It’s usually meant to be a compliment –
but is it?
If you’re a crafter, I’m sure you’ve heard things like “You should sell this!” and other, good intentioned comments on your creations at least once.
Some might even go as far, as to elaborate on how you could totally turn your craft into a source of income and how you should turn this into a whole business.
People who make these comments generally mean well and I think that shouldn’t be judged or portrayed as a bad thing.
But there’s a reason why a lot of us just don’t want to hear it anymore…
Implication
On first sight, telling someone that something they created is so good, beautiful or awesome, that other people would spend money to get to own it, is a very validating thing. It’s communicating “this is great”, “this is valuable”. But valuable is also the point, where the sweet words turn bitter.
First things first, I always have the question in my head “But would you buy it?”
Because more often than not, people saying “You should sell this-“, would be much more honest in their statement, if they continue the statement with “- not to me though”.
Which I find really interesting. Most people I know who dropped the “you should sell this”-quote on me, don’t ever buy handmade things themselves.
(Well… they do, since a lot of our ‘cheap every day goods’ are still the product of awful sweatshops and slavery-like conditions. But most people don’t buy the things made from hands of people lucky enough to be seen as human in the production process and reflected on the price tag.)
So where does the implied idea of “people would buy this” come from?
And where are these imaginary customers supposed to come from?
And when I found them, what’s the worth of my work?
Value
I most often hear the phrase in question refering to amigurumi I crocheted. And actually, after hearing it a bunch of times, I really did end up selling a few of them to various acquaintances of acquaintances and such.
Or rather – I gave them away.
Making one full amigurumi would take me a few days at the quickest. Obviously, there’s patterns that can be done much faster than that, but these weren’t the kind of plushies I was making and these weren’t the kind of things people wanted from me. They wanted details, elaborate designs or even custom ones.
I’d receive a link or screenshot of some Instagram post of another maker’s gorgeous amigurumi pattern, excitedly subtitled “can you make this?”
Now, I have to differentiate between a few kinds of asking for something, because while there were things, that make me feel a bit icky – especially looking back on them – there were and even still are some really nice situations as well.
For example, years ago a friend of mine sent an image of an amigurumi on our discord server, raving about how cool this is and how they look like some cute sidekicks from a game he likes.
Feeling personally challenged as a somewhat new crocheter, I spent a few minutes on google, found the pattern, told him about it and offered to make him one. After he said yes, another friend who liked the game as well, asked if he could get one too and even offered to pay for the yarn if I wanted to. A sweet offer that I declined, before I went on to make them each their pattern of choice. – This was an amazing experience for me.
However, there also were some not so great ones.
Another friend started asking for things I crocheted very early on in my crafty journey. At this time, I was still terrible at saying no (granted, I still am, but nowadays I at least try a tiny bit to protect myself) and for the first few months, it made me feel quite excited and wanted. Then overwhelmed. Then exhausted. Soon, she started to not only ask for things for herself, but also for friends of hers, friends of friends… I’m pretty sure had the friendship ladder continued down a few more steps, I would’ve received my own work through a labyrinth of “I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows………. -who really likes sharks. Can you make a shark for them?”
It wasn’t a friend appreciating my work anymore. It was a friend freely handing my work out to strangers. Freely and for free. And I’m the one who paid for it.
I ended up crocheting so much and so often under time pressure of “It’s their birthday next week, can you have it shipped to me in three days?”, that I injured my wrist and couldn’t crochet for months, but at this point, that was yet to come.
The previous example also brings me to another point of being asked for things, that really started to bother me: “Can you make an elephant?”, “Can you make a bumblebee?”, “Can you make a tricoloured alien with a whale for a head and chainsaws as hands?”
I admit, the last one is not a real request I got but compared to the other ones one that I would’ve really appreciated. Because that’s the point – I wasn’t asked for specific things – I was asked for concepts because these people didn’t care about the exact things they received in the end. These were the people asking for things they wanted to give to others – birthday presents for children in their family, trinkets for cousins or friends.
I’m not talking about the people asking for an elephant, then giving feedback to the specification questions and inspo pics I sent them, to figure out what in the world they wanted. Grey, blue, another colour? Realistic or antropomorphic? How big do you want the plush to be?
I’m talking about the people wanting me to read their minds and deliver a custom made toy to their liking without any specifications and if I’m lucky they’ll offer a generous 15 bucks for it. These were the people that didn’t value me or my work but merely saw me as a cheap and simple way to get a present for someone they did value – someone that should receive a cool, custom made, one-of-a-kind-thing. And if I could deliver faster than amazon – great! Because they want it for that birthday coming up and need it done asap!
