How to make money selling printables online

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BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SELLING PRINTABLES ONLINE

Creating your own printables and selling them online is a lucrative side hustle that can actually generate additional income. If you are looking for a creative outlet and a way to make extra money, you should definitely consider giving it a try.

Selling printables online is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

It takes time, determination, and persistence to make consistent sales, but it sure is possible. And it has the potential to be transformed from just a side hustle into a full-time business one day.

The good thing about creating printables is, that you don’t have to be an artist or a graphic designer to make them. Even if you think, you don’t have a creative bone in your body, you can still be successful selling printables. There are plenty of different products you can make, that don’t require artistic skills.

Scroll down to read the full post, or use the table of contents to jump to the section you are most interested in.

What are printables?

Printables are digital files that a person can download from a website and print at home or a local print shop. These can be planners, calendars, coloring pages, wall art, party decorations, stickers, etc.

Printables are often called digital downloads, because that is basically what they are, and sometimes these two terms are used interchangeably.



How much money can I make selling printables?

Obviously, the more you sell the more money lands in your bank account.

The actual amount depends on many factors, including how much time you spend on your shop, how good you are at creating and promoting your products, the niche you are in. If you do proper research, follow the trends, and improve your skills, you will build a successful shop with consistent sales and a loyal following of buyers.

Some people earn a substantial income from selling their printables. There are people like Sarah from Sarah Titus, who makes thousands of dollars every month from her Shopify store. Of course, not everybody is that successful, but if you are ready to put in some work into your side hustle and treat it seriously, it is realistic to make $500 -$1000 per month.

What are the benefits of selling printables online?

Selling printables online is a great side hustle that has a number of benefits. Some of them are:

  • It’s a legit way to supplement your income. Although there are lots of free printable files online, people are still buying them. As long as you can solve a problem and bring value to your customers, they’ll be willing to purchase your work.
  • It is a passive income. Since you provide digital downloads, you have to do the upfront work first, set everything up, and then just wait for the sales to come. Unlike physical products, you create your product once and sell it over and over again, even while you sleep. Of course, you will still need to manage your store and create additional products, but you won’t have to replenish your stock when a product is sold.
  • There is no shipping. Since it is a digital file, you don’t have to ship anything! This means, there are no shipping, packaging, or storage costs, and you don’t have to worry about your product getting lost or damaged in the mail. Think of how much time, energy, and money you can save.
  • You can work from anywhere. All you need to manage your online store is your computer with Internet access and your software.
  • You can create your own flexible schedule. You decide how much you work and when you work. You can work on the weekends or after your day job.
  • It’s a creative outlet. You can make money by doing what you actually enjoy.



What printables should I make for sale?

Before you dive into the design process, it’s essential to decide what type of printables you want to sell.

Some of the popular ones are:

  • Organizing printables (calendars, planners, to-do lists, trackers, checklists, labels, etc)
  • Journal pages
  • Digital paper (also called scrapbook paper)
  • Clip art
  • Party decorations (banners, invitations, cake toppers and wrappers, table cards, etc).
  • Invitations and gift tags
  • Party games for adults (these are great for baby showers, bachelorette parties, etc).
  • Coloring pages for kids
  • Coloring pages for adults (stress relief coloring pages are pretty popular)
  • Kids activities (word puzzles, scavenger hunts, mazes, etc)
  • Stickers
  • Resume templates
  • Your original artwork

Do some brainstorming and choose a niche, because you don’t want to be all over the place. Choose something that you are interested in, for instance, coloring pages or party decorations. This way your shop will look professional, and the buyers won’t be confused by the mishmash of products.

Of course, you can experiment with various products, see what’s working and what’s not, and change your niche eventually, but if you are just starting out you don’t want to create one calendar, one coloring page, and one sticker, and wait for the sales to come. This is not going to make your shop successful.

While it is important to be interested in your niche, it is also important to know, what products are in demand. You can create the most beautiful artwork, but if it is not what your customers are looking for, they won’t buy it.

Some tips when it comes to choosing a niche:

  • Think of the things you are passionate about.
  • Think of the things you are good at or have knowledge of
  • Research other sellers on your chosen platform
  • Do a search on Pinterest to see, what is popular



Where can I sell printables?

There are multiple platforms available to sell your printables online, each one has its own pro’s and con’s.

When choosing a platform you should take into consideration the type of printables you are planning to sell, your budget, and how tech-savvy you are. It’s best to start with one platform, to fully understand how it works, but later you can easily sell your products on multiple platforms.

Etsy

Etsy is the go-to place for all things printable, and is a good choice for a beginner. It is a huge marketplace for unique handmade goods with millions of active buyers.

In order to sell your printables on Etsy, you need to create an account, set up your shop, and upload your items. The process is easy and straight forward.

When someone makes a purchase and the payment is cleared, he can access the download file. This happens almost instantly. This means you don’t have to check your shop to see if there are orders and send your files manually to your customers. Etsy takes care of all of that.

Etsy is free to register, but there is a $0.20 listing fee for four months, and once your item is sold, there is a 3.5% transaction fee.

Teachers pay teachers

Teachers Pay Teachers is a community of educators, and you can sell educational resources on the platform.

If you want to create printable materials for teachers to use in their classrooms, then Teachers Pay Teachers is a platform for you. You can sell things like your original lesson plans, workbooks, clip art, classroom decorations, etc.

Teachers Pay Teachers have two types of memberships: a free basic one and a paid premium one. If you have the free membership, you will be charged a 45% commission fee and a $0.30 fee per resource. If you choose the paid one (will cost you $60 per year), you will be charged a 20% commission fee and a $0.15 fee per resource.

