Want to learn how to sell Canva templates online for easy profit?
In this beginner’s guide, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about planning, creating, and selling Canva templates.
First, we’ll look at what Canva templates are and why selling them can be so lucrative. Then, I’ll share my step-by-step process for designing Canva templates that buyers want.
After that, I’ll show you how to sell them through your own online template store and other popular online marketplaces.
And finally, I’ll share some marketing strategies you can use to promote your Canva templates and win more customers.
What are Canva templates?
Canva is a free online graphic design tool built for amateurs.
It’s designed to make it easy for anyone to create professional-looking graphics and designs, with simple drag-and-drop editing tools and a huge library of visual assets.
Canva templates are pre-built, editable designs that Canva users can deploy in one click, and then customize as needed, rather than starting their projects from scratch.
The template creator has already done the legwork in putting together a cohesive style and structure, sourcing graphics, and so on. All the user has to do is change the text, tweak the colors, etc. to make it their own. This saves them a ton of time.
Lots of templates are available in Canva natively, but many businesses and creators prefer to use third-party Canva templates as they’re more unique, better quality, and come in themed bundles with a consistent style. These are the kinds of templates you’re going to be selling.
Why sell Canva templates?
I truly think selling Canva templates is one of the best (and easiest) ways to make money online right now. Here’s why.
- Canva is incredibly popular. With over 65 million monthly users, the demand for Canva assets like templates is soaring. Although the market is becoming increasingly competitive, there’s still ample opportunity for sellers to establish their own niche.
- High earning potential. The most successful Canva template creators report earning thousands (sometimes, tens of thousands) of dollars a month from their template sales. That’s a pretty good side hustle.
- Passive income. You only have to invest a few hours creating a template pack once, and that single template pack can provide a recurring passive income for years. No need to invest any more time or money—just sit back and collect your earnings.
- It’s easy. You don’t have to be the best graphic designer in the world to sell Canva templates. All you need is a good idea, a creative spirit, and an eye for design. You’ll be building your templates in Canva itself, which is designed for amateurs anyway, and using pre-fab graphics, so the barrier to entry is very low.
- It’s fun. Personally, I find it super fun and fulfilling to make my own Canva templates. If you enjoy being creative, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.
How to design Canva templates that buyers want
First, I’m going to show you how to create Canva templates that sell. Here’s a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process.
Choose a target market
If you want to be successful as a Canva template seller, you need to niche down. That means targeting a specific, narrow section of the market.
In other words, rather than just making general Canva templates, you’re going to be making templates for a specific type of person or business.
This might be:
- Restaurants
- Instagram influencers
- Twitch streamers
- Bloggers
- Authors
- Boutique stores
- Dog walkers
- Etc.
The goal is to choose a niche where there’s definitely demand, but not too much competition.
To come up with ideas, I’d suggest starting with some keyword research.
Try entering ‘Canva templates for…’ into a search engine like Google or Etsy. Then, look at the search suggestions.
If something appears in the search suggestions, it means people have searched for it plenty of times before, which is a good sign that there’s sufficient demand.
And if there aren’t a lot of other template sellers showing up in the search results for that query, it’s probably not too competitive either.
Decide what types of templates you’re going to sell
Once you know who you’re targeting, decide what specific types of Canva templates you’re going to sell.
The way to do this is to ask yourself what kind of products the people you’re targeting need.
For example, influencers might need social media templates for Instagram posts and Stories, YouTube banners, Twitch panels, Pinterest Pins, Mediakits, etc.
Photographers might need templates for portfolios, photo albums, service booklets, pricing sheets, etc.
Writers might need templates for book covers, forewords, sneak peeks, mood boards, character profiles, etc.
You get the idea.
Templates sell best when they’re sold in large bundles, so try to include lots of different templates to cover every use case you can think of for your target market.
Check out the competition
Remember: Canva’s native template library already offers thousands of free templates.
You’re asking users to pay for yours, so you’re going to need to make sure they’re much better than those available on Canva.
With that in mind, the next step is to check out the competition.
Start by looking at Canva’s template library to see what templates like those you’re planning to make are already available, and make notes on how you’re going to make yours better.
Next, search Etsy to find templates like yours and see what other sellers are doing.
Pay particular attention to the best-sellers and aim to replicate their successes.
