How to Sell Printables on Etsy: A Complete Guide

Selling products on Etsy is a popular way for creatives to make money. There are several reasons why this could be the right side hustle for you:

• Minimal financial investment: With some side hustles, you have to spend money to make money. Fortunately, that’s not the case with this. Creating an Etsy account is free, Etsy’s seller fees are minimal, and since printables are digital products, there are no packaging or shipping costs.
• No qualifications required: To create eye-catching printables, you’ll need some artistic talent (and ideally experience with graphic design software), but you don’t need formal training or qualifications. Your customers won’t care about your resume—just your products.
• Passive income: When you create and sell printables, you do the work upfront. You just have to design each printable once, and then you can sell it forever. This means you can keep earning money if you take a day (or a month) off, and your income will grow over time.
• Easy to find customers: As a very popular site, Etsy has a built-in customer base and offers several features that will help you advertise your products.

We spoke to an Etsy store owner who makes six-figure sums selling printables on the platform. She said that she started her Etsy side hustle “on a whim.” (She prefers to remain anonymous because copycat sellers will make her business more difficult.)

“In 2019, I was in the process of starting a blog, but a creator I followed launched a blogging course and an Etsy course at the same time,” she said. “I decided to buy both courses because they both sounded interesting.”

Her investment paid off. “Nine months after buying the courses and launching my Etsy store, I was on maternity leave and not wanting to go back to work. That’s when I really dug into learning Etsy and taking it seriously, and that’s when I started making thousands of dollars a month on the platform.”

What kinds of printables can you sell on Etsy?

The kinds of printables you can sell on Etsy are nearly endless. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

• Planners, fillable to-do lists, and chore chart checklists
• Calendars
• Cards (birthday, invitation, greeting, etc.)
• Business cards
• To-do lists
• Wedding printables (invitations, guest books, table numbers, bridal shower games, etc.)
• Party banners, decorations, and flyers
• Baby shower invitations and games
• Pregnancy journals and announcements
• Children’s learning materials / homeschooling worksheets
• Coloring pages
• Crossword puzzles
• Hand embroidery, crochet, and knitting patterns
• Other crafts (wall art, jar labels, gift tags, candy bar wrappers, etc.)

This list is by no means exhaustive. Think of an activity or a type of event, and there’s probably room for you to create a couple of printables relating to it.

Setting up a printables shop on Etsy is easy. What’s difficult is making printables that really sell. If you want to run a successful Etsy printables business, you need to take the right steps early on.

Our Etsy seller had store open for a while before she started earning serious money. But once she really committed to it, she managed to earn over $100,000 in 9 months. She shared her secrets for success, and we’ve broken them down into easy-to-follow steps so you can open your own lucrative Etsy printables store.

1. Do market research

The number one most important factor contributing to her success was research. “I figured out that you need to do market research first, and make what people want and are searching for. Once I started doing that, my store started improving.”

Our expert emphasized that doing research before creating your printables is the best way to create competitive products and listings. “Do market research first and find products that have some search volume with low competition,” she said. “You will stand out because there aren’t already a lot of players in your space.”

This doesn’t mean you have to give up all your creative freedom or sacrifice your own interests. The trick, she  says, is to “find the sweet spot” between what you enjoy making and what people are already looking for.

2. Choose your niche

If you want to maximize your earnings, then it’s best to choose a niche before you start making printables. This isn’t absolutely necessary—if you’d rather be a generalist, you can—but be aware that you can’t sell everything to everybody. Niching down will give you a clearly defined brand, which will make it easier for customers to find and fall in love with your creations.

When you pick a niche, it’s important to narrow your focus to an area that will sell well. Here are several printable categories that are always in demand:

• Tools for planning and organizing
• Children’s educational materials
• Wall decor
• Crafts and DIY projects
• Event decorations

Our expert says that these are all good options, although she recommends “being careful of highly competitive markets where it’s hard to stand out.” Finding specific niches within these categories will help.

Within the category of planning and organizational tools, you could sell party planners or workout planners, among other things. And don’t just limit yourself to serving consumers—there’s plenty of money to be made selling printables to businesses. For example, you could sell employee schedules, employment contracts, or consent forms.

