous background from the photos, and to save them in a new file. I then shrunk them to be no bigger than 260 pixels wide (just to be safe and to make my document that much more manageable) and saved them AGAIN in another folder marked smalls.

I did this for two reasons: the first was to create the ebook. The second is that I want to have my pattern available to users of Amazon Prime, especially for the holidays coming up.   For a publisher, this is listed as the KDP Select program and I will let you know how this goes for me. 

But back to my point.  One of the stipulations to have a book in the Amazon Prime program is that it has to be exclusive to Kindle. There can't be a digital copy for sale anywhere else, including Etsy, ArtFire, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, etc. BUT you can still sell hard copies AKA books. What I plan to do is reformat my ring how-to and then print and sell the booklet. This means I can use larger photos than I did for my ebook and why I save them in two sizes.

It's also important to remember, that not all of the readers (i.e. Kobo, Kindle) are in colour. Depending on what your photos show or demonstrate, you may need to take into consideration the contrast between colours when they appear in black and white. 

I also wanted to give a quick update on how things went with Smashwords. Great news!! I am now officially on most of the devices that are out there because of them!  I'm on Barnes and Noble, iTunes and Diesel. I am still not on Kobo. To date have sold 1 copy and looking at my stats at Smashwords, I haven't got a whole lot of paritial downloads either.  I guess something is better than nothing.

As far as Lulu.com is concerned, they rejected my submitted patterns because they didn't have a table of contents. It would be easy enough to make one, now that I know how, but since I'm already listed on Barnes and Noble and iBookstore, I see no reason to go back to edit them.

By far the most successful platform I'm selling on is Kindle. As I stated in Part 1 of my self-publishing adventures, I went directly through this one.  As of right now, I usually sell 3-4 patterns a week. Lately, my bracelet how-to has taken off and I sell 1 every few days and sometimes more. I'm not sure if it's because of the upcoming holiday and people want to make gifts or if it's something else. To be honest, the "why" really isn't that important to me. I'm just happy that this is working!

To continue on my self-publishing journey, please continue on to Part 3.