About the “Generous 15 bucks”
I was never comfortable taking money – especially from people I knew. So if I’d even accept any at all, I’d always calculate the cheapest prices reasonably possible for it to even be worth doing. Then I’d scrap that and say a lower number that felt less greedy.
And still – I was often treated as if my suggestions were outrageous.
I once received the feedback through my mother, through which the communication to this almost-stranger to me had happened, that someone asking for a fully custom, designed after the traditional mask of their carnival club chewring-rattle, made for her new baby niece, mentioned that 35 euros for it were a hefty price that got only accepted after my mother told them I use “quality materials” (Which obviously I do – in the EU, toys have to meet CE-lable criteria and while I wasn’t a business but just a teenage girl getting a bit of pocket money for doing favours, I still wasn’t about to let anyone get harmed by neglegance or cheaping out on appropriate materials)
So what’s the real value of handmade items? (Example: amigurumi)
| Material (Yarn, stuffing, potential hardware) | about 4-20€ (Depending on size of the plush and yarn used – my standard amigurumi yarn is 1,69€ per 25g ball and I use about 2-3 per plush. For large, fluffy stuffies one 100g ball of chenille yarn is about 5,50€ and it takes about 3 to make a large plush. Then there’s stuffing -a few cents to multiple euros depending on the plushies size. Safety eyes – a few cents, and sometimes wooden rings, beads, rattles etc.) |
| Work time (crocheting) | about 20-150€ (Minimum wage in my country is a bit over 12€ before taxes. Taxes are overwhelming so let’s go with roughly 8-10€ per hour (Depending on how much one values someone else’s time they spend on them I suppose). I can’t for the life of me make an amigurumi the level I was asked for in under 2 hours, some complicated ones can easily take 15 hours or more) |
| Extra work time (custom designs) | 10-60€ (Going by the same numbers as the work time spent crocheting and depending on how complex the design is and wether or not additional drafts etc. are requested) |
So… “You should sell this for people who are willing to spend up to over 200€ on a plushy or put in unpaid hours”?
Now, it is perfectly valid to sell your makes for only the material cost, merely slightly above, even below or somewhere in the middle. It is perfectly fine to not want to think of time spent on your craft as work time that should get paid – I don’t see it that way myself. As I said – I was never comfortable taking money and had I not had the guilt and shame of having to at least try to find a way to eventually fend for myself at least a tiny bit, I would’ve never even tried to ask for any at all.
But the people telling me “You should sell this!”, for the most part, truly meant I should sell them for a profit. They talked about how this could be a way for me to make my own money after all. How I could start a small business and generate an income – sometimes even how the things I make are so much more complex than things they’ve seen on craft fairs before (obviously, since it’s unreasonable to try and sell a booth full of 20+ hour-work-time-pieces for a profit).
Again – I am not in any way thinking bad about anyone genuinely just expressing excitement, appreciation, or just not knowing enough about a craft themselves to know that suggesting the products of it could/should be sold for a profit might just not be as simple as they think.
Most people are wonderful and truly mean well and should not in any way be made to feel bad about it!
If you ever said something like “You shoukd sell this” to me, or even went on about how my imaginary business should work – thank you for the compliment! I appreciate your good intentions!
But if you exploited young creatives for cheap stuff before… maybe don’t do that again…
All Rights Reserved
Staying on the practical side of things for just a bit longer, we often just can’t sell the things we make – even if we happen to want to.
If we make the pattern someone else has designed, it is up to the designer, wether or not we’re even allowed to sell that thing on – especially on a business scale.
From what I’ve seen, most designers will allow you to sell things you already made on a small scale. However, putting pictures of it on your etsy shop and making them to order over and over simply isn’t allowed in most cases. You have the right to use a pattern you’ve purchased to make things from it and you are allowed to sell your own property – handmade or not. But you don’t have the right to make someone else’s design part of your business and income stream – that’s just not how copyright works.
SO often the technically correct answer to “You should sell this!” is: “That would be illegal”
Designing patterns is a whole different skill set to following one.
But if you want to sell finished handmade items it often has to be your own original pattern as well.
Like this little bear I designed ages ago and want to publish a pattern for eventually, but ADHD said no so far… ^^’
Another practical hurdle of selling handmade items – especially toys (or by EU law even things that aren’t meant to be toys, but have a design that children could be encouraged to try and play with) is that there are regulations.
Not only does having a small business mean you’re self-employed and have to deal with a whole bunch of taxes and bureaucracy (speaking for what it’s like in my country), but also can come with some legal issues. There’s so many requirements and regulations it’s really easy to miss some, especially when you’re new to all of this, but not knowing any better doesn’t protect from legal repercussions.
