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Selling Printables Online

There are many people looking to start an online business who have no clue where to begin. There are many options to consider – from promoting other peoples’ products to offering services such as ghostwriting. But you can also earn money by creating simple, easy to create digital products to sell online known as printables. This can be used as an extra income to supplement your financial needs, but you can also turn it into a full-time career.

How much you can earn is up to you. You don’t have to be a graphic designer. You simply need a few free (or paid) tools and the desire to get into this niche. Selling these products doesn’t even require you to have your own site, so the costs are low to non-existent to get started.

Why Create Printables?

The reason why you want to do this will be unique to each person, but as long as you will have an interest in creating and selling something, it can serve as a strong foundation for your business.

You also can’t expect overnight success. This isn’t a get-rich quick niche, though it can be lucrative after you get started selling. You will need some skills, but it’s nothing complex or with a big learning curve.

With access to tutorials and other learning resources, there’s no reason why you can’t find out what you need to get started selling printables. Some people don’t get involved in selling online only because it feels so daunting.

They don’t know where to start. But it really is simple and selling printables online works the same as selling any other item. You need a product and a place to sell it. You need an idea or ideas.

You need a strategy for selling these items. You need to know how to set up your downloads and how to attract customers. Those are the three basics involved with printables.

Look at the reason that you first felt an interest in selling printables and that’ll help you decide if this is something that’s right for you. There’s a lot of variety, so there are niches that appeal to all kinds of interests – from the serious to funny side.

But maybe you’re someone who doesn’t know why it’s a good idea to create and sell printables. One of the reasons that you want to create these products is because they make a great passive income avenue.

It’s one of the fastest growing income streams on the internet today, which is why a lot of people are getting on board. Having a passive income means that once you’ve created the product, you won’t be spending much time or energy on taking care of them so that they make money for you.

These are products that, once created, can continue to bring in money over and over again while you’re free to move on to something else. This will enable you to either create more printables or have time to devote to whatever your other income streams are.

Or, you can build it into something that can help you become your own boss and leave behind the daily office grind. There’s no such thing as an easy road to success, so don’t make the mistake and think of this as a lazy or super easy way to make money.

You can’t fully set it and forget it. Even after you create your product you’ll still need to make sure it sells. The way to do that is to make sure that what you’ve created is something of quality.

You’ll have to put in the work to create whatever printable product you’ve decided on. Pause to learn what you don’t know. Spending a little time in the beginning to learn how to do something properly will save you a lot of time later on.

You may or may not have a lot to learn. It depends on what your skills currently are.

You’ll also have to make sure that you set these products up to sell wherever you’re uploading them, and depending on what kind you sell, you may have to update your printables like changing the year or whatever if it’s something dated.

There may be times when you’ll have to go in and discontinue a printable or a line of printables if something has changed and they’re no longer relevant. So you will be putting in the work – especially in the beginning.

Once your brand and store is set up and the printables are listed, you’ll make money on these at all hours of the day – including when you sleep – because they’re in high demand and this demand hasn’t showed any sign of slowing down.

In fact, it continues to grow as new ideas are developed. Another reason why you want to sell printables is that they have a broad audience appeal. These consumers keep coming back for more.

If you don’t have any idea at all as to what you’d like to create, all you need to do is look at your own life or the lives of your friends. Look at what you or they find helpful, what you need, enjoy or what you wish you had that could make your life easier.

Then create it! Spy on your comptition and see what they’re working on and what’s selling a lot on sites like Etsy in the printables department. Everyone uses a form of printable in their life.

Just think about the paper products that you have to have in order to maintain your schedule. Everything from recipes to uplifting images and more are part of the printable world.

Don’t worry so much about getting started that you overthink things. It really is easier than you believe. Printables aren’t something that will take you weeks or months to make and set up once you know what you’re doing, which is one of the reasons that you want to create printables.

Creating them is even faster once you master the type of printable you’ve chosen for your niche. Plus, the more of them that you make, the faster at it you’ll become. There’s not a lot of time involved for the simpler designs, so you could have printables ready to go in as little as a few minutes to a day depending on the scope of the project that you’re working on.

You can create templates and tweak one element like the design or image on the page, taking mere seconds to complete. Because they’re quick to make, this means that you can have a large product inventory quickly, which translates into more money for you.

You can create and upload 5 printables a day, for example. At the end of a week, you’ll have 35 printables ready to sell. You can stick to one niche when you’re making them, or you could create them as individual sheets in a variety of niches.

The best part about getting into making money with printables is that you get all the perks of selling a digital product. You don’t have to ship anything to your house or ship something to someone else’s house.

There won’t be a backlog of tangible products and shipping envelopes or boxes cluttering up your home waiting to be sent or stored in your garage hogging all the space.

There’s very little hassle whatsoever involved when you get into making printable items. Plus, this is a great creative outlet as well as being a money maker. Another good point is that you’re not going to have to empty out your life savings to get started in this business.

You don’t have to have any overhead. There’s nothing for you to dust, make trips to the post office or take care of. Shoppers choose the printable they want, they pay for it and click on download.

It’s that simple for them – and for you!

What Are Printables?

Printables are basically just documents, pages, or creative designs that people can use for various areas of their lives. They can be for professional or personal use. Calendar planners are a form of printables.

This is something that many people use to keep their lives from descending into a chaotic mess of missed appointments and other things. Some use these daily, others weekly or monthly.

These planners are printed out and used to help organize a household. You might print out one that you use just to keep on top of what appointments you have going on in your life.

These can be used at home and at the office. So you might have a dental appointment that you need to remember to get to. If it’s on your day off, you could put that on your printable home calendar.

But if it’s during work hours, then you could pencil that right into a slot and have that reminder. Many people have two or three calendar planners because their lives are divided so greatly.

They need one for personal use, one for all their work projects and one for their family, such as keeping up with the events that kids need to get to. This would cover something like a sports calendar planner or groups that your kids are involved with.

It can be helpful – especially if you have more than one child to use calendar planners to sync all the schedules in the home. A calendar planner can be used to tackle home renovation projects, too.

You can schedule when each part of the project needs to get done. There will be room for you to write down phone numbers for contractors or handymen that you hire. You’ll have all the information that you need gathered together, which will save time and frustration.

Sometimes people use these calendar planners specifically for special events. For example, when planning a wedding. Because there’s so much to do, it can be helpful to write down what needs to be done before the wedding so that you stay on top of the multitude of tasks that have to be handled for such a big life moment.

You can use these calendars for when you’re having a baby, too. Everything that you need to get done before the birth can be organized in a calendar planner. You can also use one for after a baby’s arrival.

This would track everything that needs to get done after the birth, such as keeping track of doctor appointments and vaccines. Temporary calendar planners such as ones used for vacation or a business trip can also be created.

Project planners are another form of printables. These are similar to calendar planners, but can be created solely for certain projects. For example, if you’re starting a business or setting up a work project as an entrepreneur, you can use a project planner.

One of these would enable the user to be able to keep everything on track and on budget. You would know when you need to start the next phase of the project – plus, you could see at a glance if you were sticking to your goals.

