Jananas

The Daily Knitter is a website that drives traffic by offering a free daily knitting pattern. They also have a repository of free patterns, plus some exclusive patterns and articles. They drive traffic to their site by offering free patterns and earn revenue from advertising based on that traffic. My personal experience is that they are doing that at the expense of the designers.

Back in September my Basic Ear Flap Hat Pattern was picked up as one of their free patterns of the day. I was pretty excited because it meant a) traffic to my site, b) more exposure for the knitting pattern, and c) more people knitting my hat. Free patterns of the day are on the site for the last two weeks (backwards from today), however I kept getting traffic for about four months. All of a sudden in January it just stopped. Nadda, nothing.

I sent their editor a first email in January asking (nicely I might add) if the pattern could be listed on their repository of free patterns. No response and it wasn’t added. Apparently it was good enough for their free pattern of the day, but not good enough to be listed. At this point I’m a little annoyed, but hey there could be a million and one reasons why the editor didn’t respond back. So I sent another email early in February and again, no response and the pattern wasn’t added. Now, I’m really irritated – six weeks is reasonable time frame to expect a response.

This is a shitty way to treat the pattern designers. In my case, I wasn’t even asked if I was okay with them listing my pattern as the free pattern of the day. At the time I was glad for the increase in traffic but once that traffic died away but the benefit to their business continued, I was peeved because they continued to profit from using my pattern.

Here’s how I interpret their business model – they use daily free patterns to entice people to come to their site daily, driving their stats and generating ad revenue. Every new free pattern helps drive their business – so while I received a finite increase in traffic, the benefit to them from using my pattern continues long after any benefits to me (the designer) stopped.

Behind that, though, are the people writing the free patterns that the Daily Knitter is the goodwill of the designers whose patterns they use to drive traffic. In an era where reputation and trust are important, why would you risk that over something so minor?

Really, is it that difficult to add all patterns listed as ‘free patterns of the day’ on your ‘free patterns’ pages as well? Is it that difficult to respond to an email from a person whose design you’ve used (and therefore profited from)? I would think that it would be in your best interest to maintain a good relationship with your designers so that they’d be more willing to contribute to your site in the future (and thus increase the value your provide).

Daily Knitter, I think that you’ve behaved poorly and I certainly won’t be recommending that anyone use you.

Edit (March 10th) - the pattern has been added back to their listings. I’m not 100% if it was just that they finally read through their emails and there was simple a system error that I was caught in or if they came across this acted. Regardless, the email I finally got back was pleasant and friendly and the pattern has been added back. WIN!