Start An Etsy Printables Business In 5 Easy Steps

Creating Etsy printables is a great way to make a passive income and earn money online with less effort.

With just a little practice, you can create beautiful printables in no time and have a successful online business.

We have the steps to help you get started selling digital downloads – including this FREE workshop sharing the best seasonal products to capitalize on and make money.

So why wait? Keep reading to find out the 5 steps to make your printables business today!

What Are Printables?

Printables are one of the best-selling printables or crafts on the Etsy market today, so they’re an excellent chance for you to earn money.

Printables are digital downloads of documents or pictures that people can buy online. Common examples of printables include planner pages, worksheets, and art prints.

You can create printables once and then sell digital products over and over again. They’re a popular craft to sell on Etsy, and there’s a growing demand for them.

People want to buy digital downloads because they are usually affordable and customizable- plus, they help your customers in some way.

You may be selling digital products that give someone fun games for a baby shower, or you could start selling digital planners for people to manage their money or debt.

You can find niche printables, like a wedding niche or even a game niche, but printables have endless possibilities based on the needs of consumers.

So now that you know what printables are, let’s talk about how to make them and start selling on Etsy!

5 Steps To Make Printables

To start a printables business on Etsy, you need to take a few key steps.

These include creating your digital files, setting your prices, creating your shop listing on Etsy, and promoting your shop.

1. Keyword Research

To create successful products for your Etsy business, you need to know what people want and which printables Etsy sellers are making money selling.

The best way of learning what sort of printables you will make is by doing market and keyword research to help decide which products you should sell.

In other words, Etsy SEO!

There are a few simple ways to do some research:

Get Ideas Using eRank

One way to see what printables are selling is using eRank. This Etsy tool shows what the best-selling printables on Etsy are.

There is a free and a paid version. The free version is good for getting ideas, while the paid version gives more detailed information that can help you decide what to sell.

We signed up for a free eRank account to see what the top keywords it would give for “printables” would be. Here’s what it gave us for the top-selling printables:

1. Printables
2. Digital Printables
3. Printables Art
4. Wall Printables
5. Printables Wall Art

There are plenty more on the eRank list, so do some research into the best-selling printables on Etsy and see what product ideas you get!

Do An Etsy Search

Doing a simple Etsy search will show you what printable products are selling– this can give you some inspiration for creative ways to make money selling printables on Etsy.

It isn’t hard to do a quick search on Etsy to see what popular printables are being sold recently or what Etsy printable sellers are out there.

You can filter by popular keywords (Etsy SEO!) and then search for printable ideas based on these.

For example, using the keyword “printables” as a filter will show you all the available items with this keyword in their titles. But if you use other keywords with it, like “wedding,” “shower,” or “games,” you’ll get more specific variety for whatever you’re thinking about selling.

Check Out Pinterest

Looking for some fun and creative ideas to sell Etsy printables?

Then head over to Pinterest, where you can easily find thousands of printable ideas, ranging from coloring pages for kids to digital planners for budgets to gift tags for the holidays.

Many people go to Pinterest to find things to make and things to buy, like greeting cards, baby shower games, or party printables. You can use Pinterest as inspiration or use it to market your products and sell more!

2. Make Your Printables

Now that you have some printable ideas and found inspiration for designs, it’s time to create your printable.

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create digital products, just some sense of style and the right tools.

There are many different tools that you can use to create digital products, including software like Canva, Microsoft Word, or PowerPoint for creating artwork.

Start by creating a few products- at least 10 – 12 different products that you can use to populate your Etsy store. More products will give you more options for sale and attract a variety of customers.

Not really into the designing aspect of digital prints? Well, you can find freebies or hire people to design your printables for you!

You can find free templates to alter as your own digital products, even on Etsy and Pinterest. These templates can save you a lot of time by providing pre-made artwork that you can use as the basis for your design and make changes to fit your style.