For example, selling toys that don’t have a CE marking and don’t qualify for it is straight up illegal in my country (as far as I know and from when I last looked into it. It’s what made me finally decide to step up for myself and quit being that human 3D-printer)
Of course there’s also the question of marketing and ability:
How do you even find customers? Are you comfortable trying to market yourself on social media? Because that’s how it’s done these days.
Do you have the technical knowledge and skills to set up a website or use Etsy?
Do you have the physical ability to go to the post office to ship things out or participate in craft fairs?
I think it’s fair to assume that at this point everyone shoud agree that following the suggestion to go sell your goods just isn’t a practical thing to do for most people.
Hobbies Are Valid
The issue doesn’t end at the practical bumps in the road though.
The main implication I felt to my core every single time I received the suggestion to go capitalise on my hobby is:
Because it would be better than to just do it for yourself.
Because you should try to make money.
Because what is it good for if it doesn’t pay?
Because it’s a waste of time and potential not to.
Because where’s the point if you don’t?
Because if you can make money from something, you should.
As a disabled person, struggling to find my place in the world and in the middle of facing the reality that I might never be able to be a “functioning member of society” – might never be able to fend for myself, finish an education, work a job, earn my own money, survive without extensive support – I really took the “should” literally.
Sometimes, people would talk as if they just discovered my “eureka” – the “maybe she’s not totally useless after all”. And I know that’s more than likely not how they meant it but it’s how I internalised it.
For years after the hyperfixation, social pressure and existential dread driven attempts at stitching yarn into money and myself into something “not totally worthless”, ”just a bit less of a burden”… I fully lost my passion for crochet.
I stuck to knitting, which I picked up later (and apparently people are less likely to ask for socks, than for amigurumi) and filled the yarn-shaped hole in my heart with another craft. I abandoned social media and deleted all my login information. I didn’t make an amigurumi for years, just couldn’t finish a single one anymore.
I gave away all my yarn to my mother’s daycare and younger crafters in my partner’s family, apart from a few skeins of sock yarn with which I exclusively knit for myself for months on end.
To this day I rarely ever touch my amigurumi pattern books.
I’ll crochet for friends very rarely and am still happy to be asked for crafty favours by friends and family who I know don’t see me as custom-amazon. But I don’t take money.
I do favours, presents, surprises,… I don’t do transactions.
This whole pressure and expectation around something I was passionate about utterly destroyed it for me.
And from talking to a few creative people about this topic over the years, I’m convinced a lot of us feel the same way.
Why does everything have to be seen as an opportunity to make money?
Why is something that enriches a bank account seen as more valid than something that enriches a person?
It feels like our world is hyperfixated on money, numbers, taking every chance to improve our financial well-being.
So much so, that things that improve our emotional, mental, neurological or psychological well-being aren’t even seen as worth it anymore.
We feel guilty about doing things just for fun. About spending time and money on the things that make life worth living.
We feel supportive when we tell people to turn their passion into a job, because it’s “good enough to be one”. Does that mean we don’t deserve to keep the good things for ourselves?
Maybe I’m massively overthinking this.
Maybe I’m the only person on earth feeling this passionate about just letting people enjoy their hobbies and passions.
But to me, the “You should sell this!”-phase of my life was a scarring one.
Crochet was my first fiber craft – the first part of my passion I found.
It was my escape, my sanctuary, the first time I felt truly good about something and the first time something I did was receiving purely positive feedback. But more importantly, it was something I loved even without anyone else’s approval. It was (as Chloé Hayden would put it in “Differen’t Not Less” (amazing book! Might write a whole ramble about it as soon as this one is done!)) my eye sparkle.
And I just can’t think of a nice way to phrase: And capitalism killed it. (At least for a while)
How exactly did we get from nature walks and fiber-fun to capitalism…? ^^’
The Bright Side
Of course, the position I ended up in was my choice. My decision to follow a repeated suggestion. (Though I have to admit, to my autistic self the word “should” sounds very much like this definition of it: used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions. So you might want to phrase it a bit more gently, if you know you’re talking to someone who tends to take things very literally.)
But in the years following I encountered a surprising lack of understanding when replying with “Thanks but I don’t want to”. I think that’s what’s so frustrating about it in the end. People usually don’t know what they are suggesting – the ginormous iceberg below the surface of a finished thing in someone’s hand. Not only on the practical levels I already explained, but also emotionally.
You are holding something I made, with skills I developed, time I put into it, love I put in… probably especially for you if I’m giving it to you.
