7 Best Crochet Items that will Sell on Etsy

Have you thought about opening an Etsy shop to earn some extra income? Deciding what you want to sell can be one of the hardest parts of opening a shop. There are currently over one million crochet items for sale on Etsy. How will you stand out?
What you need to do is find out what types of items are in high demand but have low competition. If you’re not sure how to do that, keep reading. I have already done the work for you.

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There are some important things to consider when deciding what you are going to sell in your Etsy shop. If you sell crochet hats, scarves, clothing, and home décor, it will be more difficult to research the trends and establish your target market.

Narrowing your focus (ex: hats for children, scarves for men, clothing for women & holiday home decor) will help you plan your first product line and make it easier to research who is in your target market. You can always branch out later.

What Do You Enjoy Making?

This may seem obvious but it’s a very important question to ask yourself. Let’s say you just spent hours upon hours crocheting a beautiful mermaid tail. You love how it turned out but you didn’t really enjoy making the fin or sewing in all those tail ends.

If you sell one, you’d probably feel pretty excited.  But how would you feel if someone ordered four of them? If you only list things that you actually enjoy making, you won’t feel so overwhelmed each time you hear the “cha-ching” alert that Etsy makes when you make a sale.

Let’s say you’ve decided to make crochet hats. Now what? Once you’ve determined what types of crochet items you’re going to make (I will help you with this below), you want to consider the time of year that you offer your products.

Plan for Seasons/Holidays

If it’s the end of March, it’s probably too late to design items for Easter or Mother’s Day. You’d want to focus on items for summertime and start to think about the beginning of the school year, fall and Halloween. Over the summer, you’ll want to be planning for Thanksgiving, Christmas and winter.

What’s Trending?

There are over one million crochet items listed for sale on Etsy. How will you make your items stand out? If you’re going to make children’s items like I do, find out what children’s stores are doing. Go to the stores and websites of companies that sell children’s items and make note of what you see on their clothing and toys.

Companies spend a lot of money on research so use this to your advantage! I began noticing that certain animals like Llamas and Sloths (I’ve linked to my free hat patterns) were popping up everywhere so I made hats designed after them. Knowing what the trends are will help you to design items that will sell. Alright, let’s get down to it.

April 2021: I just noticed that My Godzilla blanket pattern is currently my highest earning page on my blog. There’s a reason for that. The movie came out recently (it was really good!) and I’m betting that searches for Godzilla items have increased. You can check out my pattern here: Godzilla Blanket.

Research

I used the Etsy Rank website to assist me with my research. If you have an Etsy shop and don’t use Etsy Rank, I recommend you start immediately. You can link your Etsy shop and get insight into your keywords, ranking and competition.

Using the category tool, I searched for the keyword “crochet” to see what categories the top listings are in. These can change so I kept checking back to see if there were any categories that I noticed were consistently being used.

Crochet Categories

After analyzing the data that I collected, I decide to focus on the following seven categories:  1. women’s swimwear, 2. amigurumi, 3. women’s clothing, 4. home & living, 5. baby accessories, 6. toys and 7. patterns.

Keyword Research

Knowing which categories to focus on, I then wanted to do some research on the specific items in each category. Using the keyword tool, I searched for other keywords related to crochet that are used by top listings. These can also change depending on the time of year (ex: tags related to costumes will be more popular around Halloween).

If a keyword fit into one of the categories I decided to focus on, I would then plug it into the tool for comparing keywords. This tool gave me valuable information on the level of competition, demand and engagement for each keyword.

Competition: Helps determine how much competition each keyword has.

Demand: Helps you estimate how much buyer interest there may be for certain keywords. A higher demand means there is a higher probability that the keywords are being searched by buyers.

Engagement: The Engagement estimates which keywords are more likely to generate clicks on the listings that are shown to buyers.

My goal was to find keywords that fit into each category and have less competition and more demand and engagement. Based on the research I did, here are my recommendations if you’re looking for ideas on what crochet items to sell in your Etsy shop.

What to Sell

1. Women’s Swimwear
(Swimsuit, Bathing Suit, Bikini Top, Swimwear)

• Swimsuit
  Competition: medium
  Demand: high
  Engagement: very high
• Bathing Suit
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Bikini Top
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high 
• Swimwear
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high

2. Amigurumi
(Puppy, Unicorn, Mermaid, Elephant)

• Puppy
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high
• Unicorn
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Mermaid
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high
• Elephant
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high

3. Women’s Clothing
(Crop Top, Halter Top, Shrug, Cardigan)

• Crop Top
  Competition: medium
  Demand: high
  Engagement: very high
• Halter Top
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high
• Shrug
  Competition: medium
  Demand: high
  Engagement: very high
• Cardigan
  Competition: high
  Demand: high
  Engagement: very high

4. Home & Living
(Pouf, Ottoman, Doily Rug, Owl Basket)

• Pouf
  Competition: low
  Demand: medium 
  Engagement: very high
• Ottoman
  Competition: very low
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high
• Doily Rug
  Competition: low
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Owl Basket
  Competition: very low
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high

Here are a few of my own patterns that fall into the Home & Living category:

Paw Print Pillow
Wine Bottle Bag
Laptop Sleeve

5. Baby Accessories
(Rattle, Mobile, Lovey, Baby Sling)

• Rattle
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Mobile
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Lovey
  Competition: low
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: medium
• Baby Sling
  Competition: very low
  Demand: unknown
  Engagement: medium

6. Toys
(Blocks, Play Food, Teddy Bear, Bean Bags)

• Blocks
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Play Food
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: medium
• Teddy Bear
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Bean Bags
  Competition: very low
  Demand: unknown
  Engagement: high

7. Digital Patterns

Since this is such a broad category, I narrowed my focus on patterns for baby items. I did this for two reasons. Baby items are quicker to make/design and people love to make gifts for babies.

(Baby Dress pattern, Baby Sweater pattern, Baby Headband pattern, Baby Cardigan pattern)

• Baby Dress Pattern
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: very high
• Baby Sweater Pattern
  Competition: medium
  Demand: medium
  Engagement: high
• Baby Headband Pattern
  Competition: low
  Demand: unknown
  Engagement: very high
• Baby Cardigan Pattern
  Competition: medium
  Demand: unknown
  Engagement: high

Takeaway

Based on my research, the 7 crochet categories that I think would sell well on Etsy are women’s swimwear, amigurumi, women’s clothing, home & living, baby accessories, toys and patterns. These categories have items that you can make that are popular with buyers and have lower competition. I hope you have found this post helpful. I’d love to hear from you.