How To Make Money With Canva: Easy Ways To Earn Extra Income

If you’re looking for new ways to boost your income as a creative professional, unlocking the money-making potential of Canva may be the answer. 

Indeed, while its array of tools and templates are commonly used by businesses to promote and market themselves, the famous design platform can be just as effective at generating long-term revenue by using it to create monetizable products and even services. 

In this guide, we’ll reveal the top ten ways to make money with Canva and even talk you through the steps you need to get started.

What is Canva?

Canva is an online graphic design tool that you can use to create everything from logos and social media graphics to print marketing materials and even websites. 

Launched in 2012, the platform has spent the past decade amassing an incredible 75 million users thanks to its beginner-friendly tools, exceptionally high-quality design templates, and the enormous amount of different things you can do with it. 

Initially, Canva’s raison d’etre seemed to be about taking the high-level graphic design and photo editing capabilities of software such as Adobe Photoshop and making them accessible to those with little-to-no prior design experience. 

In doing so, Canva has become an essential tool for small businesses, but as many savvy entrepreneurs are discovering, it’s also possible to build a business around Canva itself. 

As you’ll see below, the platform in a variety of ways to create both active and passive income through selling products you made on Canva and even offering your services as a professional Canva designer. 

Do I need a Canva Pro account to sell my designs?

Once upon a time, only those with a Canva Pro account could sell their Canva creations on other platforms. 

Since February 2021, however, that’s no longer the case. The company allows users with a free account the same rights to profit from their work as those on a paid subscription.

Try Canva Pro at no cost for 30 days!

Top 10 Ways to Make Money With Canva

1. Make money selling Canva templates

Did you know that there’s a growing market for custom Canva templates?

Although the platform offers thousands of its own templates, some small business owners find that unique templates designed by third-party creators better suit their needs. 

Although you can’t simply take a pre-existing Canva template, tweak it, and sell it as your own, you can tap into this market by creating your own templates from scratch and selling them online. 

Where to Sell Your Canva Designs

Whether you’re designing worksheets, social media templates, or anything else, one of the best places to sell your Canva designs is on Etsy. 

In our experience, this is the most popular place to buy Canva-created products, though Creative Market and Evanto are also good places to try. 

To help get you started, we put together this beginner’s guide to making money selling Canva templates on Etsy.

2. Create and sell social media designs

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Canva’s social media design tools have been the secret to its runaway success. 

Millions of bloggers, business owners, creators, and entrepreneurs use the service daily to create captivating social media posts.

At least, many of them do. 

Those who lack the time, the enthusiasm (or, let’s face it, the creative imagination) to create their content will often outsource to freelance Canva designers.

That’s where you come in. 

If you have a knack for knocking out attention-grabbing visuals for Facebook, Instagram, and other social sites, you could offer your graphic design services via freelancer marketplace sites.

Three Simple Steps to Selling Your Canva Design Skills

1.  Create a portfolio of pre-made social media posts you designed on Canva.

2. Create a seller portfolio on a marketplace site like Fiverr, Upwork, and People Per Hour. 

3. Create a social media post for a local business and send it to them privately. Offer them free use of it to test your design services with their audience, and if they like your work, charge them for future posts. 

Need a little help launching your social media design business? Learn how to create Instagram posts on Canva here.

3. Make and sell stickers

The last time we checked, Canva had over 8,000 sticker templates and blank layouts that you can use to start your own sticker business. 

As with most businesses, the first and most important thing you’ll need to do to get this off the ground is to do your research. 

Think about the kind of audience you want to target and use sites such as Amazon or Etsy to look at the type of stickers that appeal to them. 

After all, there’s a big difference in the kind of art that appeals to young kids versus teenagers who want to slap a sticker on their skateboard or an adult who wants to put one on their car. 

You can then use Canva to create your cool new designs and either prints them directly from the company’s in-house printing service or download them and use a third-party printing service. 

Where to Sell Your Canva Sticker Designs

Along with our old friends, Amazon and Etsy, print companies, you can also make your stickers available for purchase on platforms such as Redbubble and SpringTee. 

Alternatively, you could start your own eCommerce business by creating a website or using an online store builder like Shopify. 

Depending on the type of stickers you create, it may even be possible to strike a deal with local stores willing to sell your products for a cut of the profits. 

4. Using Canva to make money from the massive Ebook market

The latest figures show us that the eBook market is expected to reach $14.38 billion in revenue this year. 