Meal planners are hot selling printables, too. Most people like to schedule what they’re going to eat for the week ahead of time. Using a meal planner helps to prevent people from getting ready to make a dish then realizing that they don’t have all the ingredients that they need to get this done.

These planners can be designed in a variety of ways. You might put all the days of the week, which is a pretty standard design. Under the days, you would have space for the consumer to be able to write down what the meal was going to be.

Sometimes these types of printables will break the meal days down by which meal it is like breakfast, lunch and dinner. Others will also have a small area for snacks, which is helpful for anyone who has young children.

They’ll know what the snacks are so they know what they’re allowed to have. But it can also be helpful for when the munchies hit. You’ll know what to grab from the pantry or refrigerator without blowing your diet.

On one side of this meal planning printable, you can have space to create a grocery list. If you do this, you would make the meal planning printable so that this list could easily be separated.

This way, when it’s time to shop, the consumer simply cuts the grocery list off the menu planning printable. This makes it super easy and convenient. Though there are plain ones, usually these printables will have some kind of design.

Some of them are printed with the writing space as white while the background is either flowers or dots or some other appealing design. You might also use clip art. These can be images like flowers, bees, or kitchenware like spoons, bowls, etc.

Besides meal planners, there are also financial planners that can made as printables. These financial planners are not only great for personal use, but for businesses as well.

They can be used for home budgeting.

These pages will be ones designed to let people track for weekly or monthly budgeting.

These printables can have spaces to show income as well as list expenses. This helps people be able to track where their money is being spent.

People wanting to get out of debt can use these printables. They can be designed with spaces to list who the creditor is, the total amount of the debt owed, when it’s due, the interest rate and the monthly payment.

This can be done for both variable as well as fixed bills. They can be designed with small boxes listed under the months of the year so that after every payment is made, the user can simply check a box.

These kinds of financial printables can include extras such as expenses that are paid only once a year, like vehicle taxes or home taxes. Financial planners can be used for life events as well – such as when someone needs to plan for retirement.

The planner can be dedicated to retirement savings and investing. These planners can be used for things like planning to buy a car or a house. Even for preparing for life changes, such as a marriage or an empty nest.

Another printable that’s popular is diet and fitness. These are usually within the weight loss niche. These trackers can be designed however you like. Some people use spaces to write separate entries, such as food and exercise on one page and separate them by color.

Other designers create a page for food and a separate one for exercise. However you design it is up to you. In this printable, you’ll cover common topics like menu planning under your food section.

You would include exercise and under that heading, you might leave spaces for workouts. You can divide these workouts by numbers like 1, 2, 3 or by days of the week.

You can also divide them by type of workout or by the muscle group being targeted by the workout. Printables like this can be plain or decorative. Many of them have pages that include glasses of water, so they can be sure to track and check off each 8 ounce glass of water they have consumed.

Challenges are also a good thing to add with these kinds of printables. Pages like this might have specific timelines written across the top. For example, you could have something like a 30 day exercise challenge or a 100 day exercise challenge.

You would leave a space for the user to write down what their goal was for the challenge. Then you would list exercises and a time or rep count for each exercise. Each day, the challenge gets harder – pushes them more.

Someone starting with 15 seconds of doing squats and then adding 5 seconds per day is one way it could be done. You would want to include things like rest days in the printable, too.

Trackers are also under the category of printables. A tracker can be used for things like tracking weight loss. It can be used to track fitness goals, exercise and it can also be used for tracking the elimination of or formation of habits.

Tracking habits that derail fitness goals can lead to successful change and these printables are popular. But they can also be used to track fitness habits that help boost successful goals.

Making sure to get 10,000 steps per day is an example of this type of fitness habit. Some people use trackers for specific goals that they want to change about their bodies, such as building muscle mass or achieving a specific body fat percentage.

They can also be used for health tracking too such as making sure to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Some trackers are used for financial purposes. A consumer will list a debt at the top of the tracker, then list payments and extra payments that go toward paying off this debt. Or they can be used as a way to track spending habits.

Coloring pages are one of the top ten bestselling printables out today. That’s because it’s such a varied niche with a wide audience. These sheets are used by kids, teens and adults alike.

Printables in this category, such as coloring sheets sold separately or as a bundle, sell well because they have broad appeal. Coloring pages are for personal use, but they’re also used in therapeutic offices to help calm anxiety, so the audience can expand from personal use to businesses buying and using coloring sheets.

So if you were someone who created coloring sheets, and you like the idea of them being used to help someone, you could focus on making ones that are soothing. You can create ones that are designed for little children, teens or adults.

You can also target these sheets towards a specific niche. You could make some that are designed for sports or occupations. They can be designed for any particular place in the world.

You can design ones with endangered animals or those based on mythical creatures. There’s no limit to what you can sell in this niche. The kinds of pages that you design are up to you.

You can create your own design or you can use a pre-made design for your pages.

Some of the popular categories for this type of printable are holidays like Christmas or Easter – or special family events such as birthdays.

Coloring pages can be created with animals or toys. They can show real life places like the ocean or a forest. These pages could feature animals or plant life that you might find in each of them, like whales or dolphins – or wildlife such as deer or bunnies.

The pages can center on one type of thing – like all the printables in your coloring pages could be in one bundle and feature birds of the world. Or, you could create pages that feature castles or fantasy worlds.

You couldn’t use a thing, character or place that’s copyrighted or trademarked such as a superhero from a movie, but you could use a generic superhero. Scrapbooking pages are another type of popular printable.

You can create printables for baby photos. These might feature designs such as baby bottles and bibs or little baby animals. Some scrapbooking pages will have a layout design in shapes such as ovals, squares or rectangles.

These pages can center around seasons or weddings or baby showers. They can feature themes like love or special days such as Mother’s Day. The possibilities are endless.

You can create scrapbook pages that are designs such as a rose print background or a four leaf clover background. You could use stars or trees or showcase the season with fall leaves.

You can use whatever you design or outsource to be designed to use as your printables. Schoolwork pages are another type of printable that sells well. These are booming in sales currently, with more parents choosing to take the homeschool or virtual education route.

They can be pages that use connect the dots to help a child learn numbers and counting. You can create pages that feature toys to count – or that have kids counting shapes.

These types of sheets can be alphabet sheets so that a child can practice his or her handwriting. Some printables have math problems to solve. Others have animals to color.

Some sheets will help with spelling or punctuation. They can teach colors or time and hundreds of other things that children commonly learn. All you would need to do is to look at what kids are learning at what age and set up printables targeted towards that age group.

Parents and teachers alike buy and use printables for kids’ schoolwork and instruction.

Wall art is one area under printables that can house so many different designs and themes.

These can be created for any room of the home or college dorm room. You can also create wall art for outdoor living spaces. Some types of printables under this heading could be ones that focus on phrases.

These can be simple phrases like “Keep Dreaming” or “I love you” or you can create ones that use longer sentences. Wall art printables can be made with initials surrounded by designs like flowers or other designs.

Using last names and “established in” followed by a date are popular wall art printables.

Welcome signs and “Home Sweet Home” are a type of popular wall art printable. First names of family members are popular wall art décor, too – especially in children’s rooms.

