How To Make Money From Printables

How to make money designing printables. Printables, etsy, zazzle, graphic designing, clip art, fonts

Sharing printables over the internet has taken over the web by storm! Whether they are free or cost a small portion, we tend to love them and not really get sick of them.  I remember when I created my first ever printable (It was pretty dull but do not judge!). It wasn't much buy it was everything to me. Even though I was just creating little designs to put into my room and around the house, it turned out to make me some profit throughout the years.


When someone ask about my decor and where I got them or when I go to get them printed off at OfficeMax, I'm usually always asked where I get it from. When I express that I make a living off of printables they tend to think I'm some crazy good graphic designer when I am not *LOL*.

If you ever wanted to test out the world of printables and/or have a creative mind, this blog can help you get started. Even if you have not sold a single item ever, I will walk you through the steps to make printables a reasonable small business.


First thing first, let's get this out of our systems:

"Selling printables is way too saturated, no way I can make this a small business"

Yes, there is a lot of competition when it comes to printables. However, if you niche down then the competition will not be as tough as you think it is. I will give you A List of Printable Themes in a future post to give you some ideas.

The outline below will list four different ways to make money from creating printables. Remember, printables are designs that you create and distribute as digital files, not handheld items.



1. Offer Free Printables
I know we are trying to make money so why are we giving them away? When businesses are trying to gain a loyal customer, often times then not, they are offering a product for free to get the customer to consider their business as a possible place to buy. This is what you are going to do for your blog/website. This always a great way to build your mailing list for future sales! It's a Win-Win plan.


2. Sell them on websites
Once you have gotten use to making pretty printables, you can start selling them on websites! At this point you should have enough printables to open shop for customers. You will be surprised that the same ones you are giving for free to your users will make you money on other sites. You get the best of both worlds! The site I just for printables is Etsy to start with. They have a reasonable amount of traffic and will help build a following. I will make A List of Sites To Sell Printables in a future post. You can sign up for Etsy by clicking here.



3. Expand to independent sites
Once you have gotten used to sites like Etsy, you should consider opening an individual, office website for your printables. Sites like Shopify or even Self-hosted blogs would be perfect for this type of small business. This will then be a great way to implement your own style to your site and customization. You can also benefit if you make enough sales so you won't have fees like Etsy does.


4. Get your prints put on objects
This was the first thing I did honestly. Sites like Zazzle, SpreadShirt, CafePress, ETC, are perfect sites.You just upload your designs. to these sites and someone can pick which design the want on whatever objects the site has or you can pick what object gets what design (depending on what site you are using). The downside to this income stream is that you don't get much profit. But, I honestly do not mind because the company is doing the dirty work. The upside is that if you have a decent following on social media you can make a really good amount of sales.




Now that you have gotten the basics, it's time for you to go out and get your business started! Feel free to share your thoughts and maybe ways you make income from designing printables.