How can you just tell me to slap a price tag on that?
How can you think about it as something so purely material?
You wouldn’t tell someone giving you a lovingly written birthday card that they should sell this but when they drew the card themselves, you might tell them to sell cards like that, wouldn’t you? Not with your text in it, obviously – that stuff is personal. But the image isn’t? The self made “thing” isn’t?
Again, for the people saying it, it doesn’t go this deep and I don’t mean to shame anyone.
Still, I get uncomfortable at this suggestion so much so, that most of the time I hear it now, I just smile, nod, say thank you and listen to the rambles of which platforms could be perfect for me. (Because we all know how fair Etsy is to its sellers, don’t we? ;P [/s])
If you are a crafter, maker, artist, creative – whatever you identify as – and feel uncomfortable about such suggestions as well: Do not let anyone pressure you into turning your passion into income!
If you don’t want to sell your work – Great! Don’t!
If you want to sell your work – Great! Do!
If you used to sell your work but don’t want to do so anymore or if you don’t want to do it right now but dream of having that little handmade shop in the future – Awesome! Follow your heart! Allow yourself to choose. Allow yourself to change and choose again. Allow yourself to scrap all the choices you made, take a break, lay in a corner in creative-overload for a while, come back to it and choose again.
I know some people can get pretty intense about their grand craft-fair plans for you and it’s easy to feel pressured, especially when they won’t stop talking about it or even try to set you up with potential “customers” when you’re not even open to selling your creations… It’s okay to set boundaries.
As long as your passion isn’t destructive and/or harmful to yourself or others, it is valid. And it is wonderful.
If you are someone who said things like “You should sell this!” to someone before and meant well – it’s okay. I know I went on and on about what a messed up thing to say it can be – but that’s the point: can be.
Sometimes people want to hear things like that, and when I get the impression that’s the case, I say similar things myself! (Though I much prefer saying “could”, just to leave out the potentially implied demand)
For some people it’s just great to hear that! And even if it isn’t and you do regret saying it now – You meant to be supportive about someone’s interest and deserve a pat on the back for that! You’re probably a really amazing human being and a joy for your crafty friends to have around.
The Times It Felt Great
I’d like to end this post by telling you about the incident I recently had with a wonderful person, dropping the “Make your stuff go capitalism!”- bomb. In the sweetest way possible. ^^
Said person had previously participated in a probably late-night, discord-rant-session about this exact topic, knew my stance on it and had a similar one themselves. They came to visit and stay with my partner and I for a few, incredibly nice days some weeks ago.
The first line they said that took me by utter surprise, was when they asked me, what my latest project was. (I’m not used about getting to irl-rave about my projects to people and could practically feel my brain turn into blue-screen-mode)
I ended up showing them an embroidered bag I had made, that I had finished just a few days prior and for which I had made the sewing pattern myself as well.
If I recall correctly it went something like this:
“This is your pattern?” – “Yes”
Followed by a look that I can only assume meant something like: “You know I don’t agree with the whole capitalising on things like that thing but like…”
Which felt similarly hilarious and like the biggest compliment in the universe.
Followed by: “But do you publish it somewhere?”
Apologies if I misremember anything – when my brain goes into blue-screen-mode my memory turns pretty blurry ^^’
Placeholder image because the actual bag is a pattern I plan to publish eventually ^^
Hilariously, we had a similar situation the day after, when they saw some playing-cards I made for a pen&paper I was DMing for (so obviously I had to sneak some crafty-time into the prep).
They mentioned how the magic the gathering community would make homemade cards, because they wanted to use them in game but the official ones were super rare or expensive and how there’s people selling cards like that as well.
A while of that, a look, me grinning and exclaiming “DON’T say it!” – and a mountain worth of dopamine.
What made this situation different?
They do art. They know what goes into creating and know the discomfort of being offered money in exchange for their “service”. So when someone like that catches themselves about to say something like even just “but I mean… you could though…” after it’s already established that we both don’t agree with that whole concept – it’s validating.
I knew it was a compliment and not some saviour complex of “I hereby present to you the solution to your uselessness” or some shallow “I see this as only a material thing that I deem ‘good enough’ to put a price tag on”.
It was just… nice. In good fun. Not that deep. Not a demand.
With an extra portion of comfort because I knew for sure there isn’t a “should” or the
internal judgement or “she’d be pretty stupid not do so”.
I did not know I had so much to say about this topic o-o
And that after I already tried not to ramble on for too long… oops ^^’
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my rambling!
May your days be filled with validation and devoid of pressure
Have a wonderful week!
Snowdrop
I have Instagram now!
@a.wildflowers.life