If you're thinking about starting a printables business stay on to watch this video because I'm going to share with you how to start it what you need to know and basically give you your printables business blueprint. Hi, my name is Mei and I help makers artists and designers make a consistent income from selling their handmade products online. So when I say A printables business, I mean any business where you're selling a digital item that the customer then has to print themselves at home to use it.
So the list of what you can make is endless you could create Pages designed to fit into planners like you could make inserts focused on helping someone track their yoga practice or a mom's busy. You will or encouraging self-care food planning. There's just so many things you can make and that's just planner inserts. You can also create coloring pages for children or adults greeting cards templates for businesses to use for their marketing like artwork. You can make checklists or items for homeschool education. There is just so much you can do here. The only limit is your imagination. And of course, there are some things that People don't want so they won't pay money to buy it. So don't make those things the biggest advantage of a printables business is that it's very easy to scale and grow. I know lots of people think of it as a passive income business, but I don't really believe it's truly passive. But what does passive income mean in the first place in many businesses? You only sell the number of items that you make so let's say you sell crocheted blankets if you crochet two blankets a week, that's the maximum you can sell right.
If you're sick for a week, then you don't have any more inventory, but with a passive income business, you can do a bit more work getting set up at the start but you can sell an infinite number of items with very little additional effort. So if you sell a printable that's like a meal planner, for example, you can sell hundreds of that printable a week and it doesn't matter if you're sick or on vacation and the process for selling one printable is the same as selling 10,000 of them a lot of people. Think passive income is you doing the work up front? And then you can just sit back and relax and spend most of your time designing but that's not true. You do have to do the work to promote your business if you want to make sales and there is also a bit of customer service that you have to do.
Right? So don't go into this business thinking it's going to be no work involved at all. Another really sweet thing about printables is the entry point into the business isn't very expensive. You will need a computer and perhaps A special software like Adobe Photoshop. If you don't have great graphic design skills. You may need to hire a graphic designer or just take some classes. But even then I have heard a lot more designers are using their iPad or even something like canva which is a free graphic design online app that you can make really cool designs with but that's really all you need to get started.
And when it comes to pricing your printables just keep in mind that you are going to be limited to a certain range and it's not super high most printables are going to be around five dollars. And if you're in a niche that serves other business owners or Freelancers, then you might be able to sell printables like business planners or marketing planners for I've seen as highest 30 to 40 dollars. So these are really low price points relative to other products. That means that many people will Chose your item without too much hesitation, which is a good thing. And I think it's this is a good time to segue to talk about the challenges of a printables business. I like to talk about this so that you know what you're getting into and you can plan and strategize around these pitfalls. I'll start with the one that I touched on earlier, which is the price point because the prices of your printables are so low, you have to find a lot of customers and make a lot of sales.
If you want to make any meaningful income from this business take for example, someone who sells jewelry. For $75 and you saw printables for $3 how many customers or sales do you have to make to make a thousand dollars a month for the jewelry business. They have to find 13 customers. That's not even a sale a day for your printables business. You'd have to find 333 customers or in other words you'd have to make 11 sales a day. So your marketing and traffic game has to really be on point because you're going to need a Lot more traffic than someone who sells jewelry. Another challenge to be aware of is that because printables require the customer to do something which is, you know printed out before they can use it. There is an increase in customer service for you.
If you aren't careful, this can generate a lot of work the best way to avoid it becoming an issue is to make your items as easy to use as possible and provide resources to your customers in the way of an FAQ or tutorials. You can set those up once and then kind of forget. You know, you won't have to worry about doing ongoing work for it, but they can serve your customers for you in the long term basically automate your customer service as much as possible because remember in our example, you'll have to deal with a lot more customers than say a jewelry business.
So you have to make sure your systems are set up to take care of customers at scale. Another small challenge that I feel is worth mentioning from a marketing perspective. Is that a printable in itself isn't very sexy. Like we love looking at printables that have been filled in with pretty markers and nice handwriting with stickers and washi tape on it, but that's the end product and that's what's appealing. But if you look at just the empty printable, it's pretty plain, right what captures your customers imagination? Is what the printable looks like when it's completed that means for each item you create you'll want to fill it in to really spark the customers imagination about the potential but if this isn't your strong suit, it's worth connecting with like an influencer who will make your products come to life.
Now. Let's talk about your shops Niche because printables is a pretty competitive market, especially since so many people are drawn into the Allure of passive income. You need to decide on a knee. – if you want to really stand out it's really important that you don't let all the possibilities of what you could make overwhelm you because as creatives, I know our tendency is to want to do everything right? Let me know in the comments of this is you but if you want to be a successful printables business, you have to pick a niche such as Fitness and you know, say you're looking to develop a unique way to help out your fellow Fitness Buffs like with fitness trackers or Fitness journals or say you're super into cooking. Attrition and food, then you can make printables surrounding that audience or you can make coloring pages for kids who love science now. I know that sounds like it's too specific and that is too focused and that can feel limiting to you as a creative.