To check what’s trending right now, try searching for printables on Etsy and seeing what comes up. Alternatively, you can just type “printable” in the search bar. Etsy will make suggestions based on what’s currently popular.

3. Make your printables

Once you’ve chosen your niche, it’s time to start making your printables. To do this, you’ll need a computer and at least basic computer skills. It helps if you have graphic design software and the knowledge to use it, but you can also get started with little or no experience.

Our Etsy expert agreed that you don’t need any special skills to make money from this side hustle. “I think the best thing a person can have to create an Etsy printables business is a growth mindset,” she said. “Most people won’t start with all the skills and knowledge they need to be successful, but if they keep learning and don’t give up they can make a good income on Etsy.”

Platforms for creating printables

Our expert recommends creating your printables from scratch so they are “truly unique.” But if your design skills are limited, don’t worry. There are several tools that are great for beginners.

These platforms provide design tools, templates, and downloadable assets you can use to create your own designs:

• Canva: This platform provides templates and a drag-and-drop interface that makes designing fun and easy. It’s especially useful for creating social media graphics. You can get started for free, but a pro subscription costs $14.99 per month.
• Creative Market: This is an online marketplace with illustrations, photos, and other design elements available for purchase. There are asset “drops” each month, with paid plans (which offer access to the platform’s entire collection of assets) starting at $9.95 per month.
• Envato Elements: This platform allows you to download templates for graphics, fonts, videos, and more. Plans start at $16.50 per month.
• Adobe Creative Cloud: This is a set of 20+ creative apps and services, including Photoshop and Illustrator. There’s a 7-day free trial, with a subscription that starts at $54.99 per month.
• GIMP: This is an open-source platform for editing images and graphics. It’s a lot like Adobe Photoshop, but it costs no money to use.
• Photopea: This is a free online image and file editor. It’s supported by ads with an ad-free option starting at $5 per month.
• Affinity: This is professional creative software for photos, graphics, and layout. There’s a 30-day free trial, with a one-time license purchase that costs $164.99.

Of these options, our expert’s favorite is Canva. “I love Canva because of how simple it is to use,” she said. However, she also uses Adobe tools.

Whichever one you choose to use, be sure to read their terms of service thoroughly. Some platforms have special licensing or copyright rules you must follow when using their design assets.

Stock photo sites

Regardless of what type of software you use, you may also want to take advantage of sites that provide royalty-free stock images that can be used both commercially and non-commercially. Most of these have free versions with limited access and paid versions with unlimited downloads:

• Unsplash: The paid version of this site starts at $12 per month. You can also download a limited number of assets for free.
• Pexels: This stock photo site is completely free.
• Shutterstock: This site offers a 1-month free trial, with a subscription starting at $29 per month. One-time purchase packs (i.e., 25 images for a flat fee) are also available.
• Freepik: There’s a paid version of this site starting at $24 per month. You can also download limited free assets.
• Adobe Stock: Likewise, this platform offers limited free assets and a 30-day free trial, with the paid subscription starting at $29.99 per month.

Hiring someone to create printables for you

You can also hire a graphic designer to help you create printables if you don’t have the time or inclination to design printables yourself. This can save you time and frustration, although it will cost you money and full creative control. You can expect to spend between $10 and $50 per design.

Our expert says that if you can afford to hire someone to design printables for you, then great. However, she warns that it’s generally not the best approach for beginners since there’s a learning curve and a high risk of financial loss. “You could end up spending a lot to hire someone else to make designs for you when you’re not yet sure what will sell,” she warned.

If you do have the financial means to hire a designer and you’ve decided it’s worth it, good places to find freelance graphic designers include sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and PeoplePerHour.

4. Set up your Etsy store

Once your printables are designed and ready to go, you need to set up an Etsy store. To start selling on Etsy, you first need to create a seller account. There are two ways you can do this.

How to Create an Etsy Seller Account

Follow the prompts to set up your shop preferences, setting your language, country, and currency. You’ll also need to come up with a name for your shop, but don’t stress about this.

Our expert says the name of your Etsy shop really isn’t that important, and you shouldn’t let the decision slow you down. “A lot of people get stuck and never start because they dwell on their name. Don’t overthink it.” You can always change the name of your store later.

Once you create your Etsy store, establish your shop policies so that you’re prepared for any situations that might arise once you begin to sell your products. Setting up return and exchange policies in advance can reduce hassle later on. It also creates a streamlined process that your customers will appreciate.

