How to Make Money with Your Cricut

Machine.

You're probably wondering if it'll be worth it to make such a hefty

investment on this tricky looking machine; $299-$400 isn’t exactly the kind
of money you pick up off the streets. It's all about checks and balances and
you're probably already doing some math in your head now, calculating
ways you can recover from that investment by the time the monthly or
weekly bills come around.

If you've been able to ascertain that you can make your usual bills by
month's or week-end, then that's really superb, but if you're still in need of
some persuasion, then you'll be sure to get that "go-ahead" feeling by the
time you complete this chapter and understand more about making money
on your Cricut.

There's so much you can make with a Cricut machine and when you read "so
much", best believe that it isn't an exaggeration. By the time you start using
the Cricut machine for something as simple as creating patterns for your
personal mugs or making patterns for your kids' T-shirts, you may find that
people you interact with on a daily basis want the same things made for
them as well and in this way, you'd start earning some really cool cas.
Here's a list of more things you can make and sell with your Cricut machine
and as you consider the following products below, you might want to also
keep in mind that the popular belief surrounding Cricut creations is that the
smaller the craft you make, the more profitable it’ll be because you won’t be
spending a great deal on overhead costs such as shipping or large supplies
purchases.

 Paper and wood stencils for canvas wall arts.

 Leather earrings, bracelets and other jewelry.

 Vinyl lettering and stamps for personalized gift items.

 Customized kitchen towels.

 Interiors home décor sets; murals, decals, etc.

  Customized key chains.

 Monogram design patterns for throw pillows, plates, etc.

 Personalized baby and adult blankets or picnic blankets.

 Car stickers

 We could go on and on…

The thing about some of the products that you can make with the Cricut is
the ease with which you can sell them off to people that are not even in the
same state with you. Take the vinyl stamps for example, as many as 12
cuttings can fit into a single envelope and you can simply ship to people that
have indicated interest in your products, no matter their location. How hefty
can the shipping cost of a single envelope be? Plus, you can afford to offer
people free shipping while bearing the minimal cost of shipping on your own.
So, let's say you're able to send out 20 envelopes for $10 each. That's $200
with a few cents or dollars off for shipping while you keep the rest.

I know, that's pretty persuasive and now you want to get right to work,
making those crafts and designs that will roll the cool cash in. Your
exuberance is beautiful and here's some extras you'll need to know before
you get started so that you don't find yourself stuck in a rut at any point in
your progress.

Habits for Making Money on your Cricut

Make “2” of everything

Starting out, you want to be sure that you're not on some wild goose chase
with thinking that you can suddenly start making extra money on this Cricut
machine you bought for your personal use in the first place. You've seen the
articles and stories on the internet and you're pretty convinced that you can
start making money right away so you want to start buying supplies
immediately. Here's some solid advice; start small. You can start by
becoming your own unofficial advertisement billboard before you start
making any big moves. Make 2 of everything that you make for your
personal use. If it's a T-shirt that you made some interesting patterns on,
wear it as often as you can and observe people's reactions to it and be ready
to launch an "I can make a similar one for you if you'd like" sales pitch for
just about anybody. Remember, you can drive the sales home even better
when you're able to say, "Would you like to see this second one that I made
too?" and when you can see that they like it, you've just got your opening to
persuade them to buy {and order more} and you’ve just made some cool
cash.

The idea behind doing it this way is that you will be able to uncover real
information as to how interested people really are in your craft and designs
and so when you start buying more supplies, you have actual people in mind
that you know will look at the designs and products that you create and
have some interest in buying them. It can start with as few as 2 people, but
you must have some degree of certainty so that you do not invest efforts
that may go unrewarded.

Practice different styles, then specialize

If you're the "go-to" person for specific kinds of designs and craft, you'll be
in a much better place to rake in more earnings for yourself. Why? Well…
when you have been able to distinguish yourself from the rest of the already
saturated market of people that make Cricut patterns, clients are going to
want your specialized expertise more than they want a random person that
does it all and has competitive pricing. It's a simple rule in making good
sales; the more quality you're able to provide, the more people will
recognize the passion that creates the quality and seek you out no matter
where you are. You'll know you're onto something big when you don't
actively make any efforts to advertise your craft and yet your clientele isn't
shrinking. That's the point you'll know that you're essentially making a name
for yourself in the industry from something that might as well have started
out as a hobby.

