A famous ghostbuster once said “Print is dead.”
But that same ghostbuster also collects spores, mold, and fungus as a hobby, so, what does
he know?
While digital tools have taken over many aspects of our lives, there’s still a high demand
for printed goods, like daily planners, bullet journal templates, business plan guides, and
the list goes on and on.
If you’ve been thinking about creating and selling printable goods, stick around.
I’m going to show you some free ways you can make printables and some options for selling
them online.
Let’s get into it.
Hello creators, I’m Ben Toalson from Podia, where we empower creators like you to make
a living doing what you love.
In this video, I’m going to show you a couple of different ways you can design your own
printable files for free and I’m gonna share a few services you can use to host and sell
them online.
First, let’s talk about how to make a printable.
If you don’t have the Adobe design suite, or some other fancy design software, don’t
fret.
There are plenty of free, web-based tools out there that will allow you to design beautiful
files.
Google Docs and Canva are among the most powerful yet simple tools for making printables, so
I’m going to walk you through how to use them.
Let’s start with Google Docs.
From the main page in Google Docs, click blank or choose a template that might work with
what you’re trying to create.
I won’t go over all the different tools in Google docs, but you can import images,
create shapes, and of course, text, to make the perfect printable.
Once you’ve completed your design, click on File, hover over download, and click PDF
document.
Now I’ll walk you through making a printable with Canva.
Canva, like Google docs, is also free, but comes with a wider variety of templates and
graphics, and a simple drag and drop design tool.
Let me show you how it works.
From the Canva homepage, under Create a Design, choose documents and letter.
This will take you to the Canva designer.
On the left is a tool tab with various elements you can use for your design.
The first one you’ll see is templates.
You can either browse these templates to find one that works with your design, or you can
use other tools in the tool tab to create your own.
Once you’ve completed your design, click download, make sure PDF is selected, and click
the download button.
Now that you’ve turned your printable into a pdf file, it’s time to sell it.
Here, you have a few options to choose from.
You can host the file on your own website or cloud server and set up e-commerce so your
customers can purchase it, you can sell it on a marketplace website like shopify or Etsy,
or you can use a no-code e-commerce platform like Podia.
Let’s talk about the pros and cons of each:
Selling on a marketplace like Etsy Marketplaces like Etsy are attractive for
selling products because it can bring your products some exposure and attention you might
not otherwise get.
They are often the first place new sellers look when deciding where to sell their products.
Let’s talk about the pros and cons:
Pros:
- Visibility - Customers go to marketplace websites looking
for products like yours - No technical skills required
- Adding your product is usually pretty simple and the marketplace site takes care of everything
from processing transactions to technical issues
- Quick and easy setup - Everything, from your store and product
pages to the checkout and contact pages are all built for you
Cons:
- Competition can drive your price down - When someone searches for a specific product,
yours may display next to a similar, lower priced product in the marketplace.
You may feel pressured to lower your price in order to stay competitive.
- Limited control over the user experience - While marketplace sites do try to optimize
the user experience for your customers, you won’t be able to change or adjust anything
based on your unique needs - Limited brand recognition
- You may be able to add a logo or change colors on certain sections, but you’ll often
be competing with other branded elements like related products from other sellers and the
marketplace site’s branding.
- Limited options for expanding - Most marketplace sites are limited to one
or two specific types of products.
You may be able to host a digital download for now, but down the road you might end up
stuck if you want to offer an online course or membership.
Now let’s talk about selling on your own website.
Selling on your own website.
For most people who want host and sell products on their own website, builders like Wordpress,
Squarespace, and Webflow are go-to options.
Hosting products on your own website can have many upsides:
You control the user experience.
- That means you can present your products in the best possible light
- your products don’t have to compete with other marketplace products or ads
- and you can make the most of each customer interaction by offering limited discounts,
product bundles, or upsells.
Your brand stays front and center.
- You get to leave an impression on every visitor without someone else’s logo or product
distracting from your brand.
