Make money with Printables and digital products

Making money with Printables and digital products is one of many great ways to create a passive income for yourself by selling on Etsy. Etsy is one of the best places to sell your homemade things, especially digital & printable products, and it’s simple to get started.  With over 81 million consumers on Etsy, there’s a good chance that someone is seeking what you’re selling. You can make a living by selling your creative output on the internet.

Everyone wants an income that requires minimal effort. That’s the perk of having a passive income- by passive I mean to have money work for you, it’s exciting to learn more about this and start doing business. The goal of passive income is to earn money while you sleep.

This new world of downloadable and educational items is exploding and Etsy is a wonderful place to sell and deliver them for minimal cost. The beauty of digital listings on Etsy is that they are low-risk and can yield a nice profit.

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What Are Printables?

Printables are digital files, that you can create once and continue to earn from that one design, printables are downloadable files that customers buy and print at home, these files can be created as pdfs, Vector, SVG files, videos, and more. 

Here are some of the ideas of printable products you can sell and start making passive income on Etsy

• Planners and planners template
• Wall art/clip art 
• Stickers
• Calendars
• Coloring pages/activity books
• Games (bridal shower, baby shower, bachelorette, etc)
• Worksheets and educational resources
• Fitness / self-care printables
• Binders and bundles
• Party Invitations (Birthday, Marriage, Christmas, Easter, so on) 
• Checklists
• Labels
• Chore charts for kids, flashcards to help learn

Digital products are endless, if you have expertise in something like accounting, you can create products that people would need, like finance trackers, budgeting tools, and so on. Anything that you think of, can really be turned into a printable/ digital product if you think people will find it useful. 

Advantage of Digital downloads

According to studies, 79 percent of people have purchased digital goods during the last year. This means that anyone who wants to build and market a digital product has a huge opportunity. The benefits of creating printables are:

• Low cost, low risk
• Spend less time working
• No middleman
• Access to a large audience
• You won’t run out of stock
• Profit margins are awesome
• Digital products are easy to manage

How soon can you make money?

Selling on Etsy, can be very profitable and certainly an uncapped amount, the amount you can earn on Etsy can change on a daily basis depending on the printable products you are creating and how popular the market is for that particular product, and how you market it, learning keywords and SEO is a whole other ball game, but if you’re serious in trying to make selling printables a full-time gig, you can learn more about keywords and SEO. 

Etsy has a very low cost of 20 cents to list your product and you can sell an unlimited amount of any product you create, as the saying goes “work smarter, not harder” depending on the product you create and the time it takes you, is minimal in comparison to how many times it can sell, even after one year, you can still be making profits from that item listed. 

In my very first month of advertising on Etsy, I made over $300AU, with millions of people using Etsy, there is a huge market for people buying printables, but how much will you make really differs between people and the products you are creating, but it is totally unlimited to the amount you can make. 

If you also have a website, you can advertise your products there to drive traffic to Etsy directly or set up e-commerce on your website to buy directly through your website, also sharing your products on social media will help promote your store and drive traffic to gain more sales. 

How to Create Printables

There are many different software programs you can use to create your printables and depending on how techy you are too. There are some great free tools, I use Canva, which has a free version and a paid version, now that I sell digital products, I use the paid version of Canva as it gives you many more templates and images to use. Other programs are Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft, PicMonkey, and more.

Pinterest and Youtube are great places to find tutorial videos to learn how to start creating. 

Keep in mind, other than the actual product you are creating, you will need to create a mock-up image to advertise your products, I use Canva to create my mock-ups they have a wide range of graphics and templates available.

The best thing I find about Canva for someone that is learning, Canva is very user-friendly and easy to navigate around its website and has different printable options for images, pdfs, SVG, video, GIFS, and more.  To get started with Canva, sign up for free HERE.

Research what is trending and popular

I mentioned earlier about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and keywords, getting your product in front of more potential customers will come down to understanding SEO and the use of keywords, this can take some time to learn, so don’t freak out, you have time and your products can be found with minimal knowledge of SEO at the start. 

If you are wanting to take off and make this a passive high earning income, a tool to use to help with SEO and keywords is eRank this will help you find what is missing in your products and help optimize your listings and also to see what is trending and give you ideas of what type of products you can create within your niche. 

Don’t forget to utilize your social media accounts to advertise your products, you have put in the hard yards in creating them and you want them to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible, so start sharing them on your Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and another option is running ads directly through Etsy or even ads on your social media accounts.

How to price your Printables products

A good idea to see how to work out how much you should charge for your products is by looking at similar items and see how much they are selling for, you don’t want to price your items too high and not sell anything, and you don’t want to go too low and make hardly any profit, depending on the price you will list your product for, keep in mind Etsy fees, its a good idea to check the Etsy fees and list your product where you cover the fees and make a profit too. 

Currently, Etsy fees are $0.20 to list a product and there is a 5% transaction fee and a 3% plus $0.25 transaction fee. To work out your Etsy fees and profit use this calculator for your Etsy products.

Popular products

Very popular items that sell are seasonal products and you always have your evergreen products that can do well any time of the year. Start thinking in advance of seasonal occasions that are coming up and start creating products for that month. 

A small example of seasonal products are: 

• January  – Australia Day, the start of the school year, classrooms
• February – Valentines Day, Super Bowl, Chinese New Year, Ash Wednesday
• March – St Patrick’s Day, Marti Gras,  Palm Day
• April – Easter, April Fools, Anzac Day, Passover, Ramadan
• May- Mothers Day, May Day, Memorial Day, College graduation
• June – Fathers Day, USA Summer, USA Wedding- summer
• July – Canada Day, Independence day,  4th July
• August – Back to school
• September – Fathers day, AUS Start of Fall, USA football season
• October – Halloween
• November – Thanks Giving, Black Friday Sales
• December – Christmas, New Year, end of school, appreciation gifts

This is just a snippet of ideas, but seasonal printable products are very popular, In December I made over $300au just on selling Christmas gift tags.

You also have your evergreen products that will sell any time of year, like your planners, trackers, resume templates, games, party invites, and so so much more.

Tip: If you have created some party invites, wedding invites or any product, you can then turn them into a seasonal product, like my christmas tags for example I already have the template, I can than just create some thanks giving gift tags or party favor bag tags, turn you party invites into a birthday in December theme like christmas, you get the idea right? 

Another way is after creating some products and they have the same theme, you can sell them as a bundle.

Are you ready to start your Etsy store? 

Investing your time into creating printable and digital products is well worth the effort and easy to do in your spare time, rather than spend your time mindlessly scrolling on social media, use your time wisely to create products and start earning a passive income, there is no better way to gain more time freedom than starting a side gig like printables to make it a full-time job, but hey can you call it a job when its something you really love doing? 

Making printables is a lot of fun, whether it’s for a pastime or for something more serious.

I hope by reading this blog post it has inspired you to start being creative and exploring new ideas to get started with setting up an Etsy Store and generating a passive income.

Share your comments below if you are going to start an Etsy store, or if you currently already have a store and how it’s working for you! 

Most important – “Have fun”.