comparison
Should I sell my knitting patterns on Ravelry, on my own site, or on both at once?
Each channel differs in fees, payment handling, sales tax treatment, customer data ownership and how easily you can push an errata update to past buyers. A structural comparison, not a verdict.
Most established knitting designers end up on both, and the reason is not hedging. The two channels do genuinely different jobs. A pattern database with a project feed brings you buyers who were already searching for a top-down raglan in worsted. Your own storefront gives you the buyer's email address, the full price, and the ability to reach every past purchaser when you correct a chart.
The real decision is not which one wins. It is which one you treat as the source of truth for your file, your version number and your customer list, and how you keep the other one in step without maintaining two half-current copies of the same PDF.
What follows is a structural comparison: what each channel handles, what each costs, and what each does and does not let you do when a pattern needs correcting after release.
What each channel actually handles for you: delivery, payment, tax
Selling a digital file in the United States involves four separate jobs. Taking the money. Delivering the file. Handling sales tax on a digital good. And keeping a record of who bought what.
A pattern marketplace does the first three by default. Payment is collected through the platform's processor, the file is delivered from their servers with a download link that keeps working, and the platform generally handles the sales tax determination and remittance as a marketplace facilitator, which is the mechanism most states use to shift that duty onto the marketplace rather than the individual seller.
On your own site, you own all four. Your checkout, your processor account, your file delivery, and your tax position. Digital goods are taxed inconsistently across the states: some tax downloadable products, some do not, and some tax them only under particular definitions. Economic nexus thresholds determine whether you have an obligation in a state you have never visited. Most independents solve this by using a store platform or a tax service that calculates and files, and by talking to an accountant once rather than guessing annually.
That difference is the honest core of the comparison. The marketplace removes administrative burden. Your own site removes intermediaries. Both cost something.
Keep reading: What are the most common grading errors that only show up in the largest sizes?
Transaction fees and payment processing costs, line by line
Compare like with like by running one sale through both. Take a $9.00 pattern.
On your own site, the usual stack is a card processor at roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for an online transaction, plus whatever your store platform charges. If your platform is a flat monthly fee with no per-sale cut, the per-sale math is:
- Gross: $9.00
- Processing: 2.9 percent of $9.00 is $0.26, plus $0.30 fixed, so $0.56
- Net per sale: $8.44
Add a $29 monthly platform fee and the picture changes with volume. At 20 sales a month that fee is $1.45 per sale, dropping your net to $6.99. At 200 sales a month it is 15 cents, and your net is $8.29. Fixed monthly costs punish low volume and effectively vanish at high volume. That single fact explains why the same advice is wrong for a designer releasing twice a year and right for one releasing monthly.
On a marketplace, the structure is usually a percentage cut plus the payment processing, taken automatically, with no monthly fee. Read your platform's current published rates rather than trusting a number from a forum post, because these change. Then build the same three lines: gross, deductions, net. If a marketplace takes a combined cut that leaves you $7.60 on a $9.00 pattern, it beats a $29 monthly platform until you are selling roughly 35 patterns a month, and loses after.
The fixed 30 cent component matters more than designers expect at low price points. On a $4.00 accessory pattern, 30 cents is 7.5 percent of the price before any percentage fee is applied. That is a strong argument for bundling small patterns rather than selling them singly.
Who owns the buyer list, and what that means for errata
This is where the channels stop being interchangeable.
When you sell through your own store, you have the purchaser's email address, tied to the specific pattern and the specific version they downloaded. When you find an error in row 47 of the chart, you can email exactly the people holding the affected version, with a plain description and a fresh file.
On a marketplace, the platform holds that relationship. What you typically get instead is the platform's own update mechanism: you upload a corrected file, and buyers are notified through the platform or see the new file in their library. That works, and for many designers it works well. What you do not get is a list you control, an email you write, or any ability to reach those buyers if you ever leave the platform.
Neither is dishonest. But they produce different outcomes on the day something is wrong. Marketplace updates depend on the buyer opening the platform. A direct email lands in the inbox of someone who may be halfway through the sleeve.
