The first cycle of the new and improved PlanetJune Commissions system is complete, with the completion of my Capybara pattern. (That takes my total to 18 commissioned designs in 5 years!)

The system is much more efficient now: you can manage all your pledges from within your PlanetJune account, and each new commissioned pattern is now automatically added to all the pledgers’ PlanetJune accounts when it’s ready.

I’ve also made a few customer-suggested improvements, going forwards…

Pattern Exclusivity Window

From now on, I’ve introduced a 2 week exclusivity window for the pledgers of a new commission before the pattern is available to the public, as an added ‘thank you’ to those who pledged towards the commission.

(If you didn’t pledge towards the Capybara and would like the pattern, sign up for my monthly newsletter if you’d like notification when the pattern is ready to purchase! I’ll also be blogging details about the pattern and sharing some Capybara fun facts at that time…)

New Progress Chart

I’ve refreshed the main Commissions page by reordering the progress chart by amount pledged. Now it’s easier to see which of your favourites are closer to being fully pledged and could do with a top-up:

New Animal Options

I’ve replaced all the animal options that were less than 25% funded with new options. (The retired animals aren’t necessarily gone forever, but they’ve all been there for a long time and received little interest, so it’s time to give some different animals a chance without making the list ridiculously long.) Here are the new options:

Bilby, Dodo, Kiwi, Numbat, Pangolin, Pot-Bellied Pig, Puffin, Tasmanian Devil, Tortoise (Giant, Galapagos), Tortoise (Small, Pet), Tuatara

Which of these would you like to see made into a PlanetJune crochet pattern? The most popular so far have been the Kiwi and Dodo, but it’s early days yet, so get pledging for your favourites of the new additions!

My next commissions timeslot will begin at the end of May, and I’ll be starting work on my Goat design then, as it’s already fully-funded. But I wonder if the following commission will be one of the current front-runners, or one of the new additions? That’s up to you 😉

It’s been three years since I started logging my customer support requests, or, more accurately, questions, comments and suggestions that ask for a response from PlanetJune.

I’ve recorded almost 2300 interactions, and now I have three full years of data, I can do a comparative analysis and see if the ‘improvements’ I’ve been making to PlanetJune have actually been making a difference to my workload!

(If you run your own business and don’t already track your customer interactions, you’ll definitely want to read on to see how tracking this info has helped me…)

The Numbers

The number of support requests I’ve received overall has dropped slightly each year (from 788 to 757 to 735) – that’s almost a 7% drop since I first started logging requests.

(But that doesn’t show the whole picture: during that time I’ve increased my sales significantly without any sign of a corresponding increase in the volume of customer support. If the same proportion of my customers had a question for me now, I’d expect to see well over 1000 queries per year by now, so a small drop actually represents a big win!)

I’ll give you some more details below, with the overall percentage first, followed by a breakdown by year, from three years ago to today: (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3), so you can see any trends over time.

Sources

69% (70%, 69%, 65%) of support requests come directly through PlanetJune (email, blog comment, shop message form).

The other 31% (30%, 31%, 35%) comes through Ravelry, Etsy, social media, YouTube, etc.

Type of Support Requests

17% (12%, 20%, 19%) are Etsy-related.

16% (20%, 16%, 14%) are for technical support.

14% (13%, 13%, 16%) are for general crochet/craft support or requests for help with another designer’s pattern. [I only log these requests when I respond to them, so this number is far smaller than the actual number of questions I receive.]

13% (13%, 14%, 12%) are for pattern support (pre- and post-sale).

10% (13%, 12%, 8%) are for account administration.

6% (7%, 5%, 5%) are suggestions for new content (patterns and tutorials).

6% (5%, 6%, 7%) are requests for items I don’t sell (finished items, patterns for art pieces, translations).

5% (3%, 5%, 6%) are navigation related (where to find a certain pattern/tutorial).

The remaining 13% covers a miscellany of different subjects, ranging from requests from the media and offers to write books, to notices of my patterns being copied or pirated.

Improving Systems

My goal when I started tracking these numbers was to see where I can make improvements to streamline my business by:

• Reducing customer questions and building my FAQ so people don’t need to contact me for help
• Setting up canned responses for common questions so I can minimise the time I spend answering the remaining questions

I’ve improved several systems during these three years, and I’m happy to see that those are having a clear effect: despite having more customers, I see fewer tech support and account admin questions each year, as I keep trying to make every step easier to understand.