- You can design beautiful sales pages that you can tweak and adjust to be more effective
at converting customers.
- You have more control over what pages and products are seen based on where your customer
is in their buyer’s journey.
The possibilities are virtually limitless.
- With the right plugins, you can create a variety of different types of digital products,
like printables, or online courses, or memberships.
- You can create and sell as many digital products as you want
- You can create an unlimited number of sales pages for each of your products
There are some drawbacks to hosting your products on your own website.
- Even with pre-made templates or themes, building can be a long and complicated process,
or if you plan to hire someone to build it, it can be potentially expensive
- You’ll have to set up and connect an e-commerce solution on your own, or pay someone to do
that for you - More complex products like online courses
or memberships can be very complicated to set up
- You’ll be responsible for keeping your website, themes, and plugins up to date with
the latest web standards, and you’ll also be responsible for any technical issues that
arise.
Selling on Podia Finally, we’re going to talk about Podia
as an alternative to self hosting and marketplace sites.
Podia offers everything you need to sell online courses, webinars, downloads, and memberships
without worrying about the tech.
With Podia, you get most of the upsides that come with both building your own website and
hosting on a marketplace site, without the drawbacks.
To review, here are some of the benefits we talked about…
- Quick and easy setup and no technical skills required
- This is made possible with our easy-to-use site builder
- No competing branding or products - Your Podia site is for your brand and products
only - Control over the user experience,
- With the Podia site builder, you get to control how your visitors navigate through
your site and how your products are presented - Create unlimited products, seriously, no
limits - Create a variety of products
- With Podia you can sell printables as digital downloads, online courses, webinars, and memberships,
and each can be set up with the click of a few buttons
We also offer powerful tools to help you sell your products and communicate with your customers,
like email marketing with drip automation, messaging to chat directly with customers,
and, as I’ve already mentioned, an easy to use site builder to help you make a beautiful
website and sales pages for your products.
To top it off, we don’t charge additional transaction fees, so you get to keep more
of what you make in sales, and you maintain ownership of your audience, which means once
someone signs up for your email list or purchases something from you, that customer’s information
is yours, even if you decide to leave Podia in the future.
Best of all, you can try Podia and all of its features with a free 14-day trial and
start selling today.
Let me show you how to set up your site and add your first printable product.
Go to Podia.com/signup, type in your name, email, and a password, accept the terms of
service, and click start selling.
This will take you to your Podia dashboard.
From here, click Products and then click create product.
Type your product name, select digital download, then click create product.
Now click “add files” to drag and drop your pdf file.
Under settings, you can update your product name, add categories, and change the date
for when your product will be available.
Now click on pricing and click “Accept online payments” This will take you to a screen
where you can either set up or connect a stripe or paypal account.
Once your account is connected, you can go back to the product, click on Pricing, and
add your price.
On this page you can also offer a payment plan or connect additional products for an
upsell.
Once you’re done, click the Draft dropdown and select published.
Now click on your name dropdown in the upper right hand corner, and click edit site.
To edit a section of your page, just click on it and options will appear on the left-hand
side of the page.
You can click on your product to add a product image and description.
In the top bar you can change the site colors and fonts, and you can access help documents
to walk you through how to use the site builder.
Also at the top, you can preview your site on phone and tablet devices.
You can even edit the header, by hovering over the header and clicking on the edit icon.
This allows you to add a custom logo and add links.
Once you’re finished, click the publish button in the upper right.
Now your product is ready to sell.
There’s a lot more we could get into as far as customizing your Podia website, but
we’ll save that for a future video.
When it comes to selling printables, you’ve got a few different options to choose from,
each with their own advantages.
If you think Podia would be a good solution for your products, I encourage you to try
us out for a free 14 day trial at podia.com/signup.
I want to hear from you.
Do you make or plan to make printables?
If so, what kind?
Let me know in the comments.
If you found this video helpful and you want more content like this, click the subscribe
button and hit the notification bell so you’ll be sure not to miss any future videos.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.