So are things that pertain to stuff like coffee or cooking or pets. Family sayings and designs are a big seller in wall art printables. You can create ones that are made of abstracts or flower patterns.

They can be created with seasons in mind. For example, you could have a wall art printable with a pumpkin design on it and the words “Pumpkin Patch Ahead.” You can do the same for Christmas themed wall art like images of Santa or reindeer or snowmen with or without phrases.

Wall art printables can also be images that you design or buy to use as printable art work. Journals and journal pages are also a type of printable. These can be created with a variety of designs like hearts, flowers, or other cute images.

What some people do is alternate lined pages with pages that have a quote or uplifting phrase on one part of the page. These are often designed with boxes. So you might have two square spaces at the top of a page to write in along with a rectangular box at the bottom.

It all depends on how the journal is set up. Some people sell journal page packages as refills to go along with a perpetual journal. Stickers are a form of printables that people enjoy buying.

You can create these using stock art, self-designing them and more. They can be phrases, statements, colors, animals, angels, butterflies, hearts, books or whatever it is that you want to create.

They can target a specific audience or be set up for broad appeal. They can be made to use on computers, on notebooks, on phone cases, or anything else that you can think of.

Some entrepreneurs design and sell sticker pages separately while others sell them in conjunction with things like journals. Invitations are another type of printable that can be used to make money.

These invitations can be created for a variety of events. You can create some for birthday celebrations, for a baby shower or for a wedding or wedding anniversary. They can be created for holiday parties, retirement parties and more.

Stationery is another form of printable people love. These can be designed however you like. You might create simple, lined pages or, you can create pages that have designs like flowers, fruit, rainbows, whimsical creatures, animals and more.

You can use bright, bold colors or soft, pastel ones. Stationery can also be designed for specific holidays or events. Checklists are another type of printable. These can be used for personal or professional needs.

Consumers use checklists for help remembering all the things that need to be done. These might be for events like a wedding. Or in business, it could be a checklist for a product launch.

Worksheets are also part of the printables niche. These worksheets can be for any topic. Some people use these to work through a problem such as with debt or finances. They’ll use a financial planning worksheet.

This worksheet might have things on it like goals, budget, and savings directed toward a need or desire. Spreadsheets are similar to trackers and usually have columns consumers can use to input their data to track progress like financial goals or to make changes in their lives, such as with diet or fitness.

Printable templates are designs of whatever you decide. For example, you can design a template for making paper Halloween masks. Or you could design one featuring hearts or letters of the alphabet.

These can be created for things like household chores, for name tags, for frames and more. Workbooks are printables, but are usually several pages or more together in one. These workbooks can be on any topic and any niche.

The most popular niches for workbooks include health like self-improvement such as creating new habits, losing weight, eating healthier, and exercise. They can also center on financial health, which would be any topic relating to money including debt relief, budgeting and investing.

Some printable workbooks are designed for relationships. These would have things on them to improve or strengthen the relationship. For example, one for intimate partners might have fill in the blanks following questions asking the consumer to write down something he or she likes about the partner.

These workbooks usually focus on how to develop a healthy relationship with the various people in a person’s life. Some workbooks are inspirational or spiritual in nature and work on helping the consumer to find peace or to bolster their faith.

Choosing a Profitable Printables Niche

If you’re brand new to printables, there’s one important step that you have to take first. That’s deciding what niche your printables will be in. Remember that each niche can have dozens of different types of printables you can create.

If you’re someone who already has an established business dealing with raising kids, then one niche idea for you to break into with printables might be designing baby stickers, baby wall art or even baby clothing patterns that moms can print off.

For those who work online and who already have a niche, this step might be a little easier for you. You can simply connect the kind of work you already do with the type of printable you want to create and sell.

If you’re into fitness, it makes sense that your printable endeavor would focus on all things related to fitness. It can be easiest to branch out into a printable area where you already have some knowledge of the market.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t start from scratch and pick a new direction to take. Some people choose a niche for their printables and then branch out and add other niches over time.

You can start with whatever you want to do and even change direction if you find that you don’t enjoy that niche. There’s no right or wrong way to jump into making money with printables.

Instead of picking a specific niche to target you might select a type of printable to start with – like invitations for all occasions or journals. This way, you won’t have to narrow down your niche topic just yet.

So your research before you simply start uploading random printables. The reason that you want to do this is because you want to make sure that you’re choosing printables that are already selling for your topic or niche.

If there’s no market for it, then your printables won’t sell. If you’re at a loss as to what you might enjoy selling or what might actually sell, just look at your own life. So for example, if you’re tracking your sleep for your own health or fitness, then you know that’s something that other people are also probably doing.

It makes sense then that health trackers would be a good printable to start making.

To start your research, you want to use keywords. Head over to Etsy.com to get some idea of what’s selling.

You’ll want to do this for any site that has a searchable function where you plan to sell your printables. If you’re looking on Etsy, put in the word printable or printables in the search function.

You’ll notice that it will auto-suggest a ton of different types of printables. You’ll get ones for calendars, for wall art and more. This will give you an idea of what’s popular in printables on the site.

You can do some homework and get a feel for the items in these popular listings that are selling. However, you want to be careful because main keywords can be too broad.

A consumer that’s looking for one of those “Baby’s First Year” printable calendars may not get any results.

They’ll have to dig and might just miss your listing if you have baby calendars, but you don’t have that in your keywords. The more keywords that you use that are relevant to your printable listing, the more likely it is that consumers can easily find you through their search.

Use a keyword analytical tool to see which keywords have the highest search volume that pertain to your printable niche. You’ll want to use those keywords and phrases. One of the best ways to make sure your printables are seen is to look at who’s selling what on the platform that you set your printables up on.

If someone else is selling it, even if it’s in the exact same niche, you can bet that it means the market is open for that printable. There’s a customer base somewhere.

When you do you research and discover what kind of printable that you’d like to do, make sure that it sells well.

Competition is healthy in online business. It means the topic has been proven to sell to a target audience. Don’t veer off to something unheard of if you want to increase your odds of success.

It can be tempting to think that if there are dozens of sellers with listings for journal page printables, that there won’t be room for yours. But there is. Taste is subjective. Some consumers will buy plain journal pages, while others want ones that are more decorative.

You can always tap into a niche, even if it’s crowded, and do well if your product is good. When you check out the sellers for the printable niche that you’re thinking of getting into, look under the seller’s name on Etsy.

This will show you how many sales that person has made. You’ll also be able to see their star rating. Study the sellers who have plenty of sales and who have ample stars. These are the ones doing it right.

Their product is getting noticed and the quality is good. By seeing what the comments are, you can also sometimes glean information about what customers are looking for. For example, if a seller is creating journal pages, someone might leave a comment saying they wish there was a space for the date at the top of the page.

You can use that information to make sure that if you create a journal page, that some of your designs have a space for the date. Just remember where there’s interaction from consumers, there’s interest.

When you start doing your research on your printable niche, you’re going to find seller after seller across various platforms. Don’t waste your time checking out sellers that aren’t creating popular designs.

Emulate the ones that do have the popular designs. For example, if you see that budgeting printables featuring positive phrases are selling well, it’s okay to create a budgeting printable that features phrases, too.