There’s still room for improvement; for example, I’m seeing more people every year contact me to ask for the link to a specific pattern in my shop. I don’t know why this is, but perhaps there’s a way I could make it more obvious how a customer can find the answer without contacting me.

The Etsy Factor

The biggest barrier to my success in reducing queries is the customer support burden from Etsy, and I know exactly why that is: people on PlanetJune.com generally know where they are and what they’re buying, but many shoppers on Etsy see a pretty photo and hit ‘buy’ without reading the title or description, leading to a lot of misunderstanding about:

1. What they’re buying (yep, it’s a downloadable PDF pattern, not a completed toy for $5 with free shipping!)
2. How they’ll receive it (clearly stated in both the item description and in the ‘note from seller’ that’s sent with every order, but many Etsy shoppers don’t read any of that)

I see this as a part of my cost of using Etsy – not just in terms of the tangible cost of the Etsy fees, but the time cost of dealing with customer questions and misunderstandings. Despite this, Etsy remains a valuable funnel for new customers to find me (and then, hopefully, to buy directly from PlanetJune in future) so the fees and time are worthwhile expenses.

Even though my sales through Etsy make up only a small percentage of my income – and a much larger fraction of my customer support interactions – not having a presence on Etsy would be a mistake, as many potential customers only think to look for crochet patterns on Etsy and would never find me in the first place if I didn’t show up in the Etsy search results.

And, although the numbers are high, the misunderstandings are the same things over and over again: people not realising what they’ve bought or how/when they’ll receive it, so I’ve set up standard responses that make dealing with these questions very fast.

Verdict: Is Tracking Queries Worthwhile?

If you run a small and growing business, I’d definitely recommend tracking your customer support requests. It’ll give you a clear picture of support areas you may be able to improve, and the data to be able to provide the answers to questions on your website so your customers don’t need to contact you.

If you’re planning for the future of your business, being able to calculate whether you can expect to be overrun with customer support as your business grows, or whether this is an area you can continue to manage yourself, is critical. Might you need to hire a customer service manager at some point? Or will your systems be able to keep your admin workload in check?

For me, for the time being at least, the answer as shown from my analysis is encouraging. I’ve created a solid foundation for a long-term manageable business, but I’ll keep tracking requests so I can monitor my workload and keep looking for areas where I can tweak my systems to improve the PlanetJune experience for all my visitors.

Ever since I designed my African Violet pattern in 2009, I’ve been steadily building my collection of crocheted plants in crocheted pots. I love how they look realistic, but not in a tacky plastic-faux-plant way – they’re obviously handcrafted.

Whenever I give a crocheted plant as a gift, it’s always really well received. And they’re so much more convenient than real plants:

• They’re always in bloom
• They don’t need sunlight
• You don’t even need to remember to water them!

Now, word of my crochet pot plants has spread beyond the crochet world and my designs have started a trend in home decorating circles. In the past couple of months Homemaker (UK) and MiCasa (Spain) have included some of my crocheted plant designs in their home dec suggestions:

If you’ve ever admired my plant patterns but wondered how well they’d work for decorating your home or office, giving as a gift, or to sell online or at craft fairs, you no longer have to take my word for it!

The masses have spoken, and crocheted plants are officially on-trend and in demand – and that’s good news for everyone 🙂

So, how about picking up a plant pattern or two and getting in on the trend?!

I can hardly believe it, but today marks the 10th anniversary of the day I self-published my first crochet pattern, Fuzzy Bear – and the day a new career path began to open up to me. After two years of running PlanetJune as a side-business, I quit my day job and struck out into the unknown, without knowing if it was even possible to support myself through crochet design alone.

Happily, 10 years, 2 books, and over 150 self-published patterns later, I’ve proven that it is possible to make a real living doing what I love, thanks to a measure of luck and a lot of hard work. And, best yet, I’m still excited by the idea of coming up with new designs and new techniques and sharing my love of crochet and nature with the world.

It’s also my sweet Maui’s 13th birthday today! Here are the birthday boys one year ago today, on their 12th and 9th birthdays.