The excellent news for Canva creators is that the one design software offers several opportunities to grab a slice of that multi-billion dollar pie. 

1. Book Cover Designer

The most accessible and straightforward opportunity is offering your services as an eBook cover designer. 

The platform currently has over 3,000 ebook templates, including a blank template that you can use to create bespoke covers from scratch. 

Combine this with a wealth of stock photos, a commercial use license, and Canva’s effortless design tools, and you’ve got everything you need to launch a book cover design business. 

Again, freelancer sites such as Upwork and Fivver are the best places to sell these services, though be sure to build your online portfolio and use SEO to get it visible in search results to boost your chances of success. 

2. Sell Low Content Books

Low-content books are self-published books with few words and mostly blank pages. 

Think journals, notebooks, and even coloring or activity books. 

A few years ago, shrewd entrepreneurs got wind of the idea that you could make easy money by publishing thousands of these types of books through Amazon’s self-publishing platform, KDP.

Suddenly, the market became flooded with low-content books, many of which were of low quality. 

Thus, like the dropshipping boom before it, low content publishing’s time in the “get rich quick spotlight” ended. 

Still, just because you won’t make millions from selling journals and other products doesn’t mean you won’t make anything. 

Amazon offers 60% royalties on paperback and hardback books, so it can still prove to be a profitable side hustle providing you invest time in market research and promoting your books.

3. Basic Steps for Creating Low-Content Books to Sell on Amazon

1. Use Canva to Create front and back cover designs for your book

2. Create your content. For notebooks, this may be a series of blank pages with something written in the header or footer. For journals, it may be blank pages with the date and/or a motivational quote on each page. 

3. Register for an Amazon KDP account, upload your content, and cover

4. Promote your book wherever possible, such as through Google and Facebook ads, social media, blogs, or offline. 

4. Sell Mockups and Marketing Materials to Authors

One of the many great things we love about Canva is the excellent Smart Mockups add-on, which allows you to superimpose a book cover (or any design, for that matter) on images from various real-world environments. 

You could, for example, place a book cover you just designed on a photo of a bookshelf so that it looks as though the title is already published and available or as though it’s on an iPhone or Kindle that somebody is holding. 

Such visuals can prove invaluable in helping authors sell their work. If you’re already offering to design book covers, you could always boost your income by upselling mockups or other promotional materials such as posters for bookstores, social media content, or exclusive Pinterest pins. 

5. Design digital and printable products to sell

Etsy is more than just an ideal platform to sell Canva templates. It’s also perfect for making money from a wide range of print and digital products.

You could, for example, design a variety of printables such as worksheets, activity sheets, planners, checklists, and more. Download them as a PDF, upload them to your Etsy store, and voila, you’re selling products that have the potential to keep making you money day after week after year, all without any extra effort on your part. 

Related: Can I sell Canva designs on Etsy?

Given Etsy’s reputation as the go-to website for arts and crafts, it’s no surprise that art-related printables such as coloring pages, printable wall art, and even wrapping paper designs are good money-makers.

On the digital side of things, the world is your oyster. 

Some Canva designers focus on helping other Etsy sellers by creating store assets such as banners, logos, and shop icons. 

Others focus on digital planners and workbooks, while others use Canva to make money by selling everything from resume templates to smartphone wallpaper. 

Canva designers can also sell marketing materials to local business owners, such as business cards, logos, brochures, etc.

The best part about this approach is that it can be a valuable long-term passive income source. 

Once you’ve created your digital or printable products, you can sell them repeatedly without replenishing your inventory. 

Of course, as with most passive income opportunities, you’ll still need to do some work. It’s important to regularly update your store with new products, especially if you want to generate repeat sales from loyal customers. 

You’ll also have to work on marketing your new business to attract those customers in the first place. Do that, and the sky is the limit on how much you can make. 

Related: Most popular items on Etsy

6. Create print-on-demand designs

Remember when we talked about selling your designs on stickers earlier? You certainly don’t have to stop there. 

Using Print-on-Demand (POD) services such as Redbubble, Teespring, and Amazon Merch on Demand, you can add your designs to many products such as t-shirts, mugs, phone cases, and more. 

Another potential source of passive income for Canva creators, using POD services is as simple as uploading your designs, adding them to product mockup images, and creating a listing for each one.