You just want to make sure that you’re not copying that other person’s work because not only is that unethical, but if you use something someone else designed, you could violate a copyright.

Look for inspiration when you do your research, not underhanded shortcuts based on someone else’s work. Seeing so many of the same kinds of printables within a niche might make you feel like there’s nothing new under the sun.

But a seller, even dozens of sellers, will not meet every single need or desire a consumer has for a product. So what you do is when you research, you look for what’s missing.

You might want to create birthday party invitations. You see a lot of those on Etsy and you’re wondering what you could do differently that would make you stand out as a printable seller.

You offer something the other sellers didn’t think of. With a birthday invitation printable, you might also add a thank you as a printable option. This way, the consumer can also fill out thank you notes for the gifts without having to go find printables that take care of that.

Find that unique selling point within every printable niche that will help consumers choose you over the competition. When you do your research, you always want to look for ways that you can upsell.

What more can you provide the consumer who chooses you? If you sell scrapbook pages, look for what you can also sell that might tie in with these pages. It might be stickers or special holiday pages, one for each holiday of the year.

Or it could be a family tree printable for the front of the scrapbook. By doing your research ahead of time, you can eliminate most wasted efforts and newcomer mistakes that keep people from succeeding.

What’s Needed to Make Printables?

There are tools and software that you’re going to need to make your printables. What you’ll need exactly will depend on the type of printable you want to start making. One of the tools that many people use in order to create printables is PowerPoint.

This program is one that many people are already familiar with. You can create custom designs using the program. There are also templates available in PowerPoint but you have to be careful with the terms of service when it comes to using them as printables.

Not everything is allowed with these templates. You can’t use their fonts or images for commercial use. You would have to find fonts and images that do allow for commercial use.

What PowerPoint can help you do with creating printables is you can put together the text and the images or any artwork that you’re using to create from scratch. You will need to know about the dimensions.

When working with PowerPoint for printables, you’ll need to change these. That’s because the program isn’t set up like a standard 8.5 x 11 page. So if you’re creating pages, you’ll need to make an adjustment.

The slides are landscape size, so there may be a possible learning curve for those who aren’t used to working with the program. Some people use Canva to create their printables.

One of the reasons that this is a popular tool is because it’s free. You can use the tool to make any kind of printable. Plus, the site is pretty easy to navigate and it’s easy to learn.

The only downside to using Canva to create your stuff is that a lot of the graphics and icons aren’t free. So you’ll either have to import your own or buy them. There are a few of them that are free but there’s not a wide selection.

To get started using Canva to make printables, you need to set up an account with the site. This site is easy because their templates are simple to work with. You just choose the one you want and customize it.

You’ll need to choose what dimensions you want. If you’re going to be making pages, then you’d choose the letter design, which is the standard 8.5 x 11 format. Once you pick your dimension, you choose the layout and background.

The site lets users use photos from the site or illustrations that feature things like flowers, animals and more. It allows users to change the elements within a template, so this makes it easy to avoid starting from scratch.

Photoshop is also a tool that you can use to create printables. Photoshop is considered one of the best resources for this niche. However, there’s a steep learning curve for someone who’s not familiar with the program.

It does give users a lot of control over every aspect of the design because there are so many tools in the program. But having that much information and control can sometimes be overwhelming to someone who’s new to printable design.

If that’s you, then take a Photoshop course or use free YouTube video tutorials to learn how to use the tool. Taking the time to learn is an investment in your business. Because Photoshop leans toward the pricier resources for creating printables, you can use their more affordable Photoshop Elements option to make these.

With printables, you’ll be creating text and images. You’ll need something like Microsoft Word to create some of your designs if you don’t have any other programs or resources. This program enables users to create designs with things like shapes, lines and more.

This is one of the least expensive ways to get started making things like journal pages, but it’s not the easiest. If you’re creating a design in a checklist format or something like budgeting pages that require columns, then you’re going to need a spreadsheet format to design from.

For this purpose, you could use something like Microsoft Excel. This program can also be used to create planners. If you haven’t worked with Excel before, there are tutorials available that you can use specifically for making printables.

Most people who want to create printables who are new to design will often think they have to buy expensive design software. This is helpful and it can make setting up a printable business much faster.

But you don’t have to have it if you’re on a tight budget. You can work with something simpler. Design software is something you’ll want to keep in mind for a future purchase as you start to make money and are able to reinvest in your business.

The reason that you want this software is because you can create better designs and you’ll be able to format your designs easier. If you feel that you must have some kind of design software, you don’t have to choose a top of the line product to get started.

You can look for cheaper ones that allow users to pay smaller monthly access fees.

Some of the advice you may see will tell you that you have to buy a PDF program or find one that you can download for free.

This is not completely accurate. You do want to use PDF to save what you create. But most programs where you create your printable have PDF as one of the “save as” or export options so you don’t have to get anything extra to do this step.

It’s important that you save your designs in the PDF format. This is the format that you’ll use to allow customers to have the download. You want this format because it can’t be changed or edited in any way.

This is to prevent unscrupulous customers from taking your design, altering it and then reselling it as their own. One of the things that you will use often when creating printables are graphics.

There will be some programs that come with graphics already. While a few do allow for commercial use, many do not. It’s always best to know exactly where you stand when it comes to using graphics in things you sell.

You don’t want to create something and then get dinged later for violating their TOS (terms of service). This can end badly for you and get your entire business shut down unexpectedly.

So either be 100% sure that you’re allowed to use the program’s graphics to resell or download free or inexpensive graphics that clearly state they’re allowed to be used for commercial purposes.

You’ll need a way to design your graphics and this is covered by using Canva, PicMonkey or any number of design programs that are available for free use. PicMonkey can be used to resize a design, edit one and create one from scratch.

Plus, it’s also easy to use. There aren’t a lot of physical resources you need to buy. Most of everything that you’ll use will be online resources. However, that’s the not the case if you’re making something where the inventory isn’t online.

An example of this would be pre-made printable stickers. Or if you’re making something like die-cuts that are often used with scrapbooking. There are two ways that you can do this.

You can use your own cutting machine to print, cut and mail the purchase to the customer. Then you’d be responsible for the inventory. If you choose this method, then your overhead does go up.

In addition to the extra expense, you’ll also have to handle mailing the purchases out to the customers. An easier way is for you to create stickers or die-cuts that the customer can print on their end.

This is usually the option most people choose when setting up a printable business that includes stickers or other projects because it keeps costs down and there’s no extra effort on the seller’s part.

Your goal is to be as hands off as possible once the design is created and the best way to do that is to leave the downloading and printing up to the customer. Making money with printables is easy to start up as a business.

For the most part, it’s a fun way to earn extra money or even make a living with it. But there are some things that you do need to watch out for.

Printable Mistakes to Avoid

Once you do your homework on printables, you will have researched what your competition is offering. During the course of this research, you may notice that not all of the designs are as nice as others.

In fact, some of them may look like they were created and then put up in a hurry. This behavior will always show up in the final product. That’s a mistake that you want to avoid.

Don’t attempt to sell printables that are poor quality. This usually means that the design isn’t quite right, or there wasn’t enough time spent on details to make it appealing to customers.

