How to Create and Sell Printables: A Step by Step Beginner’s Guide

Looking for a step by step guide to creating your own printables to sell? I’ve got you covered.

I totally understand, I was once there looking for help on when I first started.

Spoiler alert: I started wanting to make just $200 a month and now I make more than my 9 to 5 selling printables. And even I can’t believe it! That you can really make money online working from home.

So, if you don't know where to start… this is the blog post for you. Let's go through, step-by-step, how to create your own printables and sell them online.

I want you to know that selling printables is not as difficult as it may seem, but has great profit potentital.

And the best part is you only have to create digital products once and letting Etsy handle the rest.

So, let’s get into it.

First, lets talk about what printables are!

Printables are digital files that customers download and print or use digitally on their devices.

This could be anything from wall art, journals, workbooks, all the way to planners. Each of them are created to help their buyers save time and organise their everyday life.

So why would you want to sell printables?

There are several reasons why:

1. Passive Income Magic: Once listed, your printables work their magic without ongoing management. No shipping hassles or inventory nightmares—just pure profit potential.

2. Demand Galore: People crave digital downloads. Planners, logos, wedding invites, educational materials—you name it. Etsy shoppers love printables.

3. Low Overhead/start up costs: Zero shipping costs. No storage fees. Just your brilliant designs waiting to be discovered.

Firstly, you need to decide who you're customer is and why you are creating these printables. Is it for homeschooling, for teachers, blogging, coloring sheets? Or maybe you’re interested in selling event stationary for weddings or birthays.

One way you can decide what your niche is ...

Think about what sparks your joy?: Explore your interests. Are you a typography wizard? Obsessed with watercolors? Find your sweet spot.

Alternatively, you can conduct market research to find your customers: You could scope out marketplaces like Etsy, amazon etc. You can also use social media to find your customers or your niche and see what is in demand, what printables are trending? What’s missing, for which you can offer a solution.

Here’s a few examples of what you might create: coaching worksheets, flash cards, wall art, printable planners, igital planners, coloring sheets, journals, habit trackers, workbooks, ebooks, calendars, party games, invitations, party decorations, budget worksheets, & etc.

Grab this FREE list of 100+ Digital Products & the best strategy for selling them.

Why do you have to find out what they want?

Well people go into the internet with questions looking for answers.

So you need to consider, what your customers want / need. And that's why you need to conduct Keyword Research.

A simple way to do keyword research is to search on google "how to [insert your printable}?

Are people searching for what you are wanting to sell? If they are, then that’s great.

Other places to do keyword research:

Pinterest

Google

Amazon (If you plan to sell on KDP)

Paid market research platforms (Keywords Everywhere, Semrush, AHrefs etc)

If you are successful in your keyword search that is a good sign that there’s a need. If not, you may want to go back to the drawing board.

Now you have a problem your customers need a solution to, it's time to create the product that will help them.

It's time to start making your printables. And I recommend you use none other than CANVA.

Canva is the absolute best resource for creating printables. It’s a must for beginners & pros alike.

There are 2 versions.

Free Canva

Canva Pro

I love and use Canva Pro because it offers so many more elements that are not available on the free account.

For example, I am able to create my branding kits and this makes it easier for me to stay consistent with brand colors, styles and fonts.

However, if you’re just starting out and don't have much money, then I would suggest you start with the Free version until you're ready to create your printables with the PRO account.

Canva has a lot of good training resources that make it easy for you to use their platform to create the products you want to use or sell.

When it comes to making printables, I really recommend making High-Quality Designs for two reasons.

1) You want your products to stand out from your competitors. So you need to make them pop!

2) Make a combination of different products. For each problem think about how you can offer multiple solutions, be it Wall art, planners, checklists—let your creativity flow.

This can depend on several factors:

1) what site you are most comfortable using?

2) Where d most of your customers shop?

3) Is your product very niche specific?

Depending on how you answer these questions will determing where you should sell your printables.

I’ve made a quick list of where you can sell them below.

Places to sell printables:

Etsy

Your Website

Shopify

Creative Fabrica

Gumroad

Payhip

Whop

Amazon KDP (in book form, low or medium content)

Teachers Pay Teachers (educational)

Etsy can be a great place to sell your printables however, know that there are fees associated with each sale. But this is calculated automatically on Etsy and any money that hits your bank account is 100% of your Etsy profit.

Etsy is also another great choice as they have their own internal traffic system with over 500 million active users each month.

So, as you can imagine there are many people who are highly successful in Etsy selling printables, as they don't have to worry about how to get people to come to their shop to actually buy stuff.

Here are a couple of tips you should consider if you want to become a top seller on Etsy:

Also known as ETSY Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) think about the followiong things:

1) Shop Name: Choose something memorable. Bonus points if it reflects your niche.

2) Banner & Profile Pic: Make it eye-catching. First impressions matter.

3) Shop Policies: Be clear about refunds, shipping (or lack thereof), and your printable magic.

Etsy makes it super easy to set up your shop, and if you use the right keywords, you can drive pretty good traffic to your shop without having to advertise on other websites or on social media.

Read this blog post about: How To Sell Printables On Etsy For Passive Income - The Complete Guide For Beginners

Now, if you are really serious about selling printables on Etsy, then a great product I would recommend is the Goldmine Digital Products Library Resource.

Yvonne has created a pretty awesome in-depth resource to help you start your printables business.

This resource contains over 200 Printables with over 8000 pages combined to help you sell all types of printables across a variety of niches from mental health, travel, education, self care, self love, business etc.

She will give you a lot of resources that will help you with how to create a printables business! So, there’s no other investment outside of purchasing the

library.

There are a TON of success stories.

You don’t need a huge audience or to show your face to create your own printables to sell.

Check it out below