But I'm sure you can come up with a ton of products around coloring pages for kids that are more science-based. You can even have a shop that's completely designed around printables for a kid's birthday party like invitations. Banners activity Pages that's a niche. It gives your business focus so you can be known for that one thing and if you want later on once you've become established and you make consistent sales you can expand into other niches or niches. Having said that one thing I've noticed in a crowded Marketplace is that you can Niche down too much. Like if you're one of only two people selling that thing that's probably because there isn't a lot of demand for that thing and I'm not even going to encourage you to make an invention because totally new ideas take a lot of funding to educate people on its use before you can expect to make sales a quick way to do some market research is to head over to as Z and see what shops there are.
Doing now, we're not going to copy anyone. We're just going to do some Intel collect some data so we can see where you can fit in. So what kind of information are you looking for? Well, here are some ideas. What's the average price point then look at a seller who's doing really well and see if you can tell what they're doing do they offer the printable on a certain size of paper? Is there a graphic style that's really trending right now and then when I search for printable coloring page Is that gave me over 40,000 results on Etsy? So the good news is that coloring pages are popular. So, you know, there's a market for it. But the bad news is that it's a pretty crowded space. So take notes on what's doing really well and also about what you would do differently and we'll talk about that in a minute.
Anyway, it's he's a really great place to do your research because so much of the information is public you can see how many sales our shop has how long they've been in business and how many times an item has sold? So one way to really stand out in a competitive market is to spend some time thinking about what makes your printables different. Maybe you have an Innovative organization system that you found really helps people get their days focused if this is your strong suit, then you're almost like a miniature life coach folded up into someone's planner, right? You can be successful with one system a few page layout options and a few different decorative choices or say you're into a Ecology and you know, there are certain times of the month that is better for doing certain things and others. You can marry your expertise in astrology with printables to create checklists or planners or calendars to help your customers, or maybe your illustration style is what sets you apart from many artists their unique style is enough to make them completely distinctive and sometimes that's all you need to stand out or maybe it's that your personality is super Goofy.
And you like telling jokes and pop culture's and memes and maybe all your printables have that flavor of fun and wit about them that will certainly appeal to a different audience than one that's into feminine or vintage Styles, right? The goal is that when someone sees your products they'll say oh that's so-and-so's give your customers a reason to become enthusiasts for your brand the more distinctive your products. The easier. Your marketing will be like, can you imagine a try? Of customers posting your printables they use daily on Instagram that's amazing word-of-mouth and referral marketing that's free for you all because you took the time to think about what makes you different. This is a time-consuming soul-searching process. So don't expect this to take over night the easy on yourself and give yourself time having a strong Foundation at the beginning of your business before you even start it is what can make the difference between making a full time living in six months versus Has 10 years now.
I love talking about pricing. And if you've seen my other videos, I have a pricing formula that I teach however for a passive income business that whole formula goes out the window when you're pricing your printables, you're going to be pretty restricted by your competitors. You're going to have a hard time fetching more than a few dollars for a printable planner. Unless you have a very strong value proposition that people are willing to pay a lot of money for like If you're a planner can help someone make a million dollars or cure cancer or save a marriage or lose a hundred pounds. So with pricing more or less fixed your business is all about the quantity. You can sell in with the exception of a bit of customer support.
You're doing the same amount of work whether you sell one item or a thousand. So let's try to sell a thousand or more. The good news. Is that once your printable is released you can keep Marketing it for years. So pricing printables is less about the time you spent designing it and more about surveying the price for something similar to what you'll sell and then deciding whether you want to be below that price at that same price or above it. Now, let's talk about distribution. I recommend setting up an automated system that will deliver the file to the customer immediately and automatically you don't want to be sending out individual emails yourself manually Etsy.
Is an instant delivery options. So that's definitely something you want to use. If you have an Etsy Shop depending on the type of printable you design a site like Fiverr or creative Market might also be a good fit to sell on. However, I always recommend that you have your own site and focus all your traffic and marketing to that even if you are using other platforms to sell your printables, if you're on Shopify, there are a lot of apps you can install to sell digital printables that automatically get delivered to your customer after they buy a free one to look at is called digital downloads. I haven't used it myself and the reviews are just okay. So make sure you do your own research and testing before you commit to it. And if you use a Shopify app that you really love I would love for you to share with us in the comments below so we can all learn once you're more established. There is always the option of printing your items yourself or through a service printer like you printing or Vistaprint and then Distributing them too low.
All craft or Gift Stores, especially if your items are something like coloring pages or greeting cards. You could also get into selling on Amazon. That's a whole other different topic but keep in mind that is an option. So once your business is open, you're going to want to spend a lot of time promoting it this is a whole topic of its own so you can watch this marketing playlist to get you started.
However it for a printables business. I think specifically the strategy of influencer marketing is going to be super helpful for you. You because your printables are very low cost. If not free to give to a lot of people right? So make a list of influencers either from Instagram Facebook YouTube or bloggers who are in your Niche and offer them free printables. And if they really love your work, they will use it and show it to their audience. Yes. You can build up your own social media following one person at a time, but that takes a really long time to get to the amount of followers that will translate into a consistent income. I'll take you. So influencer marketing is really a fast way and it's a shortcut of reaching thousands of your ideal customers. Facebook ads can also be super effective for you because your price points are so low. It's easy to find impulse buyers on Facebook, especially if you have a very specific Niche we obviously don't have enough time to talk about everything you need to know in your new printables business, but I hope this gives you a starting point in your journey.