When you create a printable that can’t stack up to the competition, not only will you lack sales, but you’ll also get a reputation within the printable community as someone who puts out poor quality work.

So take the time to create the printable the right way from the start. If you don’t know how to handle an angle of the design, work on it and study methods until you do have the hang of it.

Mastering the craft of creating will pay off in the end. If you reach the point where you think you just can’t create products that are good enough to compete with others in the niche, then outsource the design.

Another mistake that you want to avoid is making a lot of printables and putting them up for sale when they’re not selling. Printables do sell well when they’re done right and there’s a proven market for them.

But if you notice that you’re putting up printables that are designed right and fit the market, but they’re still not selling, then don’t keep uploading more. Stop and figure out what’s gone wrong so that you stop wasting time.

It’s not a volume issue when things fail to sell. Usually when something like this happens, it means that the seller didn’t optimize the listing. They didn’t hit the right keywords or created descriptions that were lacking.

Sometimes a simple product listing tweak will correct the lack of sales issue. Sellers sometimes make the mistake of thinking that just listing a printable on one of the popular selling platforms means the sales will roll in.

Each site has their own algorithms and ways they handle a seller’s keywords. You need to know how tags, keywords, relevancy and frequency matter on each selling site. A mistake that many newcomers to printables end up making has to do with pricing.

This again goes back to doing your research first. If you create a printable calendar and you price it as $19.99 but most of the comparable printables are $9.99, you’re pricing yourself out of business.

Unless you’re offering additional printables that go along with your product or you have yours set up as a bundle sale, it won’t be able to compete. You also don’t want to underprice yourself either.

If you see that trackers are selling for $3.00 a page and you sell yours for $1.00, then you’re losing money. So make sure that your prices are within range of what everyone else is selling the same or similar products for.

What you must understand about pricing is that people don’t all live the same way financially. So what’s affordable for one person won’t be for the next. While some might not blink at dropping $20 for a printable planner, that might out of reach for someone else.

You don’t want to leave that audience behind. Let your motto be that you have something affordable for everyone. This is what at least half of all your printables should be, unless you want to specifically target a high end audience.

You want to structure your pricing so that you have a pyramid of options. It’s okay to have your high priced printables. But these are items that usually sell once a customer has built a rapport with your business.

These people have tried your products, found them helpful and so they’re back for more. Have middle ground printable prices. These will fit an average budget and should be about 25% of your pricing ratio.

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make when selling printables is having poor customer service. Your customers will share reviews, they will talk online. You want to make sure that they have a good experience with your printables and there are many ways that you can ensure that.

Create a FAQ page for your products. That way, when a customer has a question, they can look it up and usually get an immediate answer. These might be questions like the customer wants to know about upcoming sales or wants to know if you do custom orders.

Having answers to the most commonly asked questions can save you a lot of time. You may also want to create an email responder file and have that ready in case customers have questions that aren’t covered under the FAQ.

This will also save you a lot of time and enable you to give quick responses. For example, customers might email you wanting to know if you give discounts for multiple orders.

Another mistake to avoid is not having your ideas organized. You need to create a spreadsheet of ideas for your printables. Have each of these ideas in the appropriate category.

You might think that you can easily keep up with what you plan to make for your printables, but when you have multiple projects, it’s easy to lose track of what you need to work on and when.

This is especially helpful when your printables are part of a bundle. You can keep everything together so you’re not searching for a bunch of individual files when it comes time to upload everything.

When a printable idea comes to you, go ahead and draw it out – either in a notebook or in your online design software. It’s okay to just get the basics down so that you don’t forget your thoughts and come back later to finish up.

You’ll save yourself time if you do a quick drawing and make notes of what colors you might use as well as font type or sizes. To avoid the mistake of wrongly sizing your printables, know ahead of time what the standard sizes are.

It can be helpful to have a cheat sheet of all the common sizes used for each product.

You can find out what these sizes are by checking out the sizes that other sellers are using as well doing a quick online search.

These sizes are what most people buy so you want to stick with what works. Don’t make the mistake of uploading something without first doing a quality and size check. Every time you get ready to sell a printable, make sure that you print it out yourself first.

Doing this step will help you see if any text might be outside the margin or if the design looks weird. It’s always better to do this pre-check first rather than having customers complain that your printables don’t look right once they download and print them.

Don’t make the mistake of not knowing your market. Don’t create a bunch of random printables ahead of time in the hopes that they’ll sell. Understand who your audience already is if you have an established platform.

This means paying attention to what it is they need or want and then creating that as a printable option for them.

Strategic Tips to Help Your Printables Sell Well

When you create your listings, explain the value of your printable. “Here’s a planner” doesn’t connect with people nearly as much as “Tired of chaos?” What you want to do is show the potential customer why they need the printable that you’re selling.

If you can’t think of a reason why, then neither will the audience. The kind of customer service you offer matters right from the start. Be honest and transparent, even if you make a mistake.

Some people who sell printables offer a money back guarantee. Whether or not you do so depends on what you prefer. You may have customers who download the product to use it then want their money back.

That’s wrong, but it’s not worth getting into a hassle with one or two people who try to take advantage of others. Usually, it’s only one or two people who’ll come back and ask for a refund.

If that happens, you’re better off biting your tongue and just refunding them. Unless you see that this person does the same across your other printable products as well. If you have multiple people asking for refunds, check your product quality.

Always answer questions, even if they’re redundant. A happy buyer can bring other people to the platform. Try to cultivate positive reviews. You can’t make people leave a review, but you can ask them.

You can’t offer a discount to those who leave a review because that’s not ethical and some platforms frown on that behavior. You can also ask for testimonials if someone has used your product and found it helpful.

To get a testimonial, you just look in the review comments and if you see one that’s particularly nice, you can ask the customer if he or she would mind giving you a testimonial.

Another strategy that helps printables sell well are the use of photos. It’s easier for a customer to find visual appeal in a printed product. So use clear, simple, isolated photos.

Don’t have a lot of stuff in the background. One strategy that’s a win with printables is making sure that it’s easy for the customer to check out on whatever site you’re using. If you’re selling on an established platform, this step should be taken care of for you.

But if you’ve uploaded printables on your own site, then make sure that your shopping cart software is customer friendly and offer several payment options. When it comes to printables, you want to give the customers options.

This will help your products sell well. Under options, size is one of them. You want to appeal to as many different people as you can. That means that your product should come in standard size, but should also be offered in smaller sizes.

For example, while many people like a full sized printable journal, others prefer ones that fit more easily into a pocket or a purse. Another good strategy is to offer choices in color as well as lined and unlined pages.

A smart way to succeed in this business is to make sure that your printables can branch out. For example, something that several printable sellers have done is they’ve turned their printables into a brand.

This is a good strategy because once people invest in a particular planner that they love, they’ll keep using it. This can make your product one that’s evergreen. What you can do is offer extras for your brand like inserts, stickers etc., as part of your printable line up.

You can sell single sheets at a time or bundled sheets. You can also create customizable printables as part of your strategy. This is done when you offer customers the opportunity to have a phrase of their choosing done in colors that they choose.

