Printable coloring pages are one of many types of digital products you can sell on Etsy. Digital products are one of the best ways to make money online because once you’ve created the product and listed it for sale, there’s no limit to how many you can sell and how much money you can make. My Etsy shop still makes sales off printable adult coloring pages I made 5 years ago! Whether you want to make money selling coloring pages or just want to make some for your kids, your classroom, or your own personal use, this post will help you get started as an absolute beginner.
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How to Make Coloring Pages to Sell on Etsy
If you know how to draw or create your own graphics, then you’re already a step ahead as far as creating original designs for your coloring pages. I recently bought a Wacom tablet to practice my own illustration and design skills, and it’s going about as great as you can expect for someone who can barely draw a 25 dog on the sidewalk without my 2-year-old niece being like “what the fuck is that?” I probably won’t be selling my own illustrations anytime soon, so don’t feel discouraged if you lack the skills needed to create a design from scratch. I lack them too, and it hasn’t stopped me from making a steady income from my creative pursuits.
Here are the tools you need to create coloring pages as a beginner:
Canva Pro
Canva is a wonderful design tool for all levels and perfect for formatting your coloring pages. All you have to do is create an 8×10” file, upload the graphics and lay them out how you want the page to look, then download the pages to sell in your store.
Canva Pro has plenty of graphics and clip art you can use in your designs, just make sure to check the licensing terms of both your Canva plan and the graphic you want to use to ensure it’s permitted for commercial use. To make things easier, I recommend downloading graphics from the next website on this list:
Creative Fabrica
Creative Fabrica is my favorite website for sourcing graphics, fonts, and clip art for my products. The main reason I love it is that everything comes with a commercial use license, so you don’t have to worry about whether it’s OK to sell something you make with elements purchased at Creative Fabrica. You’re also supporting small independent designers when you source from here, and there are plenty of freebies offered so make sure to check out the free section to see if there’s anything you can use.
Search the word “coloring” on Creative Fabrica and it’ll bring up thousands of results (87,503 when I searched). Many of these results are individual pieces of clip art that you can download and combine into a coloring book or page, like these:
Search for “adult coloring” and you’ll find more detailed coloring graphics like mandalas and patterns:
You could even incorporate an outline font to make text-based designs.
The one thing to keep in mind when creating coloring pages out of graphics you’ve downloaded is that with CF’s licensing terms, you’ll have to do more than just slap one graphic onto a page and call it good. That’s fine if you’re just making them for personal use, but if you’re making coloring pages to sell, you’ll have to turn it into a unique product that’s not just the single graphic. The only exception is if you’re sourcing from the POD (print-on-demand) section. Still, I recommend putting some originality into your pages to help them stand out and increase your potential sales.
It can get pricey when you’re buying design elements, which is why I highly recommend getting an unlimited download subscription to Creative Fabrica. I’ve had one for about two years and have made hundreds of products. It’s so worth it, especially if you want to sell more than just coloring books.
Here’s an example of a coloring page I made using Canva and some graphics from Creative Fabrica:
Get the coloring page mockup here
You can then sell the pages as-is, or as a bundle with other pages. I recommend making a dozen or two pages in a similar theme, then selling them individually as well as in a bundle in a separate listing.
How to Turn Your Printable Coloring Pages Into Books
If you’d like to sell coloring pages as a printable eBook or as a physical book through Amazon, Book Bolt will help you format your pages into a product that you can then sell digitally on Etsy or through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (that’s what the KDP means on many of CF’s graphics), where Amazon will print and mail a physical copy for you when you make a sale. Book Bolt also comes with a growing selection of premade interiors such as lined notebook pages and puzzle interiors if you’d like to create journals or activity books.
How to Make Your Etsy Listings Stand Out
The biggest question I get about selling digital products is “isn’t it too saturated?”. I don’t believe in saturation unless you’re like, the 300th LuLaRoe distributor to sign up in a town of 1,500 people. But that’s not the case when you’re selling products to the entirety of the internet which is why I don’t let saturation keep me from trying something I want to do. Here are some things to think about to help your listings stand out so you can make money faster:
Niches & Trends
When asked about the importance of niches, my advice for beginners is to not let the niche question stop you from taking action and making anything you’re inspired to make. If you want to create some kids seasonal coloring pages but you also want to make some sweary coloring book pages for adults who want to relax while coloring in the word “fuck” over and over, don’t let the niche question prevent you from just making and listing both to see what people buy. When you start getting views and sales, use your sales history and shop stats to decide what else to make. If 99% if your searches and sales are for sweary coloring pages, then that means you need to make more of those. This is how you inevitably fall into a niche, by focusing on what works and what people want. You don’t know the answers to those questions unless you start taking action.
Watching trends will also help you stand out from other sellers. You know how every few years there’s a trendy animal that’s on every Target product and that everyone’s getting tattooed on their body? Owls. Pineapples. Unicorns. Foxes. There’s always a trendy animal. Combine trends like that with other niches and ideas to create unique products that stand out.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The #1 tool you need for Etsy visibility is search engine optimization (SEO) which you can learn all about in my guide to Etsy SEO. SEO involves using strategic keywords that your target customer is most likely to type in to give your product the best chance possible to show up on the first page of results. This is the best tool to help you stand out as a beginner and I always tell new sellers to get a good grasp on SEO before paying for any advertising.
Avoid Trademark Violations
Avoiding trademarks is another crucial part of selling on Etsy. This means no Baby Shark coloring pages. No Disney. No Harry Potter. No Looney Tunes. Nothing that resembles another company or brand, no matter how tempting it is. You can learn more about avoiding trademark violations in this post.
Ready to open your Etsy shop? Use my shop referral link and we’ll both get 40 free listings ($8 value).
Check out my related posts:
How to Make and Sell Printables on Etsy
20 Digital Products You Can Sell on Etsy for Passive Income
Quick question for you:
If I have memes crates on canva or micro blogs in google docs
How can I share Them to my already created Etsy shop? I want To start to sell them as printables.
Looking to add these items in but lost as to how to accomplish this step.
Hoping u can guide me.
Kindly,
Ali
Hi Ali! To sell them as digital files on Etsy, you’d have to download them to your computer (depending on end use you’ll need it to be a JPG, PDF, PNG, or SVG) and then upload those files into the Etsy listing.
Hello!
But what format should we upload when we create a printable e book? Is PDF best? Thanks so much
Yes, PDF works great for books!