I asked my customers to join the celebration by sending me a photo of their favourite things they’ve made from a PlanetJune pattern, and most responses said it was too hard to pick just one (thank you!), but here’s a small selection from those who managed to make a choice…

From the PJ ravelry group (clockwise from top left):

• jukatca: [Aardvark, Armadillo and Camel are] my all-time favorites. They all have really cute faces, great shaping, and no color changes!
• Pyroteca: I think my favorite will always be the fuzzy patterns – they are just so cute and innovative as there was (and still is) nothing out there like them. Let alone the fact that the patterns are so well written and can let someone on their first or second try at amigurumi produce something that looks amazing.
• petrOlly: I think my favourite pattern is the plumeria flower. I love the magic in this pattern – the last few stitches give you the perfect plumeria, and the pattern always works.
• Fatals-Attraction: I will chose a favourite project, my Discworld, which I gave to my mother-in-law (it is now her favourite!)

And from Facebook and my newsletter subscribers (clockwise from left):

• Peggy A:Your baby sea turtles on my blanket. The turtles have abalone buttons sewed to their undersides so you can change the placement and remove them for washing the blanket.
• Anna B: My favourite patterns by far are the AmiCats.
• Erica A: Very hard to pick a favourite, but frogs are my favourite animal, so frog it is. Just like the cats, I loved the clever shaping on this pattern.
• Belinda Y: I love my low maintenance succulent garden! I collect real succulents and cacti too, so your patterns really caught my eye.

Thank you to everyone who sent me their photos – I’ve really enjoyed seeing them all over the past couple of weeks, and hearing which PlanetJune patterns mean the most to you! It was especially heartening to hear from those who learnt to crochet (through my books and tutorials) just so they could make one of my designs.

It’s a real privilege to have the opportunity, through PlanetJune, to add a little more joy to the world through my creations, to help you to crochet your own special pieces from my patterns, and to raise a little more awareness and appreciation of our precious natural world.

Thank you for being here with me! I hope PlanetJune has made a positive difference in your life, however small, and will continue to do so as I head into my second decade of crochet design. ❤

PlanetJune Commissions has been revamped to be easier, faster and more fun. The basic premise hasn’t changed – you can help to choose and crowdfund new PlanetJune crochet pattern designs by ‘voting’ with your commission pledge!

But I’ve reworked the mechanisms to make it more fun for you from now on, and so you won’t be stuck with pledges you made forever ago.

A Little Background…

It’s coming up for 5 years since I first launched my crowdfunded commissions system as a barometer of public opinion on which potential animal designs may be most popular. Every animal on the commissions list is one I feel confident I’d be able to design, and happy to do so if enough people show an interest. I don’t have time to design them all, and using the commissions system as a gauge to which may be popular is a useful method to decide between multiple designs I’d be equally happy to create.

After a few hurdles (I set the prices far too low, so too many designs were being pledged for me to keep up with!), I temporarily withdrew the commissions system while I completed all the fully-pledged designs and worked on upgrading the system to make it more sustainable.

Thanks to my supporters, I’ve now completed 17 crowdsourced commissioned designs – and I’m ready to start on the 18th! Which animal will it be..?

How It Works

Commissions are now linked to your PlanetJune account. Once you’ve logged in, you’ll find the new commissions options in ‘My Account’, and from there you can make pledges, view your existing pledges, and upgrade, downgrade or delete your pledges.

Now you can pledge any full dollar amount (although there’s still a $6 minimum) so you can pledge $7, or $10, or $25 – or whatever you want!

Your pledge indicates your intention to pay that amount towards the commission of the design in question, should that design become fully-funded. But, your pledge will only become locked-in at such time as the design is a) fully pledged and b) at the top of the queue.

This means you won’t be stuck with a pledge you made months or years ago – you can log into your PlanetJune account and change or delete any unlocked pledges at any time until the next commission is ready to begin (at which time all pledges towards the next fully-pledged design will be locked).

This gives you the freedom to pledge as much as you like towards as many designs as you like. At most, you’ll be committing to one of your pledges, as only the first fully-funded design will get locked and made. Even if there are other fully-funded commissions, no further pledges will be locked-in until I’ve completed the previous design, published the pattern, and announced the date of the next commissions slot – you can still delete those pledges if you change your mind.

