How I Make $2000 a Month Selling Canva Templates online. side hustle, work from home.

 How I Make $2000 a Month Selling Canva Templates online. side hustle, work from home.

marana

jan 08, 2024

Want to learn how to sell Canva templates? Want to know how to make money selling Canva templates? You can start creating Canva templates to sell and make money from the comfort of your own home – and never have to send anything. Creating Canva templates can be a great way to make extra money…

How I Make $2000 a Month Selling Canva Templates online

Want to learn how to sell Canva templates?

Want to know how to make money selling Canva templates?

You can start creating Canva templates to sell and make money from the comfort of your own home – and never have to send anything.

Creating Canva templates can be a great way to make extra money because you only need to create them once and you can sell them an unlimited number of times.

Today I have a fun interview to share with you. I interviewed Making Sense of Cents reader Maliha about how to sell Canva templates.

Working just a few hours a week, Maliha is able to earn $2,000 every month selling Canva templates online.

Are you interested in questions like:

• What exactly is a Canva template? What is Canva?

• Can I sell Canva templates?

• How can I sell my designs on Canva?

• Who buys Canva templates?

• How can I learn how to create templates for sales?

• Can someone without technical skills create a Canva template?

Today's interview will help you get started and maybe even introduce you to a new way to make extra money.

How to sell canvas templates?

1. Please tell us a little about yourself and how you started selling Canva templates.

It all started with my blog. A few years ago, things took a turn for the unknown. I was lost and stressed and felt like a failure. A lot of realizations came up. Implementation as…

• A college degree may not always be enough to land your dream job.

• Jobs are not permanent.

• Dream jobs don't always pay enough.

• Sometimes the dream job turns out not to be what you expected.

• Etc.

I won't go into the gory details, but let's just say I was in a dark place. I needed to make money, so I did what I could. I was freelancing as a web developer – a skill I taught myself in college out of curiosity (who knew it would pay my bills one day!). I also worked as a virtual assistant on and off. During that time, thanks to a lot of blogger clients, I also got to know blogging, affiliate marketing and passive income in general.

They got me thinking about starting my own blog too! After all, I've always loved to read, and what reader doesn't dream of becoming a writer at least once in their life? So in June 2018, my blog - The Side Blogger - was born.

Initially, I spent an obscene amount of time creating fancy graphics for my blog and social channels using Photoshop and InDesign. It was a pretty boring business. My education is in engineering. And while I've always had a high regard for visual design, learning Photoshop or InDesign was a whole different game. But then, thanks to a few of my virtual assistants, I found Canva – an online graphic design app.

I first fell in love with the app for its ease of use. But it was so damn fun that I was soon designing graphics just for the heck of it. I really took it as a stress relief mechanism. I must be doing something right because one day out of the blue I got an email from Canva.

How I Make $2000 a Month Selling Canva Templates online

We love your work and would love to have you as a Canva Certified Creative and Brand Ambassador! – I was paraphrasing, but that was basically the message.

As I kept designing more and more graphics with Canva for my blog, I started getting emails from random readers asking about my graphic design services.

That, along with the fact that one of my freebies - a blogger media kit template built with Canva - was getting a lot of attention, I knew I had an opportunity there. So around January 2019 I started my first Canva template store.

I started small. I set up a WooCommerce store on my blog and launched my first five Canva templates. Several media kit templates and some social media template packs. For several months I have been designing templates for ebooks, notebooks, presentations, planners and more.

I also set up stores on third party marketplaces to generate more income.

A little over a year later, in 2020, I made my first $1,000! Oh, and by the way, I was doing all of this on the side!

I don't work more than a few hours a week designing templates and promoting my products.

2. How much do you earn monthly selling Canva templates?

When I first started my business, I treated it as a hobby. I didn't promote my products enough and depended only on blog traffic. Mind you my blog was less than a year old at the time and I had maybe a hundred visitors a day on a good day.

And I was happy about it. I remember the day I made my first hundred dollars selling Canva templates and I mentally patted myself on the back thinking I could treat myself to a fancy dinner or something.

But as more and more sales started coming in, I realized I had stumbled upon something with great potential. That's when I decided to take it seriously.

And now, two years after starting my business, I'm making an average of $2,000 a month and more.

Here are some of the Canva templates I sell.

3. What is a Canva template? What is Canva?

So, as I mentioned above, Canva is an online graphic design application. It's free to use, but users can sign up for a pro account, which unlocks some nice features as well as access to millions of premium images and graphics.

A Canva template is basically designs created with Canva that can be shared with other Canva users, who can then edit and customize those designs to create something unique.

Users can change the colors, images, fonts and texts of the template and make it their own.

It's a lot like Photoshop or InDesign or even Illustrator templates.

The difference is that while Adobe products have a steep learning curve, Canva is easy to use, making it much more sought after by people who don't have the know-how of Adobe products or don't have the time to learn how these difficult-to-use programs work.

4. What do you like about creating Canva templates?

You see, I've always had a great love and appreciation for good design. In college, when I was getting my degree in electrical engineering (which I love, by the way), I occasionally threw in articles about graphic design and typography. One of the reasons I learned programs like Photoshop and InDesign was so I could create beautiful designs myself.

