How I Made $6,161 in Just 4 Months With a New Etsy Printables Shop
Do you want to learn how to make a semi-passive income by selling printables on Etsy? Are you wondering if a new Etsy printables shop can make money? Selling digital products is a great way to earn money online without worrying about inventory, shipping, or customer returns. With the right strategy, you can create products…
Do you want to learn how to make a semi-passive income by selling printables on Etsy?
Are you wondering if a new Etsy printables shop can make money?
Selling digital products is a great way to earn money online without worrying about inventory, shipping, or customer returns. With the right strategy, you can create products once and sell them over and over again – earning income even while you sleep!
Today, I’m excited to share an interview with Cody, a successful Etsy seller who has turned printables into a thriving business. He’s been featured here on Making Sense of Cents before and you can find that article here – How I Make Money Selling Printables On Etsy. Today, he is back because he recently started a brand-new Etsy printables shop to show that it’s possible to still make money in 2025.
In just four months, his new shop that he recently started hit $1,000 in monthly revenue (in about 4 months, he made $6,161 from this brand-new Etsy shop), proving that it’s still possible to start and grow a successful Etsy business today.
In this interview, Cody shares:
If you’ve ever thought about starting an Etsy shop but weren’t sure where to begin, this interview is packed with insights to help you take the first step!
I also recommend signing up for the Earn Money Selling Printables free training. You’ll learn printable ideas, how to get started on Etsy, and how to actually make sales. Additionally, you can sign up for Cody’s free ebook, which shares his secret list of best-selling products month by month.
Do you want to make money selling printables online? This free training will give you great ideas on what you can sell, how to get started, the costs, and how to make sales.
This interview is for you if you want to learn how to start an Etsy printables business right now.
I first started selling printables on Etsy in 2018 after trying almost every side hustle imaginable (cleaning boats, delivering Uber Eats on a bike, freelance writing, building websites, etc).
The problem with most side hustles is that they’re “active”, meaning that you don’t get paid unless you’re actively working on them.
Selling printables was different. I could create and list a digital product in my shop, and someone could buy it at any time, no matter what I was doing.
I remember waking up to sales and hearing the “cha-ching” sound from Etsy on my phone while I was at the gym or in the car.
After that started happening more frequently, I quickly dumped almost all of my “active” side hustles and went all in on trying to make more passive income.
Some months after I opened my shop, around Valentine’s Day, I had my first big break and made over $718 in a week. I seriously couldn’t believe it. It felt like fake money.
I was selling things like love coupons, love cards, and other Valentine’s printables.
The craziest part?
I was on vacation that week and barely touched my shop.
These were all printables that I had listed in December and January.
This one week in February completely changed how I thought about time and money.
As I mentioned above, I opened my first Etsy shop in 2018. In internet years, that feels like ages ago, and apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Someone commented on a video of mine and said “You just got lucky you started back in 2018. You could never repeat your success on Etsy today”.
Challenge accepted.
Fueled with “I’m gonna show him” energy, I opened a brand new Etsy shop in mid-August of 2024 to see how quickly I could reach $1,000/month in sales.
My strategy was simple: Create a bunch of base templates, and then use keyword research to make as many in-demand variations of that base template as possible.
For example, I might create a “thank you card” template, and then from that template, create a teacher thank you card, soccer coach thank you card, grandfather thank you card, wedding thank you card… you get the idea.
The reason why I chose this “template” approach was because it allowed me to create and list products as quickly as possible. I could create a brand-new product (including the design itself, listing images, description, tags, etc.) within a matter of 15 to 20 minutes.
Each week during the challenge, I probably spent a total of 5-10 hours on my shop.
Now, I only spend a couple of hours per week on my shop.
Since the shop has done so well and requires little maintenance, I’m going to continue to run it and add to my product suite. Who knows, I might even do another challenge!
The goal of the new Etsy shop experiment was to see how quickly I could reach $1,000/month in revenue.
I hit that goal in 116 days.
That’s not the best part of the story though…
Just one week after hitting my goal, my sales exploded, and I made over $2,500 in revenue in 7 days. I honestly couldn’t believe it. This was just 4.5 months after I opened my shop.
From mid-August to December 31st, I made $6,161 from this new Etsy shop.
Since these are digital products (I don’t sell physical products or print-on-demand), the expenses are pretty minimal.
I spend $22/month on software between Canva Pro and eRank Pro.
It costs $0.20 to list a product and Etsy takes 6.5% of each product sale.
I pay an additional $0.50 for each editable product sale since I use a program called Corjl.