If you can’t find a template you want to use, check on Fiverr to find someone who can create the template cheaply. People charge as little as $5 for small product services.

After making your printable(s), save the final version in a digital format to have it ready for Etsy listings.

PDFs work best for this purpose because they are easily opened on any device and can be printed out without losing any quality.

And now that you’ve got your product ready, let’s determine how much you should sell your printables for!

3. Set Your Prices

Pricing yourself somewhere in the middle offers value for a reasonable price and gives customers something within their budget.

Look at the competition in your niche who make similar products and see where they fall on the price spectrum. This will give you an idea for how much to charge for your digital products.

For example, we looked up budget printables on Etsy, and 1 printable sheet can range from less than $1 to $3 per page. So you could charge $1.50 or $2 in the middle, so your price is competitive.

4. Create Your Etsy Shop

Once you have created multiple printables and have an idea of what you’ll be charging for them, the next step is to open an Etsy shop.

We think it’s best to sell on Etsy, as you’ll be able to list products quickly and then have a marketplace full of millions of users checking out and buying your products.

Opening an Etsy account is free and easy, and only takes a few minutes to complete. Once your account is set up, you can start filling it with digital products.

There are a few fees to sell on Etsy, but they’re relatively inexpensive and worth it if you want to reach more people than you would on your own website.

Here are the fees for selling on Etsy:

• Listing fee: $0.20 per listing
• Transaction fee: 6.5 %
• Payment processing fee: 3% + $0.25

5. Marketing – Promote Your Etsy Shop

Marketing your Etsy business and promoting your printables is essential for attracting new customers and driving sales.

You can use many marketing strategies to promote your business, including social media, Etsy ads, email marketing, and content marketing.

If you are just starting with your printables business, it’s good to focus on one or two of these marketing tactics until you get a feel for what works best for your business.

How To Set Up Your Etsy Shop

We’ve talked about the basic steps of selling printables on Etsy, and we’ve mentioned setting up your Etsy shop, but let’s go into more detail on setting up shop!

1. Open Your Shop

You will need to create an Etsy account if you don’t already have one.

Once you’re logged in, click on the Etsy Sell button again and then click Open Your Etsy Shop. You can choose the standard Etsy account or pay for Etsy Plus.

You’ll need your business name, a logo/picture for your page, a description of your shop, and whatever you want to add.

2. Create Listings

After creating your shop and adding your digital downloads, you’ll also want to create listings. This will make it easier for customers to find the digital downloads they’re looking for on a crowded Etsy marketplace.

Each listing on Etsy or the Etsy app costs $0.20 for 4 months, but Etsy Plus is $10 per month and comes with 15 listings, plus some other stuff.

3. Add Photos and Details

If you’re considering selling on Etsy, one of the first things you’ll need to do is take some great photos of your products. After all, your images are one of the main ways you’ll be able to promote your items and attract buyers.

Focus on taking original, high-quality photos that showcase your products in the best light possible.

Also, add a watermark to your photos to discourage others from stealing your images.

Thankfully, Etsy makes it easy to start by providing clear guidelines for listing images on your printables shop. They recommend using images that are 2000px for the shortest side of the image and a resolution of 72PPI.

4. Use SEO In Your Shop

If you sell printables or other items on Etsy, you know that standing out in the vast sea of competition can be difficult. One way to get your products noticed is to optimize your shop for search engines.

We talked about SEO for researching printable ideas, but SEO is primarily to make people find your listings easier.

Here are some pointers on SEO with your Etsy store:

1. Start by ensuring that your Etsy printables shop and product listings are well-organized and easy to navigate.
2. Use keywords throughout your descriptions to help potential customers find your products.
3. In addition, promoting your printable Etsy shop through social media and other channels can also help to improve your search engine ranking and help you on the way to selling printables on Etsy. The more people visit your shop, the higher it will appear in search results.

By following these simple tips, you can give your shop the boost it needs to sell digital downloads and attract new customers and thrive.

