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As a graphic designer, you’ve been trained to apply your style and your visual intelligence to a wide range of products. If you’re like many designers, you primarily work with clients on specific projects. What if you could also create and sell digital templates for the public? Design templates are a popular product for people looking to improve the quality and effectiveness of their resumes, web design, and other digital materials. By selling these digital products on your website , you can add to the income you earn from your client work, create a passive income stream, and even showcase your services to potential new customers. Here’s how to choose which design templates to create, how to package them, and the sales process.
Types of design templates to create and sell
- Social media posts and videos
- Resumes
- Presentation decks
- E-books
- Business cards
- Invitations and brochures
- Website design templates
Take note of which templates are the most popular and which fit your design style. Discovering what already sells well is critical. If you’re going to invest your time and creativity into digital product designs, you want to make sure that you’re designing templates people want to buy.
You will also gain a sense of gaps in the marketplace—as well as how you can bring your own creativity and flair to make your own products stand out. That will also help you figure out how to market and price your own work.
A few additional things to keep in mind as you study the market:
- Search keywords that creators use in product descriptions and metadata, which help people discover the templates
- Instructions or tutorials that sellers provide for how to use their templates
- Common specifications, like resolution and file types
- How creators handle permissions for fonts and stock photography
How to sell templates on your website
Once you’ve done some preliminary research, you can take the first steps to launching your template selling business.
- Decide what templates you want to sell. You could decide this based on what suits your style, how much time you can spare, or what feels most relevant to your other work. Your market research will also help you identify popular template themes, such as birth announcement cards, social media posts for retail stores , and landing page layouts.
- Research your target audience. When you know what you’re selling, think about who you want to sell it to and how to meet their needs. For example, a marketing writer needs different things out of a portfolio template than a portrait photographer.
- Start an online store. Choose a website building platform to launch your shop. If you already have a website, it’s easiest if you can add a store page to your existing site.
- Set your prices. Look back on your research of the market to get a sense of what your peers are charging for templates. Also take into account the cost of your time .
- Promote your designs. On top of making your site and templates easy to find in search , reach out to your mailing list or social following to let your current clients or followers know about your store and share a preview.
- Keep them updated. Design templates are a great form of passive income, so you don’t need to be constantly updating your template store. But adding new designs from time to time will help you keep up with trends and stay competitive.
Packaging your design templates
Many successful designers package multiple templates together to make them more appealing.
A few strategies for bundling include:
- Creating identical templates for a variety of graphic design tools
- Packaging social media templates for 10 to 15 posts around specific uses, such as seasonal sales
- Bundling presentation deck templates for many different kinds of slides, such as introductory pages, charts, and staff biographies
If you want to sell workbooks, web templates, resumes, business cards, or e-books, consider pricing them as standalone products . Customers tend to create and use these products on a one-off basis.
Benefits of selling templates on your website
After studying the third-party creative marketplaces to decide which types of design templates you should create, it may seem like a good idea to post your own templates on those sites to introduce the broader public to your work.
However, you can keep more of the revenue for yourself by selling templates through your own website. Furthermore, you can offer templates to your existing clients as a value-added service. For newcomers to your website, templates can serve as an introduction to your style and the quality of your work.
Many web hosting services, including Squarespace, allow you to easily set up an online store or a membership subscription to sell your templates. As a trade-off, you will need to invest additional time and energy to market this new line of products. You also have the option of selling on both platforms or starting on a third-party marketplace for early visibility, with the goal of transitioning to your website later.
One last benefit of selling digital templates through your own website: People who buy your templates have immediate access to your online portfolio, so they’ll get a sense of the custom work you already do. Include a form or link on your site so it’s easy for people to reach out to you about custom work and can schedule a design consultation with you.
Interested in selling other digital products? Learn how to create online courses and classes .