During the holidays, I also spend money on ads to increase traffic to my seasonal products.
On average, digital products have 80%+ profit margins, which is much higher than selling print-on-demand or physical products on Etsy.
A printable is a digital file that a customer buys and then either prints or uses on their computer. In this interview, I’m using “printable” and “digital product” interchangeably, even though you wouldn’t actually print something like a social media template.
Some printable examples include thank you cards, gift tags, wedding invitations, labels, digital planners, wall art, calendars, budgeting spreadsheets, Instagram templates, media kits, printable games, junk journals… the list goes on and on.
If you look around the room you’re in while you’re reading this, you’ll likely see a printable or two!
As I’m typing this, I see wall art next to me, a planner on my desk, a journal on the coffee table, and a calendar on the fridge.
People buy printables because it’s a lot easier to pay $5 than to go and create the printables themselves. Even as a printable seller myself I’m still buying printables all the time.
To make another analogy to drive this point home… everyone can cook food at home, so why do restaurants and take-out even exist? The answer is convenience.
Etsy is the best marketplace by far for new printable sellers.
You don’t need an email list. You don’t need a big social media presence. You don’t need a website. You don’t need to advertise.
If you understand keyword research and SEO, Etsy will deliver buyers to your doorstep.
As of this writing, there are over 90 million buyers on Etsy, and that number is growing year over year. Etsy is spending millions in advertising (you might have seen their Super Bowl commercial last year) to get new buyers onto the platform.
Some people complain about the 6.5% fee that Etsy takes from each sale, but I’m actually a fan. Etsy is using that money to give us sellers more potential customers. I’ll gladly give Etsy $0.65 when I make $10 in exchange for finding buyers for my digital products.
You could sell printables directly on your website, or on a platform like Shopify, but then you’re in charge of driving traffic and customers.
Not to say that this isn’t a good move for some, but this usually only makes sense if you have a big email list, a sizable social media following, or some other way to attract customers.
In terms of profitability, selling printables on Etsy is hard to beat.
Many sellers I know personally have 80%+ profit margins, with some as high as 95%.
The most “expensive” part of this side hustle is your time. I don’t want to portray this as a get-rich-quick scheme.
It will take a bit of time to learn graphic design, keyword research, marketing, etc.
But the good part is that once you have a shop full of good-looking, well-researched products, they can continue to sell for months and years to come!
The amount of money you make completely depends on the amount of effort you’re willing to put in.
We had one student, Rachel, who earned over $150,000 on the side selling printables on Etsy.
We had another student, Sasha, replace her full-time income as an accountant.
We have some students who are happy making $600/month selling digital products and using that money to cover some of their monthly bills.
I like to say that selling printables on Etsy is 95% passive income.
When someone buys a printable from your shop, Etsy will automatically deliver them the digital file. There’s nothing that you need to do on your end to complete the transaction.
The 5% where it’s “active” is responding to customer questions, which are usually resolved within a couple of minutes.
I have a whole bunch of “quick replies” a.k.a. saved responses to common questions for my shop so that I can reply to buyers within the Etsy App in just a few clicks.
For ongoing work, once you get to a revenue level you’re comfortable with, you can “coast” for a while and keep things 95% passive without seeing much of a drop in sales.
However, if you want your income to grow, you’ll want to keep adding new products to your shop whenever possible.
Using the “template” method I mentioned above, adding a new product might only take 15-20 minutes. In my new Etsy shop, I try to add ~10 new products per week.
The riches are in the niches. The best-selling printables on Etsy are those with good search volume, but low competition. I like to call these “unicorns”.
Where most people go wrong is that they create generic products (e.g. thank you cards, birthday invitations, plain calendars).
The problem with this is that every Etsy seller and their mother are selling these generic products. Instead of selling just a “thank you card”, consider selling a “school bus driver thank you card” or a “pediatrician thank you card”.
As you niche down, not only are you competing against fewer people, but you’re also creating a printable that’s more in line with what the buyer is searching for!
Imagine a buyer goes to Etsy, types in “school bus driver thank you card” and then sees two cards next to each other. One is a plain thank you card that says “Thank You!” and the other is a thank you card with clip art of a school bus that says “Thanks for being the best bus driver!”.
Which do you think they’re going to pick?
The one that’s more in line with what they were searching for, of course.
This is why niching down is so important.
To give you a real example from my Etsy shop, I created this printable for a “Medical School Graduation Party”.
It’s much easier to stand out with this product than with a generic “Graduation Party” printable.