So you’re only ever committed to your pledge for the current commission. Let’s say you want to pay $30 for any one of 3 designs (but not for all of them!), you can pledge $30 towards each of them in the hope that one will grab the next commission slot. Once that happens, you’re free to delete your remaining pledges if you want, so you won’t get a surprise $30 invoice several months (or even years) later.

In this way, we can have a ‘bidding war’ every time I have a commission slot available. I’ll announce the slot via the Commissions newsletter, you make your best pledge for all the designs you’d like to commission, and whichever hits the jackpot first will become my next commissioned pattern!

Then, after the bidding war is over, you’ll have at least a month to decide if you’re still happy to honour all your other pledges, as no other design will be locked-in until I’ve completed the current pattern and announced the date of the next commission slot. Edit or delete your pledges from your PlanetJune account as often as you want – it’s all automatic.

Design Options

To give you a better idea of what I plan to design with each option, I’ve added a representative photo of each of the animals, either from my own photos, or licenced through Creative Commons.

The photos above are just a sample – you can see them all on the Design Options page on the new Commissions microsite.

Note: I had planned to add some new options to the commissions list at this relaunch time, but the list is plenty long enough already, so I’m keeping the options as-is for the time being. Once we’re well into the first cycle, I’ll get rid of some of the least popular choices and replace them with new requests. So please:

Stay Updated

I highly recommend you sign up for my Commissions News mailing list to be notified whenever new design options are added. I’ll also be emailing the list with a reminder a couple of weeks before I open each new commissions slot, so you’ll have an extra chance to check all your pledges and delete any you’re unhappy with – or add some new ones – before the next commission gets locked in.

Pledge Now for the February Timeslot!

Make your best pledges right now for the animals you’d most like me to design. At the time I write this, Goat is in the lead, with Raccoon and Capybara coming up fast and a whole host of others closing in – but that could all change in an instant… Make your best pledges now for your favourites, and maybe your design will be the one I start in the next month!

Ready to pledge? Login to your PlanetJune account – you’ll see the Commissions options (to make/edit your pledges) in ‘My Account’.

Or check out the design options and FAQ on the Commissions microsite.

I hope the new and improved PlanetJune Commissions will lead to lots more lovely animal designs to add to my portfolio – I’m looking forward to seeing which I’ll get to make first!

It’s easy when you’re immersed in a business every day to jump straight into the next thing, keep tightly focused on the next task, and not really see how far you’ve come. This Year in Review post is the one time I actually stop and think about what I’ve accomplished over the past year…

In 2016, I released 14 new crochet patterns, adding a varied mix of animals, plants, accessories, donationware and seasonal designs to my catalogue:

I haven’t had a lot of time for non-work crafting, but I have knitted another 1.5 sweaters (although I’ve just realised I haven’t even photographed/blogged my last 2015 sweater yet – oops!) and made a few other things, including my polymer clay BB-8 🙂

Personal Report

From May-August, I spent 1-2 weeks of each month travelling (to the UK, Hawaii, a Kruger safari, and Canada), which was far too much, but I either take the opportunity to travel with Dave when he has observing trips and conferences, or we miss out on the chance of a short holiday at an exciting location for little more than the cost of my plane tickets.

But, especially as we decided (for safety reasons) to not announce when we weren’t going to be home, that put a lot of business stress on me. How can I stay active on my blog and social media when all I’m doing is visiting places I can’t mention or struggling to catch up and get the next pattern ready before the next trip?

It was exhausting, and it took its toll with another 2-month bronchitis episode, which forced a lapse in my knee rehab exercises, so now I have knee problems again… I know I did too much, and I’ve learnt my lesson.

But, although I’d like to travel less frequently in future, I don’t regret my choices: we had some spectacular travel adventures with memories I’ll always treasure, I got over the bronchitis, and I know I can get my knee back to its still-wobbly-but-not-painful best in time. And I have an amazing amount of new wildlife inspiration:

Clockwise from top left: I photographed a UK robin, Hawaiian turtle, Canadian chipmunk, and African elephant – all in one year!

Business Report

My most popular patterns in 2016 were my turtles, cacti/succulents, and AmiCats (all pictured below), followed by the new 2016 releases.

It’s always the case that a few bestselling patterns make up the majority of my sales, but the size and variety of my catalogue as a whole is equally important – looking at my sales statistics, I can see that I wouldn’t be able to make a good living from my patterns without having both a) a handful of very popular designs and b) many dozens of other choices.

