Looking for an easy and fun side job from home? One of the most flexible ways to make money is by selling your own creations.
Luckily, thanks to the internet, you can sell digital products so you don’t have to worry about dealing with logistics like packaging and shipping.
One of the most popular types of digital products is printables. These are digital downloads that print on items like calendars, worksheets, planners, stickers, gift tags, and more. Anyone can make money selling printables online.
You don’t have to be a design expert or even know how to use Photoshop to create something valuable that you can sell to customers.
So many people use different kinds of printables each month, so this is a great opportunity to seize if you are looking to earn passive income with printables or even start a profitable side business.
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7 Steps to Create and Sell Printables Online
Creating printables online is something anyone can do even if you don’t know how to make printables to sell or ideas to start with. If you have a computer, internet connection, and a little creativity, the types of printables to sell are endless.
Printables range in price from $1.99 to $6 on average, while worksheet bundles or more custom-level printables can be sold for as much as $55.
Another benefit of making printables is that you can just create your product once and resell it again and again online.
So, how exactly do you get started?
Here are 7 important steps to take if you want to make money selling printables.
Step 1: Research Your Target Audience
Before you start selling anything or even create your digital product, it’s important to determine who you’d like to sell to in the first place.
Who is your target audience and ideal customer? Narrowing this down can help you brainstorm some ideas of what type of printable you should create.
If you want to help busy moms, you might realize that they need help scheduling and preparing meals during the week.
As a result, a meal planning worksheet may be a helpful printable product for your audience.
Step 2: Look at Other Printables for Inspiration
Source: Saratitus.com
There’s nothing wrong with scoping out the market and researching different types of printables to sell.
In fact, doing this is highly recommended. You can pull inspiration from other people’s creations and even get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t work.
You don’t have to copy anyone’s ideas exactly, but see where you can use your creativity to make a unique printable that might exceed the value of the ones you’re seeing online.
Step 3: Choose a Tool to Create Your Printables
Once you have your ideas narrowed down, it’s time to figure out how you’ll actually create your printable. Luckily, you have plenty of affordable options to help you do this.
Canva is one of the best sites to help you create printables because they have tons of fonts, colors, graphics, and even templates to choose from.
You don’t have to have much design knowledge to use Canva since it has a lot of automated features that help you correctly space out the elements on your printable.
When it comes to pre-sized templates, Canva has many of these so you’re not starting from scratch whether you want to make a calendar, meal plan, or activity tracker worksheet among many other things. 
Canva has a free version as well as a premium version that comes with more features. Regardless of which version of Canva you’re using, make sure you don’t copy the existing templates too closely.
Your printables must be unique and original in order for you to sell them so many as many changes and customizations as you can to create your own digital products.
If you were looking to create a weekly chore chart printable to sell with this template shown above for example, you may want to change the fonts, colors and add another graphic to make it your own creative work. You can also add an area to list the name of who’s responsible for the chore.
Another tool you may want to consider using is PicMonkey. PicMonkey comes with a small monthly fee, but the design tools available on this site are well worth it.
There are also pre-made templates to help jumpstart the creative process for your printables. Everything is fully customizable and the quality is more than enough to help you sell your printables online to happy customers.
Photoshop and Adobe InDesign are just some other tools that can help you create stunning printables but they come with a bit of a learning curve.
If you’re just starting out, it’s better to start with a free or affordable tool like Canva or PicMonkey then switch to a more advanced platform as you get more practice in.
Related: 21 Simple Ways to Make Money Without a Job
Step 4: Create the Best Printable
Source: Sarahtitus.com
Of course, you want to create the best printable available so it will sell quickly. However, don’t get too caught up on perfection.
Focus on really understanding your ideal customer and designing something that helps make their lives easier and more enjoyable.
Play around with ideas for your brand and keep improving your quality over time. Maybe you want to create printables with a pop of color or your love to incorporate graphics of animals.
Perhaps, you’re looking to take a more simplified approach. Creating the best printables requires time and consistent effort but you will definitely improve your skills if you stick with it.
