4 Ways to Sell your Designs Online

It’s important to have a passion for your design work, but one cannot live on beautiful typography or satisfying bézier curves alone.

One of the great advantages of the graphic design life is the flexibility it affords - you can mix and match full-time, part-time and freelance work to bring in money. But there are a few other ways you can generate income from your designs as well:

1. Etsy - for physical & digital items

HOW IT WORKS:
List items through a personal shop front. Customers can instantly download purchased digital goods, Etsy can generate shipping labels for physical goods.

WHAT IT COSTS: 
$.20 per listing, each time you publish or renew

I have technically had my etsy shop since 2010, but didn’t start using it seriously until about two years ago. I’ve sold custom design items, prints and stationery, and digital printable files - though it can be a great avenue for things like wordpress themes, custom invitations, and digital resources/textures as well.

People search directly on Etsy looking for products, but choosing effective keywords and promoting your shop elsewhere to get exposure is crucial - given the staggering number of shops and products. There are great resources out there to help you get started and learn the ins and outs, including this Skillshare class I found to be really helpful.

2. Society 6 - for prints, clothing & home goods

HOW IT WORKS:
Upload digital files for Society6 to produce/sell as prints and home goods.

WHAT IT COSTS: 
Free, small profit margin

I just opened a Society 6 shop recently, and I was surprised how easy it was to set up. This is a great option for passive income, because Society 6 does all of the work for you with production, orders, and shipping.

Of course, less work means less profit. You control the price mark up for prints, but other items like pillows, mugs, clocks and clothing have set profit margins ranging between 2 and 4 dollars for most items. That may seem like a small amount, but over time it may be worth the investment of a few hours to set up your shop.

3. Creative Market - for fonts, textures, & resources

HOW IT WORKS:
List digital items for instant download, set your own prices.

WHAT IT COSTS: 
Free, 30% of each sale goes to Creative Market

Creative Market is a great option to sell things you may be developing for yourself anyway - like photoshop brushes, custom fonts and stock photography. I have yet to experiment with it, so I asked Jenn Coyle of Hello Brio to share some tips for success:

"Do your research to see how popular shops write titles, descriptions, and prepare preview images. Purchase a competitor's product to investigate how they package it. Once you're getting sales and messages, always make sure to handle customer service and respond to comments as soon as you can. You can get a nice flow of passive income going if you follow these tips: make stuff you love, do your research, upload regularly, and engage with your customers."

4. On your website - for everything!

HOW IT WORKS:
Sign up for a third party e-commerce site and add it to an existing website.

WHAT IT COSTS:
Free - Varied depending on features

Adding a shop to your existing website is a great avenue if you already get a decent amount of traffic to your site, and won’t need to spend energy promoting a separate shop front. There are a myriad of e-commerce plugins and services out there, and some web platforms have built-in options like Squarespace and Wordpress plugins. For other websites, here are a few suggestions:

shopify.com - $14/month starter plan, pre-built themes, ability to sell in person
opencart.com - Free, lots of features, templated but not 100% customizable
ecwid.com - Free for up to 10 products, easy html addition to your site



All of these ventures will not yield success overnight - there are hundreds of thousands of sellers who use these methods, and it can take time and effort to build up visibility. But it certainly doesn't hurt to give it a shot, you never know what will take off!

Do you sell your design work in other places that you would recommend? Let us know in the comments!