For the past five years, I’ve kept an annual list of large project goals for PlanetJune, to complete as time permits. In 2016, I completed the last of these large behind-the-scenes projects to improve the running of my business:

• Upgrading and relaunching my shop with new features
• Splitting my FAQ into its own microsite with each answer on its own page
• Adding closed captioning to all my YouTube video tutorials
• Relaunching my newsletter with a new branded look and better anti-spam protection
• Developing and coding an improved pattern commissions system (to be relaunched later this month – watch this space!)

What’s Next?

It’s exciting to have completed all my big projects – I usually spend a large fraction of each year working behind the scenes on tech updates and improvements. But patterns and tutorials are big projects in themselves, and there’ll always be new tech/security updates to implement, so I’m happy to start 2017 without any additional goals. If I leave myself with more time to play around with new design concepts, who knows what I’ll come up with..?

My wish for 2017 is for creative freedom, light-heartedness, and time to relax. I think PlanetJune will benefit from that too, and I hope you’ll also be able to find those things in the year ahead. Happy New Year!

I’ve just finished upgrading the PlanetJune shop with some helpful new features that I think you’ll enjoy, as well as a host of small functional and cosmetic updates to make the shop easier to use and bring the graphics in line with the rest of the site.

I’m really excited about the new features I’ve built, so let’s have a look at them now…

Save for Later

This first feature will be useful for everyone – I’ve added a ‘save for later’ option in the shopping cart. I’m sure you’ll already be familiar with this functionality from your Amazon account – the saved items appear below the items already in your cart, so you can check out without having to delete the items you aren’t ready to buy today. You can move items between the cart and the Saved for Later section with just one click/tap.

This feature replaces my old wishlist functionality, which was always slightly buggy – when you added an item with options to the wishlist, it sometimes neglected to save the options. To smooth the transition for you, I’ve imported all your items from your wishlist to your Saved for Later section of your shopping cart.

A couple of things to be aware of, regarding this transition:

• I couldn’t import any items that the wishlist hadn’t stored correctly. So if you’d added a custom set (AmiDogs, Fuzzy Friends, or Accessories), it’s probably not in your Saved for Later because your custom choices hadn’t been saved. (This won’t be a problem in future – yay!)
• I started exporting the wishlist items at the end of July. I’ve also added all new wishlist items added since then, but, if you deleted anything from your wishlist after July 27th, it’ll still be in your Saved for Later section.
• Saved for Later can’t tell if you’ve already bought an item, so there may be patterns there that you already own. (But my other new features will help you with that!)

The other new features are both available from My Account:

My Patterns

Go to My Account and choose My Patterns to see an alphabetical list of all the PlanetJune patterns you own. Whether you bought them individually, or in a multipack, you’ll see the individual PDF names, so it’s easy to see what you’ve bought, and click through to download the PDF from your order whenever you need to. (This is especially useful if you bought several custom sets – the old system didn’t show you which patterns you’d chosen for each until you clicked into the order!)

From this page, you can also see which of your patterns you’ve already reviewed, and click straight through to write a review for any of the others. (Useful if you’d like to get some more entries in my monthly Review & Win contest, but can’t remember what you’ve already reviewed!)

This page is available in 2 versions: Full and Lite. The Full version is easy to browse because it includes a little photo of each pattern, but if you’ve bought a lot of patterns, all those thumbnails may take a while to load. So, I’ve also given you the option of the Lite text-only version, which loads in no time.

And now onto the last new feature:

Patterns I Don’t Own

I love this new feature! It’ll be especially useful to those of you who’ve bought lots of my patterns – with so many in my catalogue now, it can be hard to keep track of which you’ve bought, especially as you may have bought something in several different ways: individually; as part of a multipack; or as an optional add-on. The last thing I’d want to do is to make you accidentally buy the same pattern twice, so this list will take care of that.

If you’re looking for a new PlanetJune pattern to buy, head straight to the Patterns I Don’t Own list (in My Account) and you’ll see an alphabetical list of all the patterns that aren’t in your My Patterns list. Click any pattern name to go to its listing in the shop, so you can add it to your cart (or to your Saved for Later).