The truth is, there’s no definitive list of bestselling printables or a certain type of printable that’s guaranteed to make you money. If there was, everybody would be selling them, and then you’d be competing with everybody, which is exactly what I suggest not to do.
The “secret” to making money on Etsy is to niche down and create exactly what the customer is looking for. There’s a reason why the phrase “The riches are in the niches” exists!
I have been selling printables for 6+ years at this point, and it’s embarrassing to admit, but I’d still only consider myself a 5/10 (maybe 6) graphic designer.
But hey, that was good enough for me to make over $6,000 in 4.5 months with my brand-new shop.
The most important part of selling printables is keyword research, not graphic design.
We’ve seen students with zero graphic design or tech backgrounds make sales within a week of opening their shop (some within the first day or two).
Of course, printables won’t sell if they look absolutely terrible, but you certainly don’t have to be a graphic design whiz to make this side hustle work.
There are a few niches where graphic design matters a lot more than others such as weddings and wall art, but for the vast majority of printables, it just has to look “good enough”.
I sound like a broken record here, but the answer is keyword research.
If you create niched-down products that have good search volume, and low competition, you will attract buyers.
There is plenty of competition for generic products.
There is much less competition for well-researched, specific products.
The key is finding those products and creating as many of them as possible.
As the number of products in your shop continues to grow, so will your views, clicks, and sales.
You can venture out and drive traffic on places like Pinterest, but I’d put this more in the “advanced” category. It’s not necessary to make sales.
This could be an entire blog post in and of itself, but I’ll try to break down the steps as simply as possible:
I used this exact process to list over 350 digital products in my shop in just over 4 months.
That might sound insane, but remember, by using the “template” method that I described above, I can create and list a new product in 15-20 minutes.
In our E-Printables Course, we provide 15+ Canva templates to help students get products listed as quickly as possible. We also give out an additional 5 product templates each month in our VIP Membership.
We know how frustrating it can be to spend hours on your first design, so these templates serve as a sort of shortcut. Instead of designing from scratch, you start with an already-completed printable design and make a few tweaks to customize it.
All of our templates are well-researched and specifically chosen as products we see with a lot of sales potential. Some students have made sales within a day of listing their customized templates!
Another great thing about templates (which I also mentioned above), is that one template could easily turn into 10+ products.
A gift card holder could become a nurse gift card holder, a teacher gift card holder, a Valentine gift card holder, a Christmas gift card holder… you get the idea.
One of the main reasons I see people fail with this side hustle is because they never even start.
The faster you can get that first product listed (which is drastically reduced by using templates), the more likely you are to succeed. I’m a big believer in momentum.
We also offer templates for listing images and product descriptions to simplify the process.
For my new Etsy shop, I didn’t use any templates from the E-Printables Course because I thought that would be cheating.
Everything for my new shop was designed from scratch to prove that anyone can make this side hustle work (not just a guy with access to a big template library).
The E-Printables Course is the A to Z for selling printables on Etsy.
We cover idea generation, designing products, listing products, setting up your Etsy shop, product marketing, keyword research, SEO, creating editable printables, dealing with customers, seasonal trends, copyright/trademarks, and everything in between.
You can see all of the modules and lessons on the course page here.
E-Printables is self-paced, so you can work through it as quickly or as slowly as you like.
We have over-the-shoulder tutorials teaching you exactly how to design printables (and use templates to make multiple design variations).
Plus, you’ll learn to use the exact keyword research and SEO strategies that I use to drive traffic to my shops.
If you follow the lessons in order, you’ll have an Etsy shop and multiple listings posted by the time you finish the course.
We’ve helped thousands of students start their Etsy shops and we’re seeing new sellers make sales faster than ever before.
This student win happened last week:
You too could be just 15 hours away from making your first sale on Etsy.
The cool part about this side hustle is that we see successful sellers from all different walks of life… a busy mom of 2 trying to supplement her income, a college kid looking to make some extra cash, or a retiree who wants a creative outlet.
It doesn’t matter who you are, or what your background is, this side hustle is for everyone.
We don’t just help people start selling printables on Etsy though, we also help those with existing shops take them to the next level.
In addition to the E-Printables course, we also have a VIP Membership (30-day free trial available upon course purchase) which includes:
And more. There’s a lot in there.
If I had to break it down as simply as possible, the E-Printables helps you set up a successful Etsy shop, and the VIP Membership helps take that shop to the next level.
If you’ve made it to the end of this interview and think this side hustle might be for you, I’d love to see you in our community!
Are you interested in selling printables on Etsy? What printables would you sell?
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