Again, you’ll have to put effort into promoting your store and attracting customers. Once those customers purchase a product from you, your chosen POD platform will print and ship it for you, taking a small cut of the profits as a commission. 

7. Launch a Canva course

If you consider yourself a Canva expert and enjoy helping others, there are many ways you could make money from your expertise, including launching your own Canva course.

Online course providers like Udemy and Skillshare give you a free platform that you can use to design, sell, and promote a course on practically any subject, including Canva. 

Udemy even has an excellent Marketplace Insights feature which can help you determine the demand for your course subject among the platform’s existing students. 

The Insights tool also proves helpful for identifying course demands that current Udemy instructors aren’t fully meeting. 

You may find it helpful to come up with a list of potential course subjects, whether that’s a beginner-level introduction to Canva or a more specific topic, such as creating and scheduling social media posts. You can then run these through the Market Insights feature to determine which course will give you the best chance of success. 

How Much Money Can You Make Selling Canva Courses?

The amount of money you can make with Canva courses all depends on the quality of your course and the value you provide for your students. The more effort you put into creating the best course possible, the more students you’re likely to attract and, thus, the more revenue you make. 

To give you a rough figure, Udemy tells us that top Canva course creators can earn as much as $4,480 per month.

8. Start a Canva-focused YouTube channel

Many online course services require you to offer video content to your students anyway, so why not add another revenue stream by creating more Canva-related content for YouTube. 

You can use screen-recording software such as Loom can create Canva tutorials, while free tools such as OBS Studio are excellent for live-streaming your videos in real time. 

Admittedly, this isn’t the most passive form of income generation. Before monetizing your videos, you’ll need to create a regular stream of content that appeals to your audience and keep publishing that content until you reach 1,000 subscribers.

At that point, you can apply to the YouTube Partner Program, which gives you a cut of the advertising revenue generated by your videos. 

The more your channel grows, the more you’ll also have access to other money-making tools on YouTube, such as creating and selling subscriptions to a members-only area of your channel. There, you can reward your paying subscribers with things like exclusive videos, members-only live streams, and other perks, 

9. Become a Canva creator or contributor

At the time of writing, the Canva Contributor Program had grown so popular that the company has temporarily halted new sign-ups. 

That said, it’s still worth checking the Canva Contributor page regularly as, once the program reopens, it can prove to be a lucrative market for talented creators. 

By signing up for the program, you can make money by uploading design assets such as stickers, graphics, and stock photography directly to Canva. 

Any time a Canva user includes your asset in their design, you get paid. 

It’s that simple. 

10. Join the Canva affiliate program

So far, all of our Canva money-making suggestions have relied on you having a flare for creative design and at least some level of talent at using Canva’s easy-to-use tools to create unique designs. 

But what if your talents lie more in content creation, SEO, and marketing?

If that’s the case, joining the Canva affiliate marketing program may be the right path for you. 

Affiliate marketing is a process that’s simple in theory yet requires serious effort to make a real success.

The way it works is that you drive customers to a company’s products and earn a commission fee if customers purchase that product. 

In Canva’s case, you’ll promote the Canva Pro plan, the platform’s premium subscription service offering more tools, templates, and features than are available on a free Canva account. 

How you do that is up to you. 

Suppose you’ve already taken our suggestion of starting a Canva-based YouTube channel. In that case, you can include your affiliate link in your video description and encourage your subscribers to use it to access the 30-day free trial of Canva Pro. 

Alternatively, follow the popular affiliate marketing route of starting a blog helping readers to solve their Canva or general graphic design problems and add your link there. 

How Much Does the Canva Affiliate Program Pay Out?

Canva pays as much as $36 for each new Canva Pro subscriber you send their way. This makes this a lucrative proposition for those willing to spend time and effort growing their Canva-related affiliate marketing content. 

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Frequently Asked Questions

Final thoughts on using Canva to make money in 2023

It’s often said that hard work pays off, and that’s certainly true when it comes to making money from Canva. 

The more effort you put into any of the ten suggestions above, the greater your potential for making serious revenue. 

Still, that’s not to say you must stick with just one money-maker. In fact, many of the suggestions above can be combined. 

You could launch a Canva YouTube channel that brings in ad revenue, use that to drive traffic to your affiliate-monetized blog, and use both to upsell a course, creating three potential income streams all tied together. 

In other words, with sufficient design skills and a little entrepreneurial spirit, it’s entirely possible to build a lucrative business on Canva.