In this age of emphasis on having multiple streams of income that we live in, having a marketable skill is one of the best things you can do for yourself. With the right skills, you will hardly ever find yourself stranded and not able to provide for your needs one way of the other.
Sewing is one of the most indispensable skills anyone can have. Since everyone needs fashion products, any fashion designer with sewing skills can make a lot of money from offering their sewing services online asides the money made from running a fashion brand.
For video review last week, we reviewed a video on ‘How to Overcome Fear When Starting a New Business’. This week, we will review a video by Lara of Donlarrie Couture on ‘6 Ways of Making Money Online with your Sewing Skills’.
The video aims to help fashion entrepreneurs know how to make additional money online with their sewing skills. In it, she shares practical ways through which she earns an average of $4,000 online monthly.
The review will cover;
- how effective and practical the points are for Nigerian fashion designers, and
- other points missed out.
Useful Points For Fashion Designers
Many fashion entrepreneurs have multiple streams of income and many times have to wait long periods for customers to bring jobs to them before they can make money. As a fashion entrepreneur, with your sewing skills, you can have multiple platforms for income.
Alongside the video review, we asked Ruth Olawoyin, the creative director of Ribbons and Stitches about ways she has made money online with her sewing skills. We share her experiences as well.
1. Online Tutoring
This is one of the top ways of making money online with your sewing skills. A lot of people want to learn to sew but for one reason or the other have not been able to learn, you can be the solution to their problems. With online courses, you can sell one tutorial multiple times to different people and keep making money from it.
You can sell your online courses on your website – if you have one – or you can try other third-party platforms like Udemy, Teachable, Thinkific, and so on. Though costly, if you can afford them, you can try them out. The good thing about these platforms is that you do not have to have an audience before you start selling. You can also sell your courses on WhatsApp of Telegram.
“I have made money through online courses with my sewing skills. I delivered all of these courses on WhatsApp. For text resources like ebooks, the materials were uploaded to Google Drive and the link was shared.” – Ruth Olawoyin.
2. Online Retailing
Whether you are a beginner or an expert, you can make a few products and sell them online. You can sell products on eBay, Amazon, Etsy market and so on, depending on your country of residence.
Whatever it is you can make, be it a simple pair of summer shorts, a bow tie, an A-line dress, bangles, earrings, or any other fashion product, you can sell them online. An example of a simple fashion item you can make is hair scrunchies. Within an hour or two you can make 10 scrunchies, take good photographs of them and post them on the online market place of your choice.
You can also sell books online. If you feel like you have enough knowledge to pass across to others in the fashion industry, you can put your thoughts down in a book and sell. It could be a book on pattern drafting, fashion sketches, basic sewing techniques or any other thing you are skilled in. Creating PDF pattern drafting is also an option.
“Through Facebook and WhatsApp I have been able to sell my fashion products online. I placed adverts on Facebook and initiated conversations via Facebook and WhatsApp.” – Ruth Olawoyin
3. YouTubing
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world and billions of people are on YouTube all the time searching for how to learn something. This is another great opportunity to grab and start making some extra money for yourself.
YouTube can open many doors for fashion entrepreneurs as you can promote yourself and your products on YouTube. You can also share content on YouTube and monetise your channel by getting paid by Google AdSense.
This method can, however, be time and energy-consuming so you have to have that in mind when deciding which method to use in making extra money. When you create your videos on YouTube, you will have to share them with people on other platforms to draw traffic to your channel.
Consistency will make your channel grow faster. You can earn between $500 and $10,000 (and even more) monthly with YouTubing.
4. Blogging
If you are good at creating content and sewing, you can choose to become a sewing blogger. This is, however, not a get rich quick scheme, but it is something that, with consistency, can start earning you money.
You can make money through AdSense on your blog or by reviewing products and getting paid for doing that.
5. Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the most popular methods of making money online. Being an affiliate marketer means you are generating sales for someone else’s products and you earn an income from it. You do not need to ship or sell any products to customers, all you need to do is promote someone’s products.
To be an affiliate marketer, you need to have a certain number of people following you on any of your social media platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, amongst others. When you fulfil this requirement, you will need to search for products that might interest your followers or viewers.
When you find such products, you get a unique link for it that you can put on your social media platforms. When someone clicks on that link from your and of your pages and buys a product, you get paid a certain percentage of their purchase by Amazon. You can earn between $50 and $2,000 with this method.
6. Facebook Page
In case you did not know, you can now monetise your Facebook page. Before you can do this, however, you need to have a minimum of 10,000 followers on the platform.
All you need to do is post 3-minute videos on the page and earn money as people watch the video.
Other Useful Points Missed Out
1. Become a Fashion Consultant
With the knowledge you get from your sewing skills, you can become a fashion consultant for people all over the world. You can consult for fashion companies on better ways to sew a particular outfit or design.
Through this method, you can set your price and make money for yourself online.
The Usefulness of the Information to Fashion Entrepreneurs
The information provided in the video is quite useful to fashion entrepreneurs and quite practicable too. The video highlighted many useful points fashion entrepreneurs can learn from but did not explain elaborately enough on some of the points listed out.
To have this information work well for you, as a fashion entrepreneur, you will need to do your research and figure out which method is best suited for you. You will also need to research on how to effectively use whichever method you choose to go with.
Also, one key element to making sure you can successfully run your fashion brand and still make money online using any of the methods listed above is time management. Managing your time properly can do you and your fashion business a world of good. Above all, go for an option you will enjoy doing.