Patreon

Unlike the previous examples, Patreon is a membership platform.

You create an account and set up your Patreon creator page, and your subscribers (called Patrons) pay a monthly fee to receive your exclusive products. How many products to create per month and how much to charge for them depends solely on you.

Furthermore, you have an option to set up multiple tiers (levels) for your patrons to choose from. Each tier has a set monthly price and corresponding benefits. For example, your entry-level patrons will receive a new printable calendar each month, but your mid-level patrons will receive a calendar and a matching monthly planner.

This is a great way to build a recurring stream of income, and the more patrons you have, the more money you earn.

Another way to go is to charge your patrons a set price for each product you produce. This way you won’t feel pressured to create a certain amount of products each month.

Patreon is free to join and has 3 different plans: Lite, Pro, and Premium. Depending on your plan you will be charged a set commission percentage from your sales and payment processing fees.

Print-on-demand websites don’t sell digital products, they literally print your design on their white-labeled products, and deliver them to the customers.

Popular print-on-demand websites are Zazzle, Society6, RedBubble.

This is a good choice for those, who want to design wall art, cards, notebooks, stickers, etc. But you are not limited only to those, you can place your design on other products like T-shirts, mugs, phone cases, bags…

What you need to do, is create your seller’s account, upload your designs, and select products on which you’d like your designs printed. And that’s it, you don’t need to worry about anything else.

When someone buys your wall art or a T-shirt with your print on it, print-on-demand company takes your design, prints it on their physical product, and ships it directly to the buyer.

It’s free the create an account, you will earn a profit margin from each sale.

E-commerce platform

If you want to set up your own online shop, try Shopify. It’s one of the leading e-commerce platforms, that offers everything you need to sell online, including digital downloads.

With a drag-and-drop store builder, you can easily create your own professional looking website.

Shopify has 3 paid plans for you to choose from: Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. You will be charged a monthly fee depending on your plan and transaction fees.

There is also a 14-day free trial available.

Your own self-hosted website

If you want to have an online store, that is truly yours, you can build your own website.

This way you will have full control of your store, and it will be under your domain name. You won’t depend on 3rd party platforms, and won’t have to pay additional fees to them.

Although this is a great option, it requires you to be at least a bit tech-savvy.



What software do I need to make printables?

The neccessary software greatly depends on the type of printables you want to produce, your budget, and your level of expertise in this matter.

Let’s look at the different options available.

The basics

If you are just starting out and you want to test the waters to see if you actually enjoy making printables, you can begin with the basic software you might already have.

For example, text-based printables, such as planners, daily to-do lists, calendars, checklists, worksheets for kids, don’t require a lot of fancy graphics and can be made in Microsoft Word or Excel. Your design options will be limited, but you can still create printables to sell.

If you are interested in this option, Rachel from All About Planners has TONS of free tutorials on how to make printables in Microsoft Word and Excel. I definitely recommend checking them out.

Online design platforms

If you feel you need more tools, fonts and graphics, but are on a tight budget, you can try out online design platforms.

Canva is one of the most popular ones. It is an easy-to-use design platform that has lots of pre-made templates for you to customize or create your own design from scratch. It also provides users with different fonts and free stock photos directly within the platform. Canva’s drag-and-drop interface makes it pretty simple to use.

Once you have finished designing your printable you can download it to your computer in different formats.

Canva is free but has a premium paid version that you can upgrade to. Pro version comes with more design templates and tools included and has a 30-day trial period. After that, it’s $9 per month.

Going pro

If you are serious about designing printables for sale, you should look into professional graphic design software.

Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard vector graphics editor that is widely used by creatives. With Illustrator you can create all kinds of high-quality products, such as digital paper, clip art, custom illustrations, party banners, gift tags, etc. This powerful software will allow you to make almost anything you can think of.

If you want to create text-based printables that have many pages (e-books, tutorials, courses, etc) Adobe InDesign is a better choice.

You can also use Adobe Photoshop to create your printables.



How do I actually design printables?

When it comes to the design process itself, there are several options.

Create from scratch

The obvious way to go is to design your printables from scratch.

Whether you use Microsoft Word or Adobe Illustrator, you create printables, that are 100% made by you.

Use licensed graphics

Did you know, that you can incorporate graphics made by other designers into your work? If you are not artistic, or you’re just learning graphic design, this could be a great way to design your printables.

Say, you want to make a floral calendar, but you don’t know, how to create flowers. So what you do, is you create the layout in your chosen software, download the flowers from a licensed website, and use it in your design. Voila, your floral calendar is ready!

To use other people’s work in your designs legally, you need a commercial license, that clearly states, that you can use it for commercial purposes. You cannot use images, that you found on the web, or just downloaded for free. When you are not sure, if you CAN use a certain graphic or image in your work, it is always better NOT to use it, and find another one instead.

The same goes for fonts. Those beautiful hand-written fonts, that you see on so many printables are made by font designers, and

There are many websites, where designers license their work to be used commercially. Here are some of them:

N.B. Please read the license before you purchase and use the items!



Digitize your hand-drawn art

Artists can easily sell their original work in the form of digital downloads.

If you are already selling your work as a physical product, you can provide your buyers with an option to buy a digital version, that they can download, print themselves, and hang in their homes.

To do so, you will need to scan your artwork into your computer, clean it up with a photo editing software such as Photoshop or Gimp, and export in the desired file format. Your art is ready to be sold online!

You can pin this image to your Pinterest board!

How to make money selling printables online

I hope you found this beginner’s guide on how to sell printables online useful and will give this side hustle a try.

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