You create the design for them, and they print it out. With this type of transaction, you would want to get paid up front and usually offer no refunds as long as the quality is good – unless the created product is something you think others might buy.

Another strategy when it comes to selling well is to always remember the holidays. You want to release special printables around holidays like Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas and any other special day that you can think of.

Create an email list your customers can sign up to. You can send them notices about upcoming printables and sales you’re launching. A final strategy is, after every sale, you need to make sure you practice email marketing follow up.

This can be a quick email to the buyer thanking them for their purchase, but adding a note that says “I noticed you purchased ABC. You might also be interested in DEF.” You can’t send an email though if the customer hasn’t signed up and agreed to let you email them about future opportunities.

No matter what type of printable you decide you’re interested in making, one thing is true all across the board. In order for you to make money with printables, you have to know how to get them in front of customers.

Where to Sell Printables Online

Because they’re a simple download, you can sell printables in a variety of virtual places. Some sites, such as Etsy, already have a huge platform for this along with many sellers that are doing very well.

To get started on Etsy, figure out what kind of printable you want to sell. Then decide how many of these printables you’re going to need. This will help you get your files ready and edited before you set your shop live.

Next, decide what kind of format you’ll use for your download. It’s standard to use the “save as” feature and save your work as a PDF. Make it easy to sell these online, regardless of whichever platform you decide to use.

Not every customer will have a printer at home. So they’re going to need to go get whatever they download printed off elsewhere. Make sure you have some kind of disclaimer giving the customer the okay to have your product printed elsewhere.

Don’t forget to help make your product easy to use. While it might seem like common sense and easy to you, not every customer will understand how to put your product together or how to use it.

So make sure that your instructions are clear. Some sellers put these with each listing. You can do that. Or, to save time, you can write out the instructions so that they’re part of the download for each printable you sell.

This makes it easier for the customer. This might seem like a no-brainer, but when you upload your product to Etsy or wherever, you need to differentiate the names of the files.

If you don’t, you’re going to have trouble knowing which product is which. For example, if you have seven printable journals along with various other products and you label your journal files as journal 1, 2, 3, etc. then you’re not going to know which journal that file is.

That will make it hard for you to upload the correct file. Even better is to be as specific as possible when naming your products and saving them as a file. For example, linedunicornjournal would be a specific file name that told you what it is.

Questions arise sometimes about the copyright when it comes to uploaded printables. You may want to know if you should copyright the product or if that’s the platform’s responsibility.

It’s yours. That doesn’t mean that you must pay the Copyright Office each time you create a printable. When you create something, you automatically own the copyright. An unregistered copyright just means that in the event of a lawsuit if someone steals your product, you may have a harder time proving ownership.

Give a copyright notice about each of your printables on the sites that you use. Mark your products with a copyright notice and the name of your business or website. Doing this can also help customers remember where they bought the printable and when it’s time to buy again, they know just where to look.

Amazon is another platform where you can sell printables. What works best on this site is to create your printable in a bigger form. Instead of selling a printable page for a journal, you’ll want to sell the whole journal.

Instead of selling a teaching worksheet, you’ll want to sell a package of worksheets in a bundle. Amazon has strict rules on what it will and won’t allow in this category so you’ll have to be sure you’re following the TOS correctly.

You might think of Ebay as a huge auction site. Maybe you’ve never considered that it’s also a popular site for digital goods. There’s been some confusion about the ability to sell digitally on Ebay that led some to believe that it was a problem on the site, but that’s not true.

You just have to get it in the right category when you list. However, Ebay does also have rules that must be followed when it comes to this category. You must be an approved seller on the site.

If your product violates any kind of copyright, such as you using artwork that’s not for commercial use, then you can’t sell it on the platform. When you submit your printable for approval, you’ll need to list it under an information product as the category.

Once Ebay approves your listing, you’re good to go. Many people create and sell printables on their own website. With low cost domains available, you can get started this way and not break your bank account.

What some people do is they sell their printables on their blog site. If you are someone who has a following for financial learning, you might upload printables on how to get out of debt or how to invest in savings.

If you’re part of an online professional group in a certain niche and they have a file section, you might want to check to see if you can sell your printables within the group.

What you can also do is start your own group as a way of selling your printables.

Do this by creating the group based on information that you share from your niche. If you’re in fitness, share fitness tips and advice along with selling your printables. This builds your audience at the same time it grows your sales.

Sometimes, printables can be sold within a certain industry on like-minded sites. For example, you might be someone who wants to create educational printables. These sell well on many platforms, including teaching platforms such as Teachers Pay Teachers.

One of the best ways to research where to sell your printables is to use whatever niche you’re in to find platforms. If you’re into creating weight loss printables, then look for platforms catering to a weight loss audience.

The same with things like planners, worksheets, etc. To find out where to sell printables, target your competition. Find out where they’re selling and to which audience. You can find this information out just by doing a search online for printables. To narrow it down, search for your specific printable.

How to Get Traffic to Your Printable Offers

If you have a product for sale, but little or no traffic, then you have little or no sales. In order to move your printables, you have to get them in front of the people who can use them.

This is the area where a lot of people get off track. They don’t want to come across as pushy or salesy, so they upload their files and then wait for the customers to flock in. When this doesn’t happen, they start to doubt themselves and wonder if they did something wrong with what they’ve created.

What you have to realize is that the world of sales moves along by connection. At some point, in some way, you need to find a connection with the audience in order to turn them into customers.

Think about the products that you’ve purchased in your life. You weren’t born knowing about that product. Somewhere along the line that product was introduced to you. It may have been through an ad on TV.

You might have heard about it on the radio, through a friend – or, through what’s most common today – social media. That’s one of the number one ways to drive traffic and get sales for your printables.

Don’t think that all you need to do is put your products up on a platform and that ends your efforts. You must be active online in order to develop a relationship with your target audience.

This means that you should have a way to engage with the people. You can do this by having a blog. Many people build a tremendous following by creating a blog that draws in traffic.

This traffic can then turn into sales because you can talk about the product on the blog. Host a few giveaways or freebies on your blog to get the people interested in trying out your printables.

Then connect with the receivers to find out how they liked it, what they found useful and talk about that as a blog post. This will help build trust and also establish you as someone who’s an authority in that area.

Pay attention to what your blog followers are talking about – especially when they mention a frustration or a hope that can impact their daily life. Gaining this information can give you ideas on how to create audience targeted materials as well as how to tweak what you might already have.

In addition to promoting your products on your own blog, you want to connect with other bloggers. This type of cross-promoting can help drive traffic to both your blog and your selling platforms.

Facebook is a huge platform for selling tons of stuff – including printables. You want to promote your items here because this platform sees over a billion users every single month.

Make connections here by finding like-minded groups. You need to be networking. Once you get to know these people, they’ll be more likely to recommend you to others if you have something they don’t sell.

Plus, in these groups, you’ll find tips, advice and more places to sell your printables from others who are doing what you’re doing. Sometimes, sellers are allowed to self-promote their products within the group.

This information would be listed in the description or rules. These groups will often have a ton of advice on driving traffic to your site or the platforms that you use. You can also often find joint ventures in these groups.