Learn More About Printables

Selling Etsy printables can be a great way to earn money from your hobby, but you need to know more about them to make and sell them successfully.

Here are a few ways you can learn more about printables and how to create them:

Printables Courses- Plus A FREE Workshop!

Online courses often contain helpful tips and templates that you can use to start your designs.

Gold City Ventures course shows you which Etsy printables you can sell and how to tart your business.

You’ll learn which products are best to sell in your Etsy store, how to write compelling product descriptions, and much more.

These simple guidelines for printables will help you avoid common pitfalls and make more sales.

But check out the free printables workshop first to see if printables are for you nad if the course is worth your time.

I think the full course is worth its weight in gold, but check out my honest Gold City Ventures Review to see why!

Find YouTube Tutorials

Many great videos on YouTube can teach you the basics of creating digital files, such as PDFs and JPGs.

You can also find tutorials on using software like Canva Pro or Photoshop. You may have some basics, but videos on YouTube can teach you some tricks on creating your products faster!

There are even videos to create printables on Etsy!

These tutorials will help you get started selling printables, no matter what type of file format or design you’re interested in making.

Find More Inspiration

You may be selling printables on Etsy and find that you’re doing alright, but you need a best-seller to get your shop on the map.

When you’re feeling stuck, don’t forget to keep browsing through other Etsy shops. Etsy gains new users every day, but they also gain and lose shops as well.

You should stay up to date on printable trends- best-sellers can change, and as time goes on, you may need to create printables that fit new buyers.

Software For Making Etsy Printables

There are many free tools and paid design programs that you can use to create beautiful printables, even if you’ve never done any design work before.

Canva Free and Pro

Canva is a popular free design tool perfect for creating printables to sell in your Etsy store. With Canva, you can choose from various templates or create your designs from scratch.

There is also a paid version of Canva. Canva Pro gives you access to more features, including the ability to upload your fonts, create transparent backgrounds, and more.

Canva Pro offers a free 30-day trial. After the trial period, the cost is $119.99 a year or $12.99 monthly.

The Pro version gives you everything the free version does, plus:

• Premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics
• Premium and free templates with new designs daily
• Easily save and apply your brand or campaign’s colors, logos, and fonts 
• Remove image backgrounds instantly with Background Remover
• Resize designs infinitely with Magic Resize
• Save designs as templates for your team to use
• 100GB of cloud storage
• Schedule social media content to 8 platforms

If you’re serious about making printables, Canva Pro is an excellent investment. You can get started with a free trial of Canva Pro here.

Plus, you should check out how to make and sell Canva templates for easy passive income this year!

Microsoft Word

While Microsoft Word may not be the most robust design tool, it’s a great option if you’re just starting out or on a budget when starting a business. You can find many free printable templates online that you can download and edit in Word.

Microsoft Word is available in a couple of packages:

• Home: $99.99 per year or $9.99 a month
• Personal: $69.99per year or $6.99 a month

A FREE package is available for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and more. It is a web version, and you can save your documents to OneDrive.

Plus, since Microsoft Word is such a widely used program, plenty of tutorials and resources are available to help you get started.

Adobe Photoshop

If you’re looking for more advanced design tools, Adobe Photoshop may be what you are looking for!

Not only can you use Photoshop for editing photos and creating graphics, but it’s also perfect for making Etsy printables that require photo editing, like planners and recipe books.

It is available with Adobe Creative Cloud and offers a monthly subscription plan that costs $9.99 per month or $119.88 yearly.

You also get 20GB or 1TB of cloud storage, Adobe Portfolio, Adobe Fonts, and access to the latest features and updates as soon as they’re released.

Etsy Printables FAQs

We’ve covered a lot of information in this post about selling printables on Etsy, and you may still have some questions about Etsy printables.

Here are answers to some of the most common questions about making and selling Etsy printables:

What kind of files can you sell as Etsy printables?