Create a listing

Your first listing will be included in the prompts you must fill out when you set up your store. After that, you can add more listings individually:

• Open the Shop Manager in the upper right
• Select “Listings”
• Click “Add a Listing”

There are plenty of optional details you can add, but you must include the following information for each listing:

• Photos (between 1 and 10)
• Title, category, and type of product
• Product description
• Price and quantity
• Shipping information (for physical items)
• Renewal options (whether you want to automatically relist your printables when your listing expires)

Etsy charges $0.20 per listing every 4 months. If you choose to automatically renew your listing, you’ll be charged automatically.

Make sure your listing stands out from the crowd by using high-quality images and a clear description with plenty of keywords that customers will be using to search for your product.

You can also include videos showing how your printables might be used. Video is becoming more and more popular, and customers are more likely to purchase something they can see in action first.

If you’re using a print-on-demand (POD) service like Printify or Gelato to print your designs onto physical items, you’ll need to enter that service as a production partner. In the Listing Details section of the listing page, click “Add a new production partner” and fill out the required information. You’ll also need to connect to your Etsy account within your POD service provider’s platform.

Set up your payment information

Next, you’ll need to set up billing and payment options and enter other information such as your date of birth, address, and Social Security number for tax purposes.

You can then connect your bank account via Etsy’s integration with the secure platform Plaid and choose how you’d like to get paid. You’ll also enter your preferences for how Etsy will deduct fees.

Price and publish your printables

When setting the prices for your printables, several factors can influence how much you should charge:

• How unique your design is
• Your target audience and their budget
• The intended purpose of the printable
• The time and energy you’ve invested into creating it
• Expenses you’ve incurred (such as fees for software)

If you’re not sure what price to set, start by researching your competitors’ prices to get a better sense of what they’re charging. Most printables are priced between $2 and $5. You can charge more for bundles of designs.

You can preview your listing or save it as a draft if you want to make changes to it later. When your listing is finished, click “Publish.”

5. Promote your Etsy printables business

At this point, your Etsy printables store should be up and running. Now, you need to market it. Here are some tips to attract customers:

• Make the most of SEO by using accurate and descriptive keywords in your listings
• Use high-quality images
• Promote your printables on social media (Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, etc.)
• Build an email list of current and potential customers and send out newsletters regularly
• Offer promotions, giveaways, and discounts to your followers
• Spend between $1 and $25 daily with Etsy ads to promote your products throughout the Etsy platform

We asked our expert what her advice was for promoting an Etsy printables business. She seconded these tips but recommend understanding the Etsy platform first so you can get organic views for some of your items. After that, “you can figure out other platforms where your target market is hanging out and actively looking for the products you sell.”

If you’re read this far, you’re probably wondering whether you can really make money selling printables on Etsy. Fortunately, the answer is yes. Many sellers are able to turn this into a healthy side hustle, and a few are even able to generate a full-time income and turn it into a new career.

The amount of money you’ll make will obviously depend on how many printables you sell (which in turn depends on your chosen niche, the demand for your products, and the effort you put into marketing).

That said, on average, you can expect to make between $500 and $1,000 per month or around $10,000 per year if you put in the work.

Our expert agreed that this is a good goal. “I think $500 to $1,000 is reasonable,” she said. However, she also confirmed that the amount you can expect to make can vary widely.

“I think how much you make is a direct reflection on other factors such as how many products you have in your store, how much you charge per product, what your conversion rate is, and how much traffic you get,” she said.

In other words, the more work you put in by creating and marketing new printables, the more you can expect to get out of your Etsy store.

Expenses associated with selling printables on Etsy

When budgeting for this side hustle, don’t forget to account for your overhead expenses. While setting up an Etsy account is free, there are several fees you’ll be expected to pay as a seller. Make sure to take these into account when you’re calculating your profits:

• Listing fee: $0.20 per listing every four months
• Transaction fee: 5%
• Payment processing fee: 3% + $0.25

Also, don’t forget your taxes. If you earn more than $400 on Etsy, you’ll be required to pay self-employment taxes, which will amount to 15.3% of your earnings, in addition to your regular income tax. Learn more about self-employment taxes on the IRS website.