Someone else will mention your product on their social media or platform in return for you mentioning theirs. Or they’ll email their list. You would only do this for a seller  that you legitimately believed in and knew would be a help to your followers.

Otherwise, you lose the audience’s trust. Next to Facebook, you also want to use Twitter to drive traffic to your printables. Because a tweet can quickly get buried, you may need to do some research to figure out the best time to tweet about your product.

Do keep in mind that people tend to tune out those who constantly tweet to promote what they’re selling. You don’t want to get ignored. So make sure that the majority of your tweets are not based on selling.

Work on developing relationships here as well. Be active on the platform. You can do this by interacting with others, liking and replying to tweets. Talk about tips for the niche, like wedding planning tips, etc.

Make sure that you use the hashtags that are associated with printables when you talk about your products.  This drives traffic. For example, you might use #printables, #planner or #homeschoolworksheets.

You would use whichever hashtag is relevant to your product. If you were in the field of fitness, then you would also use the hashtag for fitness. If you’re not sure exactly which hashtag to use, you can do a quick online search.

But you can also use Twitter’s search option to get ideas for what hashtags will help drive traffic to your site. Just typing in “printables” pulls up everything from skin care to coloring pages to meal planners.

YouTube is a platform that regularly sees more than 2 billion monthly users. You can leverage the power of this platform to drive traffic for your printables by creating videos where you talk about your printables and how to use them.

When you have success, you can create videos that talk about your journey and how others can get started. Sharing knowledge also helps drive traffic and boost sales.

Instagram is another social media platform that you can use and it’s often one of the most overlooked platforms for driving printable sales.

The number of businesses on Instagram is big and there are more than 200 million Instagram shoppers every single day. That’s a lot of opportunity to get your printables in front of an audience.

Because it’s a visual platform, your products will have the chance to shine. That’s because with this platform, you’re not just showing a potential audience what you have to sell, you’re showing them how what you’re selling can make a difference in their lives with the images you use.

For example, you can upload an image of your weight loss tracker being used in before and after fitness shots. You’re selling what people hope to achieve rather than your printable alone – and being able to see that moves people to make a purchase.

Every time you get ready to launch a new product, start talking about it before the release day. This whets customer’s appetites and makes them curious. Make up your own hashtag to use for your product that’s coming out but you should also do this for some of the printables that you already have for sale.

Whenever you post about your products, you always want the customer to react. That means you need to use a call to action. Something like “click here to download” would work, but you can use whatever.

Nothing drives traffic like the idea of getting a good deal. You can get attention to your printables by announcing that you have a sale for a limited amount of time. Toss in a bonus they can’t get any other time or that’s only available for those who saw it on Instagram and people will want that deal.

You might wonder exactly what you should post about the product itself. You want to showcase it without coming across like a pushy salesman. The types of stuff you’ll post should vary, but tie in somehow with the printable or the lifestyle that the printable can give the buyer in a non-pushy way.

For example, you can create posts where you talk about what led you to create the product, or about how you personally use the product. You should also show all the things associated with the product – like stickers, additional sheets, etc.

If there’s a good review about your product from a user, post that on your Instagram.

Be sure on Instagram that you have links ready where the customers can find the platforms you use to sell them on.

Use tags on all your posts. You’ll want to use an Instagram business account over a regular one. You’ll gain more leverage to know how to target your audience for sales with a business account.

One of the things you get by using this type of account is access to the valuable metrics that will show you how followers react to what you post. This can help you tweak your post content as well as give you proof of what consumers like and are looking for.

Right up there with Instagram to use to drive traffic, there’s Pinterest. Pinterest is a hot social media site for printables. It’s like the world’s biggest online bulletin board. For starters, it has well over 200 million users monthly.

Men and women alike both enjoy this social medial platform. You’ll find that you have a huge target audience of women on Pinterest and these women are especially interested in the stuff they see on the site, thanks to the visual appeal.

Customers routinely turn to Pinterest to find things to make their lives prettier, easier or more organized – all things that you offer thanks to your printables. If you do a quick search of the site and type in something related to the niche, you’ll find thousands of results and you’ll also see that there’s a wide variety pinned.

You’ll see pins for planners, workbooks, wedding invitations, scrapbook pages and more. But you do need to know how to use this platform well. Make sure that you show off your printables.

Make a variety of boards all relating to your products. Don’t just show them like they’re a sales listing. Instead, put your printables into categories like “activities for kids” and then have a pin on your coloring pages.

Or do one for overworked or exhausted moms and showcase your printables that make life easier for moms – like your quick meal recipe planner. Create mood boards on Pinterest that tie in with your products and how these things on your board helped you to stay motivated to be creative.

It could be something like a beautiful sunset, a funny image, your pet or whatever. People enjoy seeing behind the scenes. Making sure that people are able to find your products is easy if you use the right hashtags.

These are #printable followed by hashtags that are connected to whatever it is that you’re selling such as #coloringpages or #wedding or other associated words. Just like on other platforms, Pinterest can help you move your product if you use it right.

Make sure that your images are pretty and show why your product is the right one for the consumer to pick. Across each of the social media platforms that you use, make sure that you take advantage of the advertising space you’re given for free.

This is where you can put your bio or “about me” and you can put direct links to your printables or your website. If you don’t have an email list, start one by promoting a sign up offer on your social media.

You don’t want to use this solely as a “buy my stuff” means of interacting with followers.

Share tips that you’ve found helpful in your life and let them get to know you. That connection is invaluable for helping to sell your printables because you can talk about what you need in your life, and the resources that answered that need – which was your printable product.

Consider Taking Your Printables Into the Digital Realm

You’ll find that a lot of people like printables. But you’ll also find that some people prefer digital printables instead. You don’t want to leave this market untapped – not when creating this as part of your business can make money as well.

A digital product can be a fillable PDF, for example. These planners are used in conjunction with apps that people use for making notes. Some of the popular ones to use with digital planners are GoodNotes or Noteshelf.

There are plenty of benefits to selling digital products under printables because the customer base is a dedicated one. They already know they love this type of product.

You can present these as great to use for people who don’t like messes.

Unlike printed products, there’s nothing lying around, and no paperwork to print off or keep up with. It also helps them have access on the go. Products that are digital are pretty convenient.

Those who use them only need to have their phone or other device in order to be able to get to their item. Another selling point for these is that they’re less likely to get lost or misplaced, since they’re digital.

Plus, users can sync the product across their multiple electronic devices. For example, if they have a digital planner, they can access that on their iPhone as well as on their laptop.

Spending Money to Make Money with Printables

Creating printables is a free or low cost way to start earning money. How much it’s going to cost you will depend on what resources you use to get started. There are plenty of free things you can use, so it doesn’t have to cost you anything.

You can rely on the frequency of posts across your platforms to help build awareness and get eyes on your products. You can also rely on content. Good content is going to create audience interest regardless of the platform.

Trying to make money without spending money doesn’t have to be a long term option. If you start out with the freebie resources to create your designs, these will be limited, and you won’t be able to grow or branch out into better designs.

You don’t want to limit the potential you can have with printables. The money that you spend is an investment into your business. If your goal is to grow creating printables into a business, then you want to have the tools that that you need.

