Selling printables on Etsy is a fun and creative way to start making money from home. I opened my own shop a few years ago and have been slowly adding inventory ever since.
If you already sell printables on Etsy, I’m now accepting contributors to my group board, which can be found right here: https://www.pinterest.com/dreamdashjournal/unique-art-prints-home-decor-fashion-printables-an/
Then, feel free to jump ahead to the weirdness.
Interested in learning how you can open your own Etsy shop and make money selling printables? Want some ideas on what printables to sell? I’ll give you a quick overview in this article.
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How to open an Etsy shop and start selling printables:
You can easilycreate an Etsy account by clicking on the “Sell on Etsy” link on Etsy. Then simply follow the prompts. Here’s a quick rundown of the set-up steps:
- You’ll be asked to set shop preferences such as language country and currency.
- Choose your shop name.Etsy’s guidelines state your name must be four to 20 characters long, no spaces or special characters, not a duplicate name used by another Etsy seller, no profanities, and no trademark infringements.
- Add your items. Use the recommended 5 photos per listing if you can. Adjust your thumbnail as needed.
- Enter the details of your listing- item description, category, etc. Add relevant tags, (use all 13 for the best chances of being found by shoppers.)
- Enter the price and any variations.
- Set shipping price. But please note Etsy now favors stores that offer free shipping, so try to roll shipping costs into the total cost.
- Preview your listings.
- Choose payment preferences.
- Set up billing.
- Open your shop!
But wait, you need to do a few more things…
- Customize your shop with a personal photo and bio. You’ll also want to create a shop banner, and shop icon. You can do this on the free graphic design site Canva.
- Set your policies, such as estimated processing and shipping time, along with returns and exchanges policy, and the payment methods you accept.
- Add sections and rearrange items as you’d like.
- Add some info to your shop’s about page.
And that’s it to get set up! Not so hard at all to set up your Etsy shop.
Can you make money selling printables on Etsy?
Yes, of course!
But do know that selling printables on Etsy is highly competitive. That’s because printables are almost entirely passive income. And what artist-entrepreneur doesn’t like passive income.
I don’t make a whole ton of money selling printables, only because I’m way more focused over here on my blog. But it’s a little extra cash in my pocket and a good time, too.
How much money you make selling printables on Etsy is entirely dependent on how much time and effort you put into your shop. To make money you will need to work consistently. You will need a good product, good mock-ups, excellent customer service, and above all the drive to succeed.
Where there is a will to succeed and make money online, there is a way. That is a fact! So if you like the idea of making money selling printables, keep reading, keep learning, and keep enjoying the ride!
Types of printables to sell on Etsy:
As for what types of printables to sell on Etsy?
Whatever you LOVE designing/creating the most is my personal recommendation! So long as your creation is in digital form, it can be sold as a digital download and anyone can purchase and print it out.
This means that if you’re, say, a watercolor artist, then you’ll need to take high-quality photos of your work to digitize. Or digitally scan your work.
You can also find a company to print your work for you and set up printing and fulfillment with that company.
Of course, you don’t have to be an “artist” to sell art on Etsy. Forget about labels and what’s art and what’s not art. As Andy Warhol said- “Art is whatever you can get away with.”
Focus instead on being a creator and CREATE. Do your best to make what you create look nice. Ultimately, you want to offer beauty, good design, and value to your customer. Selling printables on Etsy does not require you to be a professional artist.
Here are some printable ideas for you:
- Calendars & planners
- Daily checklists
- Budget or financial planners
- Meal or fitness planners
- Wedding planners
- Word art such as inspirational typography quotes, bible verses, nursery rhymes, funny sayings, or simple statements.
- Fine art of all types- paintings, drawings, graphic design, collage, photography, and more.
- Art specifically for different rooms- kitchen art, bathroom art, nursery art, kids art.
- Party signs for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and baby showers.
- Cards- greeting cards, holiday cards.
- Templates that people can edit and customize themselves such as resumes, invitations, announcements and more.
I hope you’re feeling inspired!
And I gotta say, creating digital products is a fun way to create passive income. Make it once, sell it for infinity.
Related: 11 Creative Ways to Make Passive Income as an Artist
In my shop, Dream Dash Designs, I sell instant download art printables.
Here are a few examples of art printables I have available:
Cute, right? I think so. But your style may be different. The wonderful thing is, there is room for many different art styles on Etsy.
Now I’ll get to the main point of this article…what I really want to talk about because nobody ever does…
The strangest thing about printables on Etsy:
Ok, bear with me.
So I have this shop, but nothing in it exists. I spent a lot of time hitting buttons to create my store and the items in it which are not tangible.
My shop can be seen on your screen, but it isn’t exactly real. It’s not not real. But it doesn’t exist in physical reality. It sells only invisible items. Items that do not exist. Yet.
Not until someone deems one of the items worthy of being real.
This someone, the buyer, is the force which summons one of my store items into existence.
To summon, the buyer gazes through eyes that operate via their own vastly more complex computer (brain) and taps buttons on their own keypad to pay.
The payment is done with money that also doesn’t exist in the physical realm.
The entity that is Etsy sends my invisible non-tangible store item/s through time and space into my customer’s computer. At which point my customer downloads the item and brings it into the physical realm by printing it out.
For your digital products to actually ever exist in this dimension, someone must deem your product/s to be worthy. Someone must like or need your item enough to bring it to this dimension that we call “reality.”
It’s so WEIRD! Right? And awesome! We are seriously living in the future!
And a lot of things are like this. It’s so fascinating, don’t you think?
You may wonder what I’m smoking, (it’s legal where I live *shrugs*) but the fact is that much exists in the unseen realm. The digital realm is completely unseen if not for our screens, yet it still exists. Or does it? I don’t have an answer.
If a comet hit the earth and we were left with no electricity and no computers, where would all the digital data go? Is it still somewhere?
It seems likely there’s digital information floating around from aliens or past advanced civilizations just waiting for us to discover or tap into. What exactly remains unseen?
Please leave your comments below, I’d love to hear them!
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