How To Make Money With Your Cricut- All Your Questions Answered
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If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to make money with your Cricut then you need to read this! We’re sharing where to sell Cricut crafts, how to price handmade projects, where to source cut files and ideas of the best things to sell!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.
One of my very favorite subjects to talk about is Cricut. I have a lot of friends and readers who have seen the projects I’ve made with my Cricut and come to me with their questions. I love to talk about Cricut and am happy to answer anything! One of the questions I get asked most frequently is “Can I Make Money With My Cricut?” Today I’m going to give you the 411 on everything you need to know.
There are many reasons why people want to make money using their Cricut!
- It’s the funnest hobby ever and people want to do it all the time!
- To get a return on the investment of the price of your Cricut cutting machine.
- You see things sold at craft fairs and think “I could do that!”
- Supplementing your household income is a goal of yours.
- You want to earn a full time income doing what you love.
The short answer to the question “Can I make money using my Cricut” is ABSOLUTELY! The long answer is that there are some questions you should ask yourself first to make sure you start your Cricut business off on the right foot! Read on to go through some of them and for more information about how, where and what to sell!
Question 1: How Long Have You Been Using A Cricut For?
Lots of people start seeing dollar signs before they even get their Cricut out of the box. While it’s extremely important to set goals and work towards them I highly suggest taking a few months to really get to know your machine, to perfect your technique and to figure out what you enjoy doing the most. It’s also really important to try out different materials, learn how to use them and discover the proper techniques that will give your projects longevity.
I have been using Cricut cutting machines for 6 years, and when I look back at where I first started I can’t believe how far I’ve come. I also cringe at some of those first creations I made! Your business is only as good as the products you sell, so make sure that you test your creations out on yourself, family and friends before you start selling them to the general public.
Question 2: What Cut Files Are You Going To Use?
People generally have 3 choices when determining what cut files to use if they want to make money with their Cricut:
- Sign up for Cricut Access– Cricut Access is such an amazing one stop shop for creating Cricut projects to sell. With Cricut Access you have access to over 100,000 images and hundreds of fonts. You could easily make items with just images and fonts in Cricut Access for the rest of your life and never have to use any other cut files. Cricut has an Angel Policy which allows users to sell finished products using a number of their cut files. Examples of images that are not included in this policy are licensed images including Disney, Star Wars, Hello Kitty, DC Comics, Martha Stewart and more. Before selling items made with Cricut Access fonts and images I highly suggest reading through the Angel Policy and perhaps having your lawyer read through it to. Sign up for Cricut Access here.
- Create your own cut files- This is something that I have started to do more over the last year and it is so much fun! I use my iPad, Procreate and an Apple Pencil to draw my own images that I then convert into SVG. Since Cricut allows you to upload jpg, png, svg, bmp, gif and dxf files into Cricut Design space there are a number of different programs that you can use for creating your own images. In addition to Procreate some of my friends use Illustrator, Pic Monkey, Inkscape and Canva to create design files.
- Buy Cut Files from Design Websites and/or Designers- There are some incredible designs out there that have very big commercial appeal. If you do a bit of digging you can find incredible images to fit any audience. The big thing you want to make sure you check before using a cut file for an item you want to sell is that the license is for commercial use (as opposed to personal use) and then to read through the commercial use license to see what is covered. I like to keep separate file folders on my computer for commercial use cut files and personal use cut files. Make sure you also pay close attention to the fonts you are using as many free fonts are personal use only. Many designers have their images as personal use licenses, but offer a commercial use license for an additional fee. You can find our commercial use license here.
3. How Are You Going To Price Your Items?
This topic can often make people who have been selling handmade goods for a long time cringe. Why? Because often newbies to the world of selling handcrafted goods underprice their product. Why does this make seasoned sellers cringe? It makes it harder for them to sell the goods they’ve worked so hard on for a reasonable price.
Though it can be tempting at the beginning to price things cheap so that your product moves, I highly suggest you price things fairly from the beginning. It’s easier to lower your prices if they aren’t selling, than raising them if they are. Save the bargain basement deals for close friends and family members.
Here’s a couple of different ways to figure out what you will charge for your products:
- Cost of supplies + Hourly Wage For Amount of Time You Spent= Price you sell for. For this one make sure that you charge at least minimum wage for your time. This is my favorite way to price because I think it’s very fair. Your supplies are covered, your time is covered… It feels right.
- Cost of supplies X 3= Price you sell for. I’m not as big of a fan of this one because supply cost often has nothing to do with how much time is put into a product.
- Check the market to see the going rate for things. Do a bit of market research! Check Etsy, take a visit to your local craft fair, check handmade Facebook groups. See how your competitors are pricing and price accordingly.
- Ask friends what they’d pay for something- My friend and I recently did a craft fair with our daughters and we ended up going with this model. We asked friends to be brutally honest about what they would pay for things at a craft fair or how much they would expect things to be priced for. We felt like the prices we came up with were fair for us, and fair for our buyers and we actually ended up doing quite well with our sales.
4. Where Are You Going To Sell?
This is a really fun one because there are so many different options. Here are a few of my favorites and the pros and cons of each.
- Set up your own online store on your blog or website– Pros: You own the website yourself so any marketing you do drives buyers directly to you and not anyone else. Cons: You have to either set up your site yourself, or hire someone to do it. You are also 100% responsible for your own marketing. It’s going to be harder for someone to discover you by chance.