What a good errata notice contains
Whatever the channel, the notice needs four things: which pattern, which version they have and which is current, exactly what changed stated as a page and a line or a chart row, and whether the change affects work already completed. That last item is the one knitters actually need. "Chart B row 47 corrected, affects the left front only, work completed below row 47 is unaffected" is a useful sentence. "Updated file, please redownload" is not.
Keep reading: Do I have to collect sales tax on a PDF pattern sold to a buyer in another state?
Discovery: pattern databases, project pages and search behavior
A pattern database is a search engine with structured fields. Yarn weight, yardage, needle size, gauge, construction method, size range, craft. Someone with 400 yards of DK and a desire for a yoked pullover can filter to precisely that, and your pattern either appears or does not.
Your own site competes in general web search instead, where you are ranking against every craft blog and retailer. That is winnable, slowly, with genuine content and clear pattern pages, but it is a project measured in seasons.
The other database asset is the project page. Finished objects made from your pattern, photographed by real knitters, in real yarns, with notes about modifications. That is social proof you cannot manufacture on your own site, and it accumulates. It is also, quietly, an errata early warning system: three people noting the same odd decrease in their project notes is a signal worth checking.
Updating a live pattern file on each platform
The mechanics differ enough to plan around.
| Task | Marketplace | Own storefront |
|---|---|---|
| Replace the file | Upload the new PDF over the listing | Upload to the product, confirm the delivery link points at the new file |
| Notify past buyers | Platform notification or library update | Email you write, to the segment you choose |
| Show what changed | Listing notes plus your changelog page inside the PDF | Product page notes plus the same changelog page |
| Prove which version a buyer holds | Version and date printed in the file itself | Same, plus your own order record of what was delivered |
The common element in every row is the version stamp inside the PDF. Print the version number and the date on page one and put it in the filename. That is the only piece of the system that travels with the file no matter which channel it came from, and it is what lets a customer support email be resolved in one reply.
See how StitchPattern handles this for independent sewing and knitting pattern design
Bundles, coupons and collection pricing across channels
Bundling is where the two channels diverge in flexibility. Marketplaces typically offer their own bundle and coupon tools, with rules about how discounts stack and when they can run. Your own store lets you build whatever you want: a three pattern collection at a set price, a tiered discount, a code that only your newsletter has.
The trap is running the same promotion at different effective prices in two places at once. Someone who bought at full price on Tuesday and sees a 40 percent code on Wednesday has a legitimate complaint, and they will send it.
Two rules keep this clean. First, decide which channel leads on price and make the other follow within the same day. Second, never discount a pattern below the point where the marketplace cut plus processing leaves you under a dollar, because at that point you are paying for the privilege of a sale.
Running both: one master file and one version number
If you sell in two places, you have to accept one discipline: there is exactly one master file, and every channel serves a copy of it.
The workflow that survives contact with a busy release week looks like this:
- Correct the master file and increment the version, using a major bump for anything affecting stitch counts, charts, measurements or yardage.
- Add a dated line to the changelog page inside the PDF.
- Export once. Upload the identical export to every channel on the same day.
- Write one errata note and send it through each channel's mechanism, with the same wording.
- Record which version each channel is now serving, and the date you pushed it.
Step five is the one everyone skips, and it is the one that catches the failure where a corrected file went to your own store in March and to the marketplace in June because you forgot.
Choosing, and then not relitigating it
If discovery is your bottleneck, the database earns its cut. If you already have an audience and a mailing list, your own store keeps more of every dollar and keeps the relationship. Most designers who publish steadily end up running both, leading with their own store on release day and letting the database carry discovery for the long tail.
Either way the fragile part is the same: keeping one version of the truth, and reaching people who bought a file that has since been corrected. StitchPattern holds the master file, the version history and the correction log in one place, and pushes errata to previous buyers when a version changes, so the answer to "which channel has the current file" is never a guess.
