Printables business is a type of digital business that allows a person who has graphic design skills to sell monetize his products. It is a business which I will recommend to any stay at home mom who wishes to build a home business because the start up cost is small and it gives you the ability to earn passive income from home. It also gives artists an opportunity to express oneself creatively and earn money from it.
Once your design is up, all you need to do is to provide customer support for it and you are on your way to earning a good income.
I was inspired to write this post because I know what it is to be a stay at home mom who wants to augment her income or run a business from home. The circumstance you are in right now may not give you the opportunity to run a complete brick and mortar business, but if you have some graphic design skills or even if you don’t have any but have an interest in producing printables. You can turn it into a business and earn a good chunk of money from it.
In this post, I will be showing you how to start this business, where to sell your printables and different ways of monetizing your printable designs.
Defining a Niche for your Printables Business
Before you start your business, you have to decide what niche you will like to serve, I always believe that when you want to start a new venture, start with a niche you are familiar with. For more on discovering your niche, please Get My Free Ebook, I did a very good job of explaining how to discover your niche market there.
What kind of Niche will you like your printables to serve, if you are a food buff who likes recipes and the likes, you can design printables that present recipes in such a way that people will be willing to buy them, stick them on the Refridgerator and use them whenever they require. Here are some common niches you may like to consider.
- Kids/ Baby: You could make Printables for Kids, baby stickers, printables to organize baby feedings or checklists for the baby’s doctors visit. you can also make designs for baby clothes, Fun printable binders for kids
- Food: You can make printable grocery coupons, printable grocery lists, food recipe printables and simple organizational charts for the food pantry.
- School: You could make Printable Graph paper, printable coloring sets for kids or teens in school.
- Gifts: Printable greeting cards, gift certificates, printable gift sets, printable gift tags.
- Organizational printables: This may include checklists, Binders, homemakers checklist, e.t.c.
- Blogs: Printables that helps bloggers organize their content, schedule their posts and plan their content output.
There are a lot of ideas that you can design printables around, just brainstorm around what you are familiar with before you set out to create a printable design around it.
Tools for your Printables Business
It’s easy, just a few things and you are good to go:
- A Laptop computer or desktop
- Design software: I recommend the following
Canva.com : Canva gives you the opportunity to design stuff you like using their already made templates, I use canva a lot because I like their features. It actually works well if you are beginner designer with little or no skills. Canva will enable you to make designs that are easy to use and also beautiful. They have a paid feature though where you get to resize your pictures, the only downfall with that feature is that the resizing is still withing the context of their own design sizes, you can’t resize your pictures to what you want especially if your dimensions are not in their bouquet of offerings. Where you want a picture that is paid, it’s often a dollar to buy the picture that you like.
I get most of my pictures from Canva because I love that someone with zero design skills can pick up their templates and design something good.
Picmonkey: There has been a lot of raves about picmonkey, I haven’t used it before but most write ups about it says it’s a beautiful platform to use in designing your printables. It has the option for resizing your pictures to the size you want. So if you are someone who can afford to pay their monthly paid feature then you can sign up with them. They have a free trial period of 7 days, so you can use it to check them out to see if you like what they have to offer. You can edit your photos, touch up your designs or create an entirely new design or even collage what you already have.
Adobe Illustrator: This is also a design software with a paid feature that enables you to design your printables. It’s a good one but I will recommend that if you are new to designing stuff before you run off to start paying a monthly subscription. You can try out your skills by designing with the free options like Canva first as you get better and make more sales, you can then begin to use a paid version. Their plans vary but the popular Indesign option goes for 19 dollars if you are signing up for an annual plan.
Photoshop elements: Much like the Adobe Illustrator too, you will have to pay a monthly fee before you can use it.
Fonts: Fonts are a great part of designing printables because they give you different options that will help you letter your printable material. Shopping around for a good font will go a long way in determining how good your design will turn out. A good Place to get your Fonts from will be at the creative market. There are also free fonts out there that you can use to make your designs pop. Examples of free fonts are Brela, Comfortaa, Ubuntu, Chivo, Jura, clear sans. There a lot out there you can research to find one that suits you.
Caution: Don’t forget to watermark and password your design on PDF to prevent theft.
How to sell your Printable designs.
Since printables are digital products, there are many ways to sell your designs.
Etsy: Etsy is a platform that enables you to sell your handmade goods, so it’s the best place to sell your handmade printable designs. For a listing price of 2 cents, you can set up your shop on Etsy and begin to sell. For more on how to start an Etsy shop read my post on how to set up an Etsy shop
Zazzle: Zazzle is a platform that allows you to sell your designs to them so they can be used on different types of objects like mugs T-shirts, pillow cases or even table mats. You earn commissions for every sale that they make on those objects.
Society 6: society6 operates much like Zazzle, you earn money commissions for your designs, while they do all the hard work of printing your designed printables and shipping it to the buyer.
Redbubble.com: Redbubble puts the designer’s printable designs on different categories of their stuff like Men’s T- shirts, women’s wear, wall art, home décor, casings for phones and a whole lot of other stuff they have on their site. The good thing is you get to decide where you want your designs to be put and you get paid a certain percentage of the sale of the material that your design is on.
Shirtcity: Shirt city operates similarly to Redbubble, you get a commission for the designs you make and they put those designs on shirts. The company is responsible for the packaging and shipping to the customers. To sign up with shirt city click here: CLICK YOUR SHIRT!
Sell on your own site: I believe that as you succeed in selling on the different platforms above, you may begin to desire to sell on your own website if you have one. If you do not have one, then its time for you to start a blog ad create an online presence that will enable you to write about what you do and also sell your products through it. A good eCommerce platform that will make it easy for you to set up your online shop is the Shopify platform. It will give you the needed resources to get your eCommerce store up and running without many problems
Design for others as a Freelancer: You can also sell your designs to others for them to use, especially for Bloggers who may love your work but do not have the skills to do what you do, you can choose to make custom made designs for them and charge them a one off fee to use your designs.
Create an Ecourse: You can also create an e-course and teach people via your blog how to make those designs, you will make a ton of passive income from your course. To learn how to create an e-course, read this post I wrote on a breakdown on how much it will cost you to create a course that people will pay for in other to learn from you.
This post I wrote so inspired me that I went on and started 2 online stores withing 2 hours, read about it Here
For more on how ideas on starting a home business as a stay at home mom:
REVEALED!!!!!! 6 EASY STEPS TO TRANSITION FROM A STAY AT HOME TO A WORK AT HOME MOM