Related: How to Make Money From a Hobby
Step 5: Choose a Platform
Where you decide to sell your printables is important and you have several options. If you’re a blogger, you can sell them from your own site by creating an online store.
If you don’t know where to sell printables online other than on your own site, consider setting up a Shopify store or using Send Owl to help you collect payments and process orders online.
Or, you can choose a 3rd party site like Etsy to sell your printables on. Etsy, is a popular place to sell printables and they offer a ton of features to help you make the most of your online store.
You can offer promotions, collect reviews, show previews of how your printables work, and more. Of course, Etsy does charge a fee when you make a sale, but in exchange, you get to host your own printables store online so it’s a trade-off.
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Step 6: Price it to Sell
Pricing your product should be just as fun as creating it. Start by comparing your printable to others that are being sold and determine a price range that fits in with the competition.
You should also always price for profit and this may depend on how the printable is sold.
If you’re using a platform like Etsy and know that they deduct a fee when you sell a product, keep this in mind when naming your prices.
Realize that you can always adjust your prices as you go, offer sales, and play around with the numbers until you find a price point that works best for your customers and brings in more sales.
Related: Make Money Searching the Web
Step 7: Promote Your Printables
Creating and listing your printables is just the starting point. If you want to get more sales and generate a recurring income, you’ll need to develop a plan for promoting your printables to get them in front of more people.
There are many ways to do this but one of the easiest things you can do is optimize your listing with a detailed description and specific keywords if you’re using a site like Etsy.
This will help more people find your printables when they’re searching online. If you have a blog, be sure to promote them on your own platform as well as social media.
Also, think of creative ways to promote your product whether that involves making a how-to video, or using testimonials from happy customers.
Tips to Make Selling Pritables Worth It
While you can make money selling printables online even as a newbie, the price of these digital downloads remains on the lower end.
Ideally, you’d want to sell quite a few printables each month to earn a steady part-time income.
Here are a few quick tips to help you make selling printables worth it for the long-term.
Related: 35+ Best Ways to Make Money Online in 2021
Tip 1: Hire a Graphic Designer
If you don’t how to make printables to sell, or you just don’t have time to come up with a unique design for your printables, you can always hire a graphic designer to do it for you.
Just get clear on your idea and perhaps you can even create a rough sketch of your vision and let an expert graphic designer take it from there.
Fiverr is a great place to start looking for affordable designers with good reviews.
Tip 2: Create Lots of Options
Don’t stop with just one digital product. Be sure to fill your printables store with many different options so you can get repeat customers.
If you want to create weekly chore chart printables for families, be sure to create other similar products as well like daily to-do list sheets, daily responsibility sheets and more.
By adding more options to your printables store, you’ll be able to serve more customer needs and increase your profits as well.
Say you have one printable that sells really well for $3. If your goal is to earn $500 per month, you’d need to sell over 166 printables to a new person each month. But if you add different options or even bundle some of your printables together, it can be much easier to reach that income goal.
Tip 3: Use an Email List
If you can commit to making quality and helpful printables, it won’t be long before you get some loyal customers and fans of your online store.
Create an email list on day one so you can capture leads, send promotions, and update people on your latest products. You can even offer an incentive to people who join the list by providing a free printable each month that’s not available in your store.
Tip 4: Share on Social Media
Don’t underestimate the value of having a social media presence. Create a Facebook or Instagram page for your printables business and share tips and tutorials related to your product.
You can also share new product previews and promotions on social media as well. If you already have personal social media profiles, you can share information about your printables business there too.
Related: Sell Photos Online
Why You Should Sell Printables
Overall, starting a printables business online can be an excellent way to earn passive income since you can create your product once then sell it over and over again.
If you’ve been longing to do something creative for extra cash that’s also on your own terms, start brainstorming some ideas of printables that you can create.
Play around with Canva or PicMonkey to create a quality design and start selling. You’ll find that it can be rewarding to create useful digital products that help people in their everyday lives.