Again, this list is available in Full and Lite versions, so you can stick to text-only if you’re on a slow internet connection or just want to check for a specific pattern, or enjoy browsing the photos in the Full version if you have a minute to wait for all the thumbnails to load!

These updates are the result of a month of development and hand-coding. Although I’ve tested everything extensively, there’s always a chance that something on the live site may give an unexpected result. If you have any problems using the shop or your PlanetJune account, or see anything that looks remotely strange, please email me to let me know, so I can fix it!

I hope you’ll find the new features helpful, and, while you may not notice all the other little changes and improvements, they should all combine to make the shop, and your PlanetJune account, easier to use from now on.

Yesterday, I spent the entire day transcribing all my crochet video tutorials so I could add closed captioning to my videos. From now on, if you’re hard of hearing or have any problems understanding my accent, you can turn on the subtitles (it’s the ‘CC’ option on all YouTube videos) and read along as I talk.

An example screenshot of one of my tutorials with CC turned on.

An added bonus is that, now YouTube is owned by Google, non-English speakers can use Google’s auto-translate to get a (reasonable, if not perfect) translation of my videos, too:

‘anneau magique’ = ‘magic ring’ in French! (Note: as far as I can see, auto-translate only works on the non-mobile version of YouTube at time of writing.)

I think adding these captions is a valuable addition to my video tutorials, and I’ll be creating transcripts for all my new videos in future, too. But doing this wasn’t something I’d planned…

Auto-Captions: a Cautionary Tale

Did you know that YouTube now adds automatic closed captioning to most videos? That sounds like a great feature, but it turns out it’s appallingly (and hilariously) inaccurate.

Yesterday, I looked at the auto-captions for my videos for the first time and was truly horrified. They made no sense at all; almost every word was wrong (e.g. it’s ‘loop stitch’, not ‘lipstick’). But, worst of all, they also included some adult words and phrases that often made it sound like I was describing something very different from crochet..!

After working so hard to produce clear, comprehensible video tutorials, to find YouTube had added this comedy subtitling was a big disappointment – anyone who’s tried to watch my videos with the closed captioning turned on must think I’m a complete idiot. (But, this was also an opportunity for me to enhance my videos by adding this feature properly, so it’s not all bad.)

As I was replacing the auto-captions on each video with my new transcripts, I kept a list of the old captions for one phrase that I always say at the start of every video: “this is June from PlanetJune”. It’s a good indication of how poor (and inconsistent) the auto-captioning is. For my 30 video tutorials, YouTube mis-interpreted that same phrase in 15 different ways:

• this is Jen from Panaji
• this is Kim from Planet game
• this is Jim component to
• this is Jim from Planet came
• this is Kim from planet King
• this is Jin from panicking
• this is June from panicking
• this is Kim from panicking

…so I’m sure you can imagine how bad the captions for the remainder of the videos were (although “this is June from panicking” was a pretty accurate description of me when I first discovered the extent of this problem!)

I don’t know if my English accent caused extra problems for the auto-captioning, but, given the results I got with my fairly common/neutral accent I don’t have high hopes that auto-captioning is ever accurate enough to be useful.

Check your Video Captions

If you make YouTube videos, I’d recommend that you check the results of your auto-captions as soon as possible, and see if yours are any better than mine were!

• If there are only a few mistakes, it’s easy to edit the captions to fix them.
• If they’re as bad as mine were but you don’t have time to create proper transcripts at the moment, you can at least turn the auto-captions off for each video, so people won’t laugh at you!
• Or, you can do what I did and replace the auto-captioning on each video with a text file containing a complete and accurate transcript. (This takes time, but it’ll help people to find you in search as well as being useful to your viewers, so I’d say it’s well worth doing.)

How do you do these things? Here are some helpful links from YouTube to get you started:

• How to add subtitles & closed captions
• How to edit or remove captions

Closed captioning my videos wasn’t something I’d ever thought to do, but yet again (as with my mobile-friendly site redesign last year) Google has forced my hand in a way that’s made me improve my offerings. So, um, thanks, Google?

If you’d like to see my tutorials, I have playlists for them in my YouTube channel:

• PlanetJune crochet video tutorials for right-handers
• PlanetJune crochet video tutorials for left-handers

I’m very happy to have accurate and helpful subtitles on all my video tutorials now, and I hope they’ll make my videos an even more useful resource for crocheters. 🙂