You can know what you need by looking at how spending money on an item or software will increase your productivity or make the creation process easier. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.

A lot of people bootstrap a business and there’s nothing wrong with that. But as it starts to grow, you might want to consider using paid methods such as advertising to increase your traffic and income.

If you’re undecided about spending money on advertising, then there are some things to consider. Ask yourself if putting money into ads will help you make money. If you don’t know what you’re doing with ads, take the time to learn, because you can lose money if you don’t understand how they work.

There are plenty of places where you can market your printables and work to drive traffic. Many people find success this way. But others do use advertising as their business builds.

They do that to increase awareness for their brand, increase visibility and to bring in more money. Whether or not you choose to use advertising depends on where you’re at currently with your business, what you can afford and what your game plan is for growing your income with printables.

There are several ways to take advantage of advertising. You can advertise on Etsy if you have a shop there. You just go to the marketing section, click on advertising and then choose what you want your daily budget to be.

Be aware that there is a minimum daily amount already preset that you can’t lower. Once you set your budget, Etsy will then promote and put your product across their platform – including on their app so that it gets in front of a targeted audience.

When you set up your advertising, you will need to decide which listing you’re going to have Etsy promote. They do them individually, so the more listings you want promoted, the more you’ll need to pay.

You can also advertise on Pinterest. You go into your Ads Manager to create the ad. Their setup allows users to decide what they want the goal of the ad to be. You can then input who you want your ad to target.

You’ll use things like keywords and consumer interest to target the audience. Pinterest will assist you by suggesting more data that you can use to improve the ad. You then pick when you want the advertising to begin and what you want your advertising limit to be.

Then you’ll decide which one of your Pins you would like Pinterest to promote with the ad. Instagram also allows advertising for products, though it can be a little more expensive to advertise here than on other platforms.

By using sponsored content, you can get more traffic to your printables. On Instagram, you go into ad manager, choose your ad goal, your audience and where you want your ads to appear – like in stories or feed.

Instagram will give you a selection of ad formats to choose from. Once you do that, then you set your budget and schedule. Leveling up in all areas of your printables business should be something you plan for eventually, but don’t let it stress you unnecessarily until you have the funds to reinvest.

8 Final Tips to Successfully Sell Your Printables

Time is an investment that you’ll have to make when you start creating printables. It doesn’t matter if you have skills or not – if you’re new to printables, you’ll need time to learn the ropes.

Plus, setting them up on the platform is also going to take a little time. Since time is money, you have to find the easiest and fastest way to handle making and selling printables.

#1 – Don’t start from scratch every single time you get ready to create a product in your printable line.

Not only is this time consuming, but it’s not necessary. You can make a template that you use for each of your items. This works by you simply inputting the changes to the template when you need to use it.

For example, if you have a calendar page for each individual month, you could simple remove the text for the month and insert the new month. To get around having to change the design so that you create more dates for longer months or take away slots for shorter months, just have extra spaces and label those as notes.

That way, your formatting never has to change.

#2 – Make your printables perform multiple jobs.

You can create a single page for your printable product. These will sell individually.

But you also want to put the same printable inside a packet or bundle. This way, you create once, but sell twice.

The reason that you want to create bundles is because some people like to get everything they need in a category at once without feeling like they’re spending too much or too often.

If they see them all priced individually, they may hesitate if it feels like they’re buying a bunch of stuff. But a bundle makes them feel they get everything they need for just one cost – and at a discount.

#3 – Don’t put an expiration date on any of your products if you can help it.

Having an expiration date renders the product useless. At the close of each year, all of the printable projects that you dated for the current year or targeted for a specific event and date will become outdated.

No one wants to buy last year’s calendar or planner or worksheets. So for those, you’ll have to go in and change every place across all the printables where you have the year, the month or the event that’s now out of date.

But for some things, like homeschool math sheets, you can leave the date off and let it stay viable year after year. Unless the date is important to the printable, leave it off.

#4 – Don’t put limits on your selling space.

Because Etsy is such a well-known place to sell printables, it’s developed the reputation as being the go-to platform. But when stick to selling your stuff on solely one site, you’re leaving a lot of untapped profit potential behind.

You might think that putting printables up across several platforms is going to take you a lot of time. It will. But only in the beginning. Once they’re all uploaded, you don’t have to keep doing that step.

By putting your printables up on different platforms, you can link from one to the next to create better traffic. Plus, shoppers like having choices about where they’re going to buy products from.

#5 – Avoid shiny new object syndrome.

You might start out working on a printable and you’re full of hope and good intentions. But before you get that done, another idea hits. You think that one sounds great, too – so you stop what you’re working on and start another project.

Then, you get more ideas and you’re busy leaving half-finished projects all over the place. If you spend too much time flitting from one unfinished project to the next, you won’t be able to get the printables done successfully.

Focus on finishing one project before moving on to the next. You won’t make any money with good intentions. Always look at the big picture.

#6 – Make sure you have a launch plan.

A launch plan can help you be able to successfully complete and sell your printables.

This helps gives you a strategy to follow to get things done when they need to be completed.

Your launch plan should include a brief listing description of the product. You’ll also find this step useful later when you need to create descriptions to upload. The plan should have a marketing component with a targeted audience in mind.

Know the demographic for each of the platforms where you plan to list your product. This information will come in handy later, too if you decide to use advertising. You also need to know the launch date.

This helps you to be able to break down each crucial step that needs to happen for each day or week in order to get the product completed on time.

#7 – Be a professional right from the start.

You might decide that making money with printables is just something that you want to do for fun to earn a little extra cash. You have no intention of doing anything more than that.

But you might find that the printables you’ve created are selling so well you could end up making it your full time career. If that’s something you want to do, that’d be great for you.

However, if you haven’t been paying attention to all the costs involved with making printables, then what happens at the end of the year is you have no way of accounting for what you’ve spent versus what you’ve earned.

That wouldn’t be so great, because without accurate record keeping, if you decide you want your printables to become a business, you have no way of proving to the IRS if you can legitimately claim business deductions.

#8 – Don’t blindly follow the current.

If you research what’s selling under printables, you’ll find that some sellers will create products that are a flash in the pan because they’re following whatever comes along that spikes in popularity.

It can be tempting to decide to put everything on hold and go after these trendy printables, just like those sellers. These products appear to sell well, and it looks like the sellers are making serious money, so why shouldn’t you?

You put a lot of effort into creating a lot of them and get the listings up. But by the time you do that, the current has already shifted. You discover that just as quickly as these products sold, now they’ve all but dried up and none of your products in that category are moving.

That’s what happens when you chase a fad. Those things are here, then they’re gone.

If you created multiple products chasing that money, then you have a lot of wasted product on your hands.

It’s always best to save your energy and protect your income by creating the things that are evergreen rather than putting all your efforts into something that’s here today and gone tomorrow.

If you really want to try your hand at it, make sure you have templates ready to be customized with elements of the fad and be on the lookout for trends so you can scoop up sales right away.

Starting your own printables business isn’t difficult or expensive. There’s a short learning curve and a limited amount of time required to create these low-content items before you can start enjoying the profits from your efforts.

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