Can I Sell Canva Designs on Etsy? A Guide to Making Money from Your Creations

If you’ve been using Canva’s unlimited design capabilities to create custom products, you may wonder if you can make money by selling your Canva designs on Etsy.

The short answer is yes, you can. 

The longer answer is that you can, as long as you create your own designs and templates from scratch. Making money from these designs is allowed, whereas selling Canva’s pre-existing designs isn’t.

If that has yet to deter you, this guide will answer all your questions about selling your Canva creations on Etsy and show you how to get started.

Related: How to start selling on Etsy

Why is Etsy the Best Place to Sell Your Canva Designs?

1. Etsy is Incredibly Popular

Some 96.3 million active buyers made a purchase on Etsy in 2021 alone, while the company’s official figures boast 94.1 million active buyers.

In other words, an enormous, built-in audience of potential customers is waiting for you and your creations.

2. There’s a Proven Market

It isn’t just the significant number of active buyers that makes an Etsy shop the perfect place to sell Canva templates and other products; it’s the fact that a substantial number of those buyers are actively purchasing Canva content on the platform.

A quick search for ‘Canva templates’ turns up 280,421 products ranging from under $5 to over $50. 

Not that templates are the only things you can put in your Etsy store. 

Let’s say you want to make content planners, games, or other products buyers can download, print, and use. 

Etsy has an astounding 5,388,157 results for ‘printables.’

It isn’t just that these products exist on Etsy that’s important; it’s the fact that so many of them exist with star ratings and reviews proving that there are Etsy users who want to buy the kind of products you can create. 

3. It Can Be a Good Source of Passive Income 

One of the great things about creating digital products is that you can sell them over and over again without any extra work.

Make a design, add it to your store, and enjoy repeated sales. Multiply this by the unlimited number of products you could sell, and you could create a solid course of long-term passive income. 

4. It’s Easy to Get Started

Of course, there are multiple ways you could sell your designs. 

You could try selling your creations on other design marketplaces, but some have stricter restrictions than Etsy regarding the type and quality of the product you can sell.

You could even create an eCommerce website and keep 100% of the profits, but you’ll have to work tirelessly to attract customers since you won’t have access to Etsy’s ready-made audience.

Combine that with the fact that Etsy is generally an easy-to-use platform and is the perfect place to start.

Related: Do you need a business license to sell on Etsy?

Do I Need a Canva Pro Account to Sell Templates?

Ready for some more good news?

You don’t need a Canva Pro account to sell templates or other designs.

The Canva terms and conditions regarding commercial use apply to both free and pro users. Free users can even access the shareable template link feature you’ll need to give your customers when they purchase from you. 

That doesn’t mean there aren’t benefits to be gained by upgrading to a paid account.

While there’s lots of great free content on Canva, most of the best design elements are limited only to Canva Pro users. 

You’ll also have access to a handy Magic Resize tool which will help you repurpose your designs for different needs and ample storage space so that you can create and store more designs.

startingyourbusiness.com

How Much Money Can You Make Selling Canva Templates?  

The amount you’ll make from all this depends on how much work you put in. 

While 65% of Etsy sellers are said to make less than $100 a year, those in the top 35% reportedly bring home anywhere from a few thousand to over $45,000 per year.

Related: Most popular items on Etsy

To be among the top earners, you’ll need to be consistently testing out new products and working hard on marketing your business.

You’ll also have to consider your costs and ensure that you set them high enough to make a profit while still covering expenses such as a $10.99 per month Canva Pro subscription and your Etsy seller fees.

Those fees are USD $0.20 per Etsy listing plus a 6.5% commission on the total sale, including shipping costs.

Step-By-Step Of Creating Canva Templates To Sell On Etsy

Step 1: Identify Your Market and Niche

As with any new business, your first task is to define your niche and test that there’s a market out there for that niche. 

Create a list of all the designs you’d like to create on Canva, then use the Etsy search feature as we did earlier to see if people are buying those sorts of designs.

Let’s say you decide to start a bridal store selling downloadable stationery and similar products. You might search for wedding invitation templates and note the 350,000+ listings.

Although that means you’ll have to work hard to stand out from the competition, it shows you that a legitimate audience is willing to pay for such templates. 

Step 2: Create a Canva Template

Once you’ve developed and validated an idea, it’s time to make your template. 

Log into Canva and use the search function to find the template format you’re looking for. For this tutorial, we’re going to make a social media template to help people make stunning Instagram posts on Canva, so choosing this post format ensures we have the right dimensions for an Instagram post.

If you’re creating something totally unique, you can use the custom size button on the homepage to set your own dimensions.

Next, select ‘Blank template’ and get to work on using Canva’s stock media, fonts, and graphic elements to create a new design.

Step 3: Create your Download File for Etsy

When your template is ready, go to Share – Template Link.

This will give you the link that your customers will use to access a copy of your template for their own design. 

Of course, since you can’t just upload a link to your Etsy store, you’ll need to create a PDF deliverable that includes the link and any other relevant information. You can then attach this PDF to your listing for customers to download.

You can use Canva for this, too, simply by using a poster format, customizing it with the relevant information, and downloading it as a PDF.

Step 4: Create an Etsy shop

Go to Etsy’s seller page, click ‘Get Started’, and follow the instructions to create your account.

Next, click ‘Let’s do this!’ and Etsy will walk you through the process of building your first shop.

To do this, you’ll need to give your store a name, enter your bank details so that you can get paid and pay the Etsy seller fees, and set up two-factor authentication to secure your account.

Step 5: Add Your Canva Designs to Etsy   

Once you’ve finished the Etsy store setup process, you’ll be ready to add your Canva template as a new listing. 

Click the ‘Add Listing’ button, and you’ll first need to add a thumbnail image to attract buyers.

You can use Canva’s own Etsy templates to create this.

Next, you can fill in all your product information. The more you add in here, the greater chance that customers will be able to find your products. 

Since you’re dealing with templates here, don’t forget to select your product type as ‘digital’ to avoid dealing with shipping information. 

From there, enter your pricing information and fill in any other relevant details.

Finally, you can upload the PDF you created earlier, then click ‘save and continue.

With that, you’re done. Your first Canva template is now for sale on Etsy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Selling Canva Designs on Etsy: The Next Steps to Take

By now, you’ve learned all you need to know to start selling Canva designs on Etsy, but keep in mind that adding your designs is only the first part of the process. With so much competition, you’ll need to put the work into marketing your product, get familiar with Etsy SEO to ensure you’re targeting the right keywords, and do all you can to attract your first customers.

If you take advantage of Canva’s 30-day free trial, you can even use the platform’s content planner to create and schedule social media posts to advertise your first product, making it the ideal all-in-one tool to start your new Etsy business.