The most common file types of printables on Etsy are DOC, PDF, PNG, JPEG, or even SVG files.

Why sell printables on Etsy?

Creating some best-selling printables on Etsy is a great way to make money from your art and designs.

Plus, it’s a fun and easy way to get started in the e-commerce world and make a passive income.

Here are some reasons you should sell on Etsy:

• An Etsy shop is a perfect business idea for stay-at-home moms
• Creating printables doesn’t require a lot of money upfront
• There’s a massive market for them- printables are versatile and can be used for a variety of purposes
• Etsy provides a wide range of tools and resources to help you
• Etsy is a great way to build your brand and reach new customers
• There is not a lot of overhead – you only need to create the designs and list them on Etsy

Can I really make money selling printables on Etsy?  

Yes, you can make money selling printables on Etsy. Some people make six figures a year with their Etsy store.

Printables are one of the most popular items on Etsy, and there is a large market for them. You can charge a lot for your designs, and people will be happy to pay for them.

Of course, how much money you make will depend on several factors, including the quality of your designs, how well you market your store, and more.

But if you create high-quality printables and market your Etsy shop well, there’s no reason you can’t make a passive income from the best-selling printables.

Do I need to know SEO?

You don’t need to know SEO to sell printables on Etsy, but it can help you get more traffic to your store.

Overall, it’s essential to understand SEO if you want to sell printables on Etsy. You can start by experimenting with different keywords to see what results they give you and how much traffic they bring to your shop.

Then, once you have found some of the most popular keywords, you can optimize your listing pages for those keywords so that it’s easier for people to find them.

You can also take courses on SEO as we did with Stupid Simple SEO. It helps to get a background in SEO to optimize your listings as much as you can.

What sort of printable ideas do you suggest?

The best printable ideas depends on what you’re interested in. You can sell anything from planner inserts to wall art to greeting cards to digital planners.

Here are a few ideas for Etsy digital downloads:

• Custom Art, like watercolor art
• Wedding stationery
• Printable weekly planner
• Budgets
• Printable games and ice breakers
• Gift tags
• Baby shower games

What are some examples of printable shops on Etsy?

Several shops offer a wide variety of products, from invitations to coloring pages to planners to budgets. If you’re looking for inspiration or ideas for your shop, check out these successful Etsy sellers.

• The Savvy Mama
• Modern Printable Shop
• Digital Things
• LAPrintables
• OVCreativeStudio

Are there other places to sell printables?

Yes, there are many other places to sell printables online. Popular platforms include Creative Market and Shopify, and we think selling on Shopify is great for printables and other merch.

Selling printables on your website can be more work than selling on Etsy, but it’s a great way to build your brand and reach new customers. Plus, if you sell on your website, you’ll keep 100% of the profits.

If you want to sell printables on your website, you’ll need to set up the website and get hosting on a web host like BlueHost. A shopping cart and payment processor will also be needed.

There are also many Facebook groups dedicated explicitly to selling printables, so you can network with other sellers and get advice and feedback on your products.

What are some more tips for getting started with selling printables?

Here are some tips to get you started with selling printables:

1. Offer various products: customers like to have choices, so offer a range of different printables in your shop.
2. Provide excellent customer service: respond to questions and concerns quickly and politely.
3. Promote your shop: use social media, Etsy ads, blogging, and other marketing channels to get the word out about your printables business.

Final Thoughts

Starting a printables business can be a great way to make passive income. With a little bit of effort, you can have your side hustle business up and running in no time!

You’ll be able to make some extra money, but you’ll also be able to express your creativity and connect with other like-minded individuals.

One of the best places to start a printable shop is Etsy, where you can connect with customers around the globe and create a one-stop-shop for all your products quickly and at a low cost.

Overall, making your own Etsy printables business can be an enriching experience.

Not only can you make some extra money, but you can also help people organize their lives and add a little bit of beauty to the world.

So get creative with your printables and sell them on Etsy today!