That doesn’t mean outright stealing their templates—it means taking what they’ve done well and applying it to your own designs. For example, you might include a similar range of templates in your bundle, but improve on the aesthetic and style.
Build your templates in Canva
Now we’re done with the planning stage, it’s time to start building the templates.
You need to do this on Canva, so sign up and log in.
I’d recommend signing up for Canva Pro if possible as it’ll give you access to a wider range of graphics and design options, but it isn’t strictly necessary.
Here are some tips to follow when designing your templates in Canva:
- Make sure your designs are original. Canva’s rules are that you can only sell templates that are original designs. You can and should use Canva’s pre-fab content (like social media graphics, shapes, fonts, images, etc.) in your templates, but you have to do some creative work yourself for it to be deemed original.
- Stick to free elements. You can use a combination of Free and Pro content to create designs, but I’d recommend sticking to free elements in your templates as your customers might not be signed up for Canva Pro and won’t necessarily have access to Pro content.
- Start with a color palette. It’s a good idea to use the same kind of colors across all the templates in a given bundle to make sure they all work together cohesively, so start by determining a color palette.
- Create a Brand Kit. Canva’s Brand Kit feature lets you save colors, fonts, graphics, icons, logos, etc. to use within a project. This comes in super useful for maintaining consistency across templates.
Grab your Canva template links
To deliver Canva templates to your buyers, you’ll need to give them a link that they can click to open the designs.
Once you’re finished making a template, click Share in the top-right corner, then click Template link > Create template link.
Copy the link to your clipboard. Then, add it to a PDF file and save it.
The reason for adding it to a PDF is so we have a digital file to automatically deliver to customers after they make a purchase (this is easier to automate than sending them an email with the links).
Prepare product images
The last step is to create some product images.
Your buyers won’t be able to see the Canva template until they’ve already bought it, so these are the images you’ll use in your product listing to give them a ‘sneak peek’ and show them what they’re getting for their money.
I’d recommend making at least 5 (ideally, 10) product images to promote your templates. The more visual information you can provide upfront, the higher your conversion rate will be.
If your templates are designed to be used on products (for example, book covers, t-shirts, etc.), I’d also recommend making some product mockup images.
For example, you could create a mockup of a physical book to show how your book cover template would look on the finished, printed product. You’ll probably need to use professional design software like Photoshop to do this as it might be difficult to achieve on Canva.
How to sell Canva templates with Sellfy
The best way to sell Canva templates is through your own online store, which you can build with Sellfy.
Selling on your own website gives you full control over pricing, and you won’t have to share your profits with anyone else like you would if you sell them through Canva or other marketplaces.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to show you how to use Sellfy to build an online store and start selling templates in under an hour.
Step 1: Sign up for Sellfy
Head to Sellfy’s website and sign up for a monthly subscription plan.
The Starter plan is a good choice as you can always upgrade later if needed. There’s also a 14-day trial so you can test it out for free.
Click here to sign up for a free trial.
When you log in, the setup wizard will guide you to set up your store. You’ll just need to enter a name and description, and choose a color scheme—-it only takes a minute.
Step 2: Add your templates as a product
From the dashboard, click Add new product > Digital product.
Upload the PDF file with your Canva template links. You can drag and drop it into the box at the top of the page, or just click Browse and select it from your device.
Step 3: Fill out the product details
Next, fill out the Product details section.
You’ll need to enter a product name (e.g. ‘100+ Canva template bundle for photographers’) and a description.
Make sure to include all relevant information in the product description, including what it is and who it’s for, a list of templates that are included, information about how to open/edit the file, licensing terms, your return policy, etc.
You’ll also need to add the product preview images you created earlier to the listing.
Step 4: Set your pricing
Enter the price you want to sell your Canva template bundle for under Price settings and select a currency.
If you’re not sure how much to charge, look at your competitors. For example, if most other template packs like yours are priced between $10 and $20, you should probably stick to somewhere in that ballpark too.
Your price should also depend on the number of templates in your pack. Generally speaking, the more templates, the more you can charge.
You also have the option of selecting Pay what you want pricing in Sellfy if you want to let customers choose how much they pay.
After you’ve set your price and filled out all the other product details, hit Save product and Sellfy will create the product page for you.