Find a good e-commerce listing

This can only come when you've established that people would want
something your hands have made and you’re now willing to take it a notch
higher and see what a greater audience has to say about your craft. At this
point, you'll need to conduct some good research to understand the platform
that will suit your long-term goals best. There are many platforms you can
get a listing on such as Etsy or Amazon but what you'll be looking for is a
platform that can get you the most visibility for the specific kind of craft that
you produce without costing you an arm and a leg in listing renewal and
maintenance costs and also for shipping your products to your clients.

Choose your quality margin and reproduce it consistently

This will keep you making as much money as there is to be made on the
market. When you can maintain a consistency for your products, people
grow to trust the consistency that you bring into your products and
creations. When people trust you and the service you render, you're the first
person that comes to mind when they think about a project and this is
something that you can monetize constantly as you grow and expand.

Start and Stay Consistent

It's easy for anyone to lose focus for two reasons; they don't get the kind of
feedback or attention they want immediately they start or they lose the will
to stay on it even though they're getting some feedback and making
progress. Either ways, this doesn't have to be you and you can make this
happen.

Starting out, you have to be prepared to face any mental or emotional

setbacks that you may experience and for this to happen, you need to set
your eyes on very specific goals that you know will truly leave you feeling
like the achiever that you are. When you always have those goals in sight,
you can be able to look at them from time to time and draw the courage
you'll need to keep pushing.

Consistency is an important skill to build as you start out on any venture and
the Cricut business is no different. When you're able to get up and show up
for a specific number of hours daily, it lends a great deal of potential to the
success that you can make with your Cricut machine. As a matter of fact,
the more quality time you're able to spend making products on your
machine, the less time it'll take for you to produce a consistent quality of
product the next time around and so, when you really look at it, you can
discover that you reap benefits on all fronts. Show up every day and you'll
learn to build the kind of focus and drive that you can easily take with you
into any new venture you set up. Create quality products every time and
that’s the only thing you’ll know how to create within any new place or new
skill you find yourself engaging in.

Keep Yourself Accountable

You know the famous quote by Socrates, "Know thyself" ...yes, you have to
understand yourself deeply and try not to lie to yourself about how much
time you're really putting into making your Cricut business a success. When
you're able to pace yourself correctly, you won't find yourself slacking in any
way and then when you're slacking, you'd be able to know what points to
pick yourself up and continue moving forward. It's beautiful when you're
able to achieve consistency and accountability at once and this combination
has the kind of impact that you can see clearly in the progress you'll make
as you keep going.

Moving On…

Now that you’ve got some habits down, you’re ready to start making some
money on your Cricut. There are different models of Cricut on the market
and through this book, you’ll probably understand the particular machine
that suits your skills the most. Based on popular use and reports from
professional Cricut users, you can find the table below to be very insightful
for the products you can make with each Cricut type.

Cricut Machine Type Products You can make

Cricut Air  Paper based designs like
paper flowers

 Customized Cake Toppers of

all kinds

 Leather earrings; easily

customizable.

Cricut Maker  Felt and Fabric designs

 Wooden Designs like letters

and number stencils

 Greeting Cards of all kinds

Cricut Explorer  Everything you’ve just read

above plus…

 Wedding décor; paper

based, leather based or
vinyl crafts
  Customized wall and table
decals

 Wall art designs; vinyl-

based crafts.

When you have conducted some extensive research and found the right
Cricut machine type for the kind of specialized expertise you want to build,
there can be no limit to how much you can make with that machine. When
you are truly passionate about the way you want to use your Cricut, people
will be able to connect to that uniqueness in the creations that you’re
bringing to life and in the saturated Cricut market, it is only your uniqueness
and consistency that can really distinguish your work from all the others.

In making Cricut creations also, you may want to consider these few things
that can eat into your earnings if you do not understand them properly; the
list below will show you how to think about your earnings and the kind of
profit you can make.

Cost of raw materials and supplies:

It may be difficult for you to optimize around this particular aspect because
you cannot always determine how much you will be spending on specific
supplies and there’s always the fact that you may have scrap cuttings that
you will not be able to reuse for a new project. Typically, you will add the
cost of supplies that go into making each creation to the overall pricing that
your clients will pay and this is the more reason you should be able to
develop a system that can help you develop healthy prices for your products
that can keep your clients coming back.

