Disclaimer: the video above is not one of Chelly Wood’s videos, and Chelly is not affiliated with the Unicorn Rainbows Toys & Dolls YouTube channel.

Recently the YouTubers at Unicorn Rainbows Toys and Dolls left a kind comment on one of my videos. Out of curiosity, I visited their YouTube channel and discovered all the amazing videos they are making. Go check out their YouTube channel with this link!

They are creating doll play videos, unboxing videos, doll makeover videos, and so much more!

Currently they are asking for people to submit questions for their Q and A segments. Feel free to pop over to YouTube to submit your question. I submitted one recently too, and I hope they get a chance to answer mine!

Since the passage of COPPA laws, it’s harder to earn money on your YouTube channel, if you are making videos about dolls or toys. To learn more about COPPA and how it affects YouTubers like myself and the Unicorn Rainbows channel folks, click here.

After they passed the COPPA laws, doll craft YouTubers like myself had to find new ways to earn money. That’s when I started my Affiliate Marketing program, and I also started to offer online courses.

You may not realize it, but there are costs associated with running a website like ChellyWood.com. In 2018, my blog fee alone cost only $28 a year. But someone commented that they couldn’t find my patterns, that links to my patterns weren’t working, and suddenly I realized I’d uploaded more patterns than my $28 a year could hold.

Here’s how my website used to look:

So in 2019 I had to purchase a $300 per year business account with my web provider because I had uploaded so many patterns that the cheap version couldn’t hold them all!

And then COPPA laws passed, and I wasn’t able to make money on YouTube because videos that were considered “made for kids” were not eligible for advertising. So how was I supposed to keep this website running?

My brother advised me to start affiliate marketing, which works like this: my blog posts will link to Etsy, eBay, and Amazon, and when you guys — my followers — click on the hyperlinks for buying snaps, Velcro, and even dolls, as long as you actually buy something with that link, I will earn a very small portion of whatever you paid.

In fact, I now have a “Shop” page, so you can purchase your goods for making doll clothes, right out of my shop, and each time you make a purchase, it drops money into my ChellyWood.com bank account.

The year 2021 was the first year I used Affiliate marketing, and I actually earned a fair amount of money. So last year at tax time, I was advised to create an LLC for my small ChellyWood.com business, and I followed that advice.

But for some reason, the year 2022 hasn’t been particularly lucrative for my little one-woman business, even though I’m now teaching online classes through the Creative Spark Online Learning platform, in addition to the affiliate marketing that I’m doing through this website.

In January, I’ll post my earnings in a blog post, but when I did my quarterly earnings calculations, it wasn’t looking good. So if you need more snaps, doll-sized zippers, fabric, lace, elastic, or teeny-tiny buttons, please consider using my Shop page to make your purchases. Every penny helps!

And I’ll soon be releasing a new class with Creative Spark, teaching everyone how to design their own doll pants. If you have the funds, and if that topic sounds interesting to you, please consider signing up. Here’s a link to my instructor page on the Creative Spark Online Learning platform.

Finally, with the New Year right around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about our sewing resolutions for 2023. Did you know I have a digital sewing planner in my Etsy store and it only costs 99 cents? Consider buying my digital planner, which you can use on your phone, laptop, or computer. You can print it out and write your goals on there by hand, too, if that’s what you prefer.

Anyways, to wrap this up, let me say that I truly enjoy making patterns for this website, and with my retirement only about three years away, I really hope I can afford to keep this website running into my retirement years. If you don’t need any sewing notions, and you don’t have a use for a sewing planner, and you can’t afford to sign up for one of my online courses, there’s still something you can do to help…

Share the JPG images of my free patterns (like the one you see below) on any social media venue you take part in… Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tic-Toc, Instagram, etc… Share, SHARE, SHARE! The more people who know about this site, the more money I can earn to keep it running.

Best wishes for a happy 2023!

Disclaimer/Credit/Affiliate Marketing Link:

*ChellyWood.com earns money by linking to Amazon, eBay, Michaels, Etsy, and other online affiliate programs. Links provided above may be affiliate links. For a full list of my affiliate programs, and to understand how cookies are used to help this website earn money, please see my “Privacy Policy” page.

The free printable PDF sewing pattern offered here on this website is the design of Chelly Wood, and it is marked with a Creative Commons Attribution mark. Any similarity to other companies’ or other crafters’ projects of a similar nature is unintended.

Are you lovin’ all this free stuff from ChellyWood.com? Please show your support by telling people about ChellyWood.com. That’s what the “Creative Commons Attribution” mark on my patterns means: if you use my free patterns and tutorials, you should tell people where you got all this great free stuff!

• You can pin my patterns on Pinterest.
• You can post or like them on Facebook.
• You can tweet about them.
• Use any other form of social media that appeals to you!