Step 5: Connect a payment processor
Customers won’t be able to checkout and buy the product until you connect a payment processor.
This is easy enough to do. Just click Store settings > Payment settings.
Then, choose whether you want to use Stripe or PayPal and follow the instructions on-screen to connect your account.
Step 6: Customize your store
The last step is to add the final touches to your Sellfy store.
Tap the shop icon (in the top corner of the sidebar) > Customize to open up the store customizer.
Then, use the drag-and-drop editor to change the design as needed. You can customize individual pages and change global style settings using the toolbar on the left.
Finally, make any changes to your Store settings as needed.
For example, you might want to set up Taxes so that Sellfy automatically adds the correct tax amount to each customer’s order based on their location.
You might also want to change your Email settings to edit the emails that you automatically send to customers.
3 other places to sell your Canva templates
In addition to your own website, you can also sell Canva templates through other online marketplaces. Here are the three best options.
1. Canva
You can sign up as a Template Creator on Canva to list your templates in Canva’s native asset library and earn royalties when yours are used.
It’s not clear exactly how much creators earn each time their templates are used, but it’s not likely to be very much. You’ll make much more money selling your templates directly to consumers via your own website than through this kind of royalty share model.
Plus, Canva isn’t currently accepting applications from new Template Creators. They may open applications again in the future, but they have particularly high standards so there’s no guarantee you’ll be accepted.
2. Etsy
Etsy is a super popular online marketplace for creators, artists, and makers.
Over 95 million people shop on Etsy every month, so it’s a great place to find buyers for your templates. The main downside is that competition on Etsy is steep and you’ll be competing with thousands of other sellers.
Etsy also charges a 6.5% transaction fee on sales. While this isn’t too bad compared to most other marketplaces, you’re still missing out on a chunk of your profits that you’d keep if you were to sell through your own store instead.
Related reading: The Best Products To Sell On Etsy: Latest Top Sellers
3. Creative Market
Creative Market is another one of the most popular digital product marketplaces for brands and creators, with over 10 million members.
It’s a good place to sell all kinds of digital assets, including Canva templates.
You can set your own prices and sell non-exclusively (which means you’re still free to list your templates on your own site and elsewhere in addition to on Creative Market).
However, Creative Market takes a hefty 50% of the sale price as their cut, so you only take home half of the list price of each sale you make.
How to market Canva templates
Before we wrap up, here are some marketing strategies you can use to promote your Canva templates and make more sales.
Optimize your listings for search
Make sure you’ve optimized your product pages for search. The goal is to make sure your listings show up in the results when users search platforms like Google or Etsy for relevant keywords.
There’s a lot that goes into ecommerce SEO (search engine optimization), but you can start by making sure to include keywords your buyers might search for in your title, product descriptions, image meta text, etc.
Run ads
A quick and effective way to drive sales is to run paid ads on platforms like Etsy, Google, Facebook, and Instagram.
You can get a lot of customers through ads but the costs can be steep. You’ll typically pay per click, so make sure to get your targeting options right.
Start small and experiment with different targeting options until you’re getting a positive return on investment (ROI), then scale up from there.
Offer discounts
Sellfy offers marketing tools that let you set up promotional offers like discounts and coupons. Use these to promote your products and incentivize customers to buy them. You can also run sales on sites like Etsy to rank higher and improve your conversion rate.
Pin your products.
Pinterest is a great place to build an audience and find customers for your Canva templates. Regularly share pins that show your templates in their best light. Make sure to make them as attractive and clickable as possible.
You can also promote your products on other social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
Build an email list
Offer a free lead magnet (like a single free Canva template) to entice users to sign up for your email list.
Then, send out promotional emails to the people on your list to advertise your Canva template bundles and nurture them to conversion.
If you haven’t started your email list yet, check out our post on email newsletter software to find the right tool for your needs.
Final thoughts
That completes our beginner’s guide to starting a Canva template business.
To recap, the best way to sell Canva templates is through your own Sellfy store, but you can reach more customers by listing them on marketplaces like Etsy and Creative Market too.
Focus on high-quality templates that target a specific niche to stand the best chance of making sales.
Want to sell something other than Canva templates? Check out our roundup of 60+ best products to sell online this year.
You might also be interested in our beginner’s guide to selling PDFs online.
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