Think about this as one of the commitments that you’re making to ensure
that you are always giving your clients the best that they can get as far as
the prices of your creations go. When you start out, you may be prone to
either over-estimating what you’ll need for the creation you’re making or
under-estimating what you’ll need and that is just fine; as long as you start
paying attention from that point on so that you can make better deductions
and guesses about the amount of supplies you’ll need to produce a certain
amount of creations. Yes, that’s the trick; practice and observation of the
processes that you actively complete to get a creation ready will inform you
better the next time around you want to create some more.

Shipping:

When you have been able to research the cost of shipping virtually every
creation you have decided to make on your Cricut, you must find a way to
determine the best creations to focus your efforts on that will also yield the
most profits for you in the long run. For instance, if the cost of shipping for
the kind of vinyl crafts that we talked about earlier that go for $10 apiece is
$1, that’s a reasonable price that most of your clients won’t have a hard
time paying at all. For these kinds of crafts, you can easily offer free
shipping and make even more sales because, who doesn’t love free
shipping!

However, if you’ve completed a creation and created a pricing that is

reasonable and yet the product will cost more in shipping, it will not receive
a great deal of engagement from clients no matter how artistic or beautiful
these creations are. Shipping is a crucial aspect that you must factor in as
you make creations and even as you choose the platforms that you would
want to sell your products on. It plays a huge role in determining how much
clients will engage with your products.

Effort:

A common problem that most newbies in the Cricut business face is how to
efficiently add or price the efforts they’ve used to create the designs when
they are determining their overall cost. Simply put, it’s difficult to do this.
Here’s a more difficult truth that you’ll need to handle as you start with your
Cricut business; you never really know how you’ll price your efforts until
later.

For most people that get started on Cricut, it is mostly because they enjoy
making these designs and crafts and even have a real bent and passion for it
and during those beginning stages, it seems as though there is no effort at
all that is being put into the creations. For most people, it does not remain
this way because as they reach a wider audience and their products get
better feedback, the demand for their skills and time may start eating into
other parts of their lives and causing very serious imbalance.
This does not have to be you. To make sure this does not happen, you must
understand that as you start out, you cannot really price your efforts well
enough so there’s no use trying. You must first focus on getting people to
pay attention to your creations and then, as the attention starts pouring in,
you’ll have to observe and determine the areas that you will put your efforts
into that will yield the most return on investments. This would include the
areas of design and craft that you can easily master and reproduce creations
at a fast pace while charging a substantial amount. It will also include
identifying areas that you can really pour a great deal of your creative
expressions into and for which you can set an impressive price for the
product and have it bought consistently. One thing’s for sure as regards the
rewards for your efforts and that’s that it’ll take time for you to price it
fairly; don’t rush the process.

How to Get Your Cricut Creations Out There

For some people, they have been able to launch their money-making
venture using their Cricut with very little investment by way of
advertisement or marketing. Earlier, I talked about the fact that you can
become your own advertisement billboard by simply wearing what you make
and observing people’s reactions to it before delivering your persuasive
pitch. You can also adopt the following cost-effective choices to get your
craft visible to potential customers;

The platform you choose

If you are able to choose a platform that is highlighted by all as the “go-to”
place for the kind of craft that you produce, then your marketing is half
done, if not completely done. This is because as you get on board with the
platform, you can be sure that all the people that can see your offerings at
every given point are there specifically because they want the kind of craft
that you are making.

You can be sure that if you are listed on a platform that primarily caters to
decal makers, you won’t have a customer looking for vinyl stamps because
they must know that they won’t find it on that platform. So, that leaves you
with one specific task and that’s finding a way to make your decals as
unique as can ever be found; this is pretty specific.

On the flip side, let’s say you decided to go on a platform that lists decals as
well as other crafts that can be made with Cricut, it can be a little tough to
really know if you’re getting through to the right kind of customers. Usually
however, these platforms that offer multiple products have ways for you to
make your offerings more targeted. One of the ways that these platforms
can help is by using algorithms that promote a specific kind of content to a
specific kind of audience based on what that audience typically searches for
when they come onto the platform to buy products. In order to cash in on
these kinds of algorithms, you’ll have to use keywords and competitive
pricing that describe your products and the platform’s algorithms can then
use them to make you visible to your potential customer base. This can be a
tricky kind of marketing to rely on and this is the reason you must have
some back-up plan for getting your products visible.