But I never had enough time to master these platforms.

But Canva was different.

It's like when I started using Canva, I looked like an experienced designer when I wasn't. All because the platform is so easy to use. You can choose different frames and shapes from their huge library of graphic resources and boom!

You can create something stunning in minutes - tasks that would otherwise take you HOURS if you tried to do them with Photoshop or InDesign. I'm not bashing Adobe products here, I'll admit that Photoshop and Illustrator and InDesign are much better than Canva. But my point is that not everyone has the time to learn these platforms or the resources to hire a professional designer.

Canva is perfect for these people. It's perfect for me!

5. How much money can you make selling Canva templates? Can you make money selling templates? Can you make money from Canva?

If I can make an average of over $2000 per month with just 30 templates in my store, then the answer is yes, there is money to be made with this store.

How much you earn depends on many factors like the quality of your template, usability, relevance, right price, etc. It also depends on how much time you put into this business. I do this on the side and make about $2000 a month.

6. Who buys Canva templates? Won't too many people sell them?

Typically, people who buy Canva templates are those who don't have the skills to design their own graphics and digital products using Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign. They love Canva because the platform is very easy to use.

Even someone who has never designed anything in their life can pick up Canva in a few hours!

There may be too many people selling Canva templates, but there is also a much larger audience that needs templates. I wouldn't worry about the market getting saturated anytime soon.

Especially with the growing number of bloggers, online course creators, educators and trainers, the demand for digital products is only growing, as is the popularity of Canva.

7. Do I need to already have followers to make money selling Canva templates?

I know some Canva template sellers who don't even have their own website, email list or anything! I know a few people who make more money than me but don't even have a huge social media following.

You can always use a third-party marketplace like Etsy or Creative Market. These platforms do a decent job of driving traffic to your products

8. How can I come up with new ideas for Canva templates? How do I learn how to create Canva templates for sale?

I often tell my students to think about the audience they want to serve.

Ideas come from knowing the audience.

It also helps to note special months and holidays. For example, March is Women's History Month and a designer could create template packs that focus on inspirational women. February is all about Valentine templates. Trust me, once you go down this rabbit hole, you'll find that the problem isn't finding new ideas, it's keeping up with all the ideas you have!

9. Does Canva own my designs? Or me as a creator?

No way! Own your designs! Canva is simply a tool that brings your creative vision to life.

The only thing unique about Canva is the graphic elements. As a Canva user and template designer, you can use these elements that you do not own, but have permission to use as a Canva user.

But that's okay because when a buyer buys your template, they'll need to have a Canva account themselves to customize the template. And as a Canva user, they will have the same license to use these graphic elements as you, the template designer.

10. Can someone without technical skills create a Canva template?

One of the advantages of Canva is its ease of use.

Of course, different people have different skills. If someone sits down with Canva and plays with it for a few days and still hasn't figured out how to use the platform, then maybe selling Canva templates isn't the best idea for them.

However, I can tell you that using and creating with Canva requires a lot less technical skills than Photoshop or InDesign, for example.

11. Can you list the steps needed to start creating and selling Canva templates?

Of course, the most important thing for selling Canva templates is knowing how to use Canva.

To do this, you first need to create an account with Canva and play around with the platform until you know how to create a design.

Once you've taken care of that, here's what you should ideally do to start selling your templates.

1. 1. Decide what kind of templates to sell. Create a product line. If you're a complete beginner and have no idea where to start, a good first five products might be — an Instagram template pack, an e-book or magazine, a planner or some kind of worksheet, a presentation/slide deck, social media banners.
2. 2. Set up shop(s). Your store can be on your own website, or Etsy, or Creative Market, or preferably all three of these platforms! There are other platforms for selling Canva templates. But these three are my favorites so far.
3. 3. Design your templates and prepare deliveries for your buyers.
4. 4. Design amazeballs product images that will make your ideal customers fall in love with your templates.
5. 5. List your products in your stores.
6. 6. Sell/promote your products.
7. 7. Sell templates and earn $$$

12. Are there any other tips you have for someone who wants to try this side hustle?

Selling Canva templates is like any other business, but with less losses.

For example, you can start creating and selling Canva templates with just a free Canva account. It doesn't cost you any money to set up shops on Etsy or Creative Market. So it is not as risky a business as some others.

That means you have to love Canva and creating with Canva. I mean, someone who hates writing can't be a writer, right? It's the same with Canva templates.

Ask yourself - do you enjoy creating graphics and digital products? Do you have the patience to spend hours creating beautiful things and making a concerted effort to create better products every time you sit down to design? If your answer is yes, then you have what it takes to start a Canva template business.

Like any other business, the Canva template business is not a get-rich-over-night scheme. You need to work for at least a few months before you see results. You have to have patience, persistence and you have to get to work!

Conclusion: How to Sell Canva Templates 

I hope you enjoyed this conversation about how to sell Canva templates and how to make money with Canva.

What I love about this side hustle is that you can work from home in your spare time and be your own boss!

A Canva template is like a pre-designed layout that others can use to create things like social media graphics, Pinterest images, eBooks, and more. People buy these templates because it's a useful starting point if you're not very good at designing things. Business owners, nonprofits, educators, planners, and more all buy templates.