- Set up your own Facebook business page or Facebook group- Pros: Facebook is an established platform that has huge traffic daily. Many users use Facebook as a way to connect with businesses they want to support. You can also advertise through Facebook for fairly inexpensively to reach your target customers. Cons: It can take time to build a following on Facebook. Also, since you don’t own Facebook (unless Mark Zuckerberg happens to be a Hello Creative Family reader), you don’t own the audience. Facebook is there to make money, so they are showing posts from business pages to less and less people– unless you pay for advertising.
- Sell in already established Handmade Facebook Groups- Pros: If you do a quick facebook search you’ll find that many cities/states/provinces have local groups where people can sell their handmade goods. The nice thing about this is that the groups are already established and you don’t have to build the audience yourself (which can take time). It’s also nice because you are selling to local people and can often arrange pickup instead of having to worry about shipping. It can be a nice way to meet local people in your community that become repeat customers– especially when you are first getting started. Cons: You will be competing with other sellers for sales. Chances are there will be other local people using their Cricut to make items to sell so you will want to be original with what you are creating. Remember how in the question about pricing I said that established sellers get frustrated with newbies pricing? I find that there are often times a lot of people selling things for really cheap in Facebook groups.
- Etsy- Pros: Etsy is easily the biggest, most well known, “go to” place to buy handmade goods. It’s often the first place where people go when they are looking for handmade goods. Etsy is really good at marketing so they have huge traffic to their site with shoppers from all around the world. Cons: Since everyone knows about Etsy, just about everyone sells on Etsy. There is a lot of competition so you will still want to put time, energy and money into marketing your Etsy shop. Etsy also charges a fee for listing items and then a “commission fee” for each item that is sold. The fees aren’t huge, but are definitely something to consider when figuring out your pricing. 99.99% of what you sell on Etsy will need to be shipped, so figuring out shipping and handling costs is another thing you’ll need to think about.
- Craft Fairs- Pros: Craft fairs are a really fun way to meet your customers face to face. The craft fair organizer does the marketing so you are guaranteed to have people walking through the door, and you can also do your own marketing to have friends, family and local customers come support you at the craft fair. Cons: The biggest con to doing a craft fair in my opinion is having to pre-make all of your stock and not knowing what’s going to sell and what’s going to sit. (I prefer selling things made to order). You can end up with a lot of unsold stock at the end of the fair that you then have to figure out how to sell. Craft fairs are a lot of work to prepare for and if the attendance isn’t as expected, or if visitors are looking for things other than what you are selling, they could end up being a lot of work without much payout.
- Local Businesses- Pros: Selling at local businesses helps you create a brand new audience for your products. Bring samples to businesses where you would love to have your items sold and offer to make a custom line just for their shop. Cons: You will be splitting your profit with the businesses where you are selling. Additionally, like selling at craft fairs, you’ll have to pre-make items and hope that they sell.
5. What are you going to sell?
This is where the fun really starts! If you own a Cricut, if you’ve spent time on this site, or if you’ve searched Cricut on Pinterest you know that the possibilities are ENDLESS!
My tip is to figure out what you are good at, and make sure that you really enjoy making it. If you swear every time you have to weed vinyl then intricate mandala shirts probably aren’t the right thing for you to be selling– even if there is an audience for it!
I also suggest to put your own unique spin on whatever you sell. This will help you really stand out from the crowd.
Here are 10 of my favorite ideas of items you can create to make money with your Cricut:
I hope that these ideas got the wheels in your head turning and that you are able to come up with your own one of a kind idea of what to create to make money with your Cricut! The thing that I love the most about my Cricut cutting machines is that it helps me bring projects that I dream of, into reality! So start dreaming, start creating and start making money using your Cricut cutting machine! I’m always happy to talk about Cricut so if you have any questions, shoot me a message!
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Tell me… Do you own a Cricut cutting machine? Which model? Do you sell things that you make with your Cricut? Do you have any questions or tips that you would add to make money with your Cricut?
Disclosure: Thank you to Cricut for working with us on this post. As with all articles on Hello Creative Family all thoughts and opinions are 100% our own. We only share things we love and we certainly love our Cricut cutting machines!
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If I am wanting to use free svg files that I have downloaded into my Cricut Design Space to make coaster to sell for a little extra money on the side from my regular job that I have do i still need the commercial licence to do this?
Hi Catilin,
Thank you so much for your great question. To know if you need a commercial use license or a personal use license you just need to ask yourself this question– Am I going to be making this cut file to make things for for myself or giving it away to friends and loved ones? Will I be using this cut file to make things that I will sell to make any amount of money off of? If your answer is the first one then a personal use license is fine. If your answer is the second one then you really should be using a cut file that you have a commercial use license for… no matter how big or small the money you will be making is.
Cricut Access has an angel use license included in their subscription so images from there are good to go (you can get info about Cricut Access here: https://shrsl.com/26axj ). If you purchase the cut file from Etsy, make sure you check the licensing agreement. Often it will be for personal use but you can purchase a commercial use license for a small additional fee. My friends and I do a blog hop where we give away a free personal use SVG file each month. We do this because we love our readers. Purchasing a commercial use license from any of us is a really nice way to say “I appreciate you. I value your work. Thank you for helping me a make a bit of an additional income.”
I hope that helps! Please ask any questions you have. I’m so happy to answer them for you!
Best Wishes,
Crystal
Thank you so much, just got my machine and need to know everything