Use friends, family and word of mouth referrals:

There will be no better “hype-persons” for your products like your family or
your close friends and even colleagues at work. When we really look around
us, we can always find those people that really want us to be able to thrive
in any side gig that we start up for ourselves. Your goal, as you start out,
would be to find out those people within your circle and get them started on
the hype for your products. It can be your 5-year old kid that would not stop
raving about the beautiful pattern that her water bottle now has or that her
favorite shirt has. The funny thing is, when people see how enthusiastic
other people are about the designs that you have made for them, they get
drawn in instantly. So, whether it is your 5-year old’s non-stop ranting about
her new shirt or water bottle design or your best friends’ steady talk about
the murals and decals they have hanging in their sitting room, it is sure to
draw people in and the chances that they’d want something similar
increases.

Another angle is when people buy from you and you ask them if they’d
recommend you to their friends. No one would ever say no as far as they
appreciate the work that they have received and once they affirm this to you
with their own words, then you can be assured that they will refer you to
more people. This word-of-mouth referral is something you can definitely
rely on because majority of people who make promises to other people want
to believe that they can keep such promises and so they actually put in an
effort to keep the promise. So, keep this in mind that for every sale you
make, you should be able to ask your client if they’d be sure to recommend
your service to the next person they engage with; then you can sit back and
watch your clients market your products for you while you focus your
energies on creating the crafts.

Use social media:

It is absolutely free to open up an account on Pinterest, Instagram,

Facebook or Twitter and when you think about the kind of traction these
social media platforms can bring to your business for free, you’ll know that it
is an area worth investing efforts into for just a short time. These platforms
have different strategies that they work with to get you and your profile
content visible to other people that interact on the platforms as well. For
Twitter and Instagram, you can simply use the unique hashtags that
describe your products and post up content frequently within the time
spaces that have the most engagement on the two platforms and just that
way, you can be able to reach a wider audience. The same can go for
Facebook but with Pinterest, you might need to put up more text content
that describes the reason you have so much passion for the designs you
make; as you will find, beautiful stories sell your products faster than
anything else would.

When using social media, you must have a different place where potential
clients can revert to make their purchases in the easiest manner possible.
For instance, when you put up images of your various creations on your
Instagram, you can add a link in your bio that can take a potential customer
to your listing on an e-commmerce store like Etsy or Amazon where they
can easily place an order for the product that has caught their fancy and pay
promptly. It is important that you have a very distinct place where clients
can go to make the actions that you desire from them; buying your product.
It is also important that you make the process very smooth and easy for the
customer; if they have to stress to get your products, it lowers the chances
that they would actually buy it in the end.

Use promos, deals and discounts:

It never gets old to give freebies to people from time to time in hopes of
getting them to engage with your products as often as possible. When you
offer promos, it has to be strategic and it must have clear, practical
outcomes for the long-term goals of your business. There is no need to start
deals and promos that may leave you in the red as regards your investment
of financial resources. For each discount you grant, there must be a way that
is not so distant that can help you recoup the monies you won’t be making
while you’re offering discounts.

For example, when you start offering discounts as the year draws to an end
and the Christmas festivities start, the goal must be to reach more clients
than you already have during the beginning and middle of the year and
while you’re trying to reach these new clients with your discount rates, your
eyes must be set on drawing them in with the uniqueness and quality of
your products and highlighting your best offerings to them. When this is the
goal you set your eyes on, you can be assured that when the discount rates
are no longer in play, your newfound clients will still want the quality that
they always got before and they would not mind paying a little extra as long
as that quality is assured. With this strategy, you can then recoup some
monies with the new deals you’re offering and you would’ve already
expanded your clientele in the process.

Get feedback from every client and improve upon it:

Seriously, there’s nothing a client would love more than to note that the
improvements that they asked for is being implemented the next time
around that they use your service. This is not a popular marketing strategy
but it is super effective. If you think that your clients already advertise your
products as it is, wait until they have a small complaint that you pay
complete attention to and improve upon and they take note of it; there can
be no limit to the marketing that client can do for you afterwards.

The simple trick at play here is that whenever you make someone feel
important around you every time that they interact with you, they become
adept fans of you and whatever you choose to be involved in. When your
clients get good feelings from using your products and services all the time,
they have no problems putting in a good word for you with their friends,
family, colleagues, bosses, etc.

When you handle customer feedback smoothly and leave them with the best
kind of experience despite the brief lag in your interactions with them, the
connection that they have with your product is ten-fold; it makes them feel
that they are building a truly meaningful connection with your products
beyond simply buying them. This customer-centric approach will inevitably
become a core part of your brand that everyone will be able to recognize at
every turn that they use your products. This is the best form of marketing; a
brand or product that sells itself to everyone, no matter their location.