[NEW BLUEPRINT] Profit With Biz Printables

by Ryan | Apr 26, 2024 | Blog | 0 comments

Did you know there are more than 5 million small businesses in the UK?

That’s a huge market!

Today I’d like to show you a smart, simple way that you could tap into this demand to generate a small-but-growing passive income….

One where you could easily create multiple income streams without adding to your workload.

It’s all thanks to a specific kind of B2B (business-to-business) digital product that you don’t need to see, touch, stock or post – even the payments are processed automatically.

And you can do it all on Etsy, which means you don’t need your own website, social media following, or traffic-generation methods.

Plus, with the help of AI, you don’t need any knowledge about running a small business to do this.

Let me give you the lowdown…

Why Businesses Want Digital Products

Whether you’re a local clothes shop, a restaurant, a handmade product maker or an online webshop, you need images for all kinds of printed materials…

Packaging, signage, menus, t-shirts and other merchandise, logos, business cards, website banners, email headers, social media pages, advertising.

In the old days, a small business owner or entrepreneur would have to pay a freelance designer (or an agency) to design these.

This was an expensive option that was inaccessible to many people.

The truth is, most people don’t have the time, experience or skill to get involved with creating designs for their business, which is why there is a booming trade in ‘off-the-peg’ materials that companies can buy, download and use for their own purposes.

Digital products offer an instant convenient and hassle-free way to get images, text and logos. They can shop around, choose one that’s right for them, pay and get the product immediately.

One of the main places they go to is Etsy.

While Etsy is often regarded as the top online marketplace for selling crafts, handmade gifts and bespoke items, one of the biggest growing areas is digital products in the form of downloadable files.

A company can download templates and designs, then print them onto a range of physical materials – clothing, packaging, signage, labels and advertising.

Here are three examples….

Handmade Product Labels – People selling handmade products need labels for packaging, for instance, jar labels, perfume bottle labels, and labels for boxes. Here is an example of one specifically for candle makers, priced at £6.

Cafe/Restaurant Printables – Cafes, pubs and restaurants need good looking printed materials that help them create an identity for their business, like branded menus, cafe art, loyalty cards and signs. Here’s an example menu template for a small restaurant, priced £6.80.

Thank You cards – many businesses use thankyou cards which they put into packaging when they send a product to customers. They can also be used to thank attendees to conferences, workshops, and other events. Here is an example of downloadable card templates priced at £9.08.

There’s also a market for downloadable images that the business can online.

For example, most businesses have social media accounts like Instagram and Facebook, and could benefit from readymade banners and post templates.

Same goes for logos, sales pages, webinar invitations, newsletters and other forms of digital content.

And it’s not only about the materials that B2B customers need in shops and on websites.

Small businesses also look for templates for materials that help them run their business – everything from invoices and contracts to bookkeeping and event planning.

For instance…

Social media management – here’s an example of a package of templates to help people plan, organise and run social media campaigns.

Employee management… Running a business with staff, freelancers and suppliers can be really complicated, which is why there’s a market for printable project planners for small business teams.
Bookkeeping Excel Template – Just about everyone uses spreadsheets. Microsoft Excel, a paid app, is one of the most popular software applications. Then there are free spreadsheet apps like Google Sheets, and Apple Numbers. A lot of people find them difficult and time consuming to set up, which is why they will often pay for pre-set accounting spreadsheets and profit calculators.
Invoice templates – when people first start in business they will often have no idea of how to lay out invoices, Having a template makes them look instantly credible and prevent any costly small print errors.
Marketing and copywriting – if you’ve ever done any marketing and copywriting, you could take the work you’ve done and turn it into templates that others can use for business.
Worksheets for courses and coaching – you could provide worksheets and other kinds of content for people who need to teach or train others.
Powerpoint Presentations –. The rise of webinars, online workshops and video marketing means that even home entrepreneurs and small outfits need to create presentations to sell, deliver content and promote themselves. If you’ve used Powerpoint before, then this could be a profitable printable for you.

You could also consider:

Content marketing strategy guides
Customisable press release templates
Contract templates for services, freelancers, and partnerships
Daily, weekly, and monthly planner templates
Mind mapping and brainstorming templates
Decision-making frameworks and tools

For a full list of Etsy’s best-selling business printables, go to www.etsy.com/uk/market/business_printables.

Using AI To Create Products

You don’t need to be an expert in small business because you can use ChatGPT to help you create your digital products,

Tools for Designing Digital Products

There are tools that make digital creations easy on your computer.

Canva – Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. It has a variety of features and templates, with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface to make it user friendly.
Picmonkey – An alternative to Canva, offering templates for flyovers, Instagram posts, invitations, logs and more. PicMonkey is the preferred choice by many for photo editing while Canva is reputedly best for designing graphics.
Corjl – This is an online editing platform that allows you to make templates that can be edited by your customer – let’s say for instance they want to add their details into a wedding invitation, Christmas card or business card. This means that people can buy your template but then use it multiple times, in different ways for their own purpose.
Adobe AI Illustrator – This industry-standard vector graphics software allows you to resize and edit images, create logos, make your own icons, drawings and illustrations, product packaging and posters. Now powered by AI!
Adobe Photoshop – this is great for photo editing and compositing, digital painting, animation, and graphic design.
Adobe Fresco – this allows you to create line drawings and other types of art as if you were using pencil, pen, or brush on paper. You can then send these to Adobe’s Photoshop or Illustrator to turn into the final product.
Gimp – This is a free online alternative to Photoshop which you could use if you want to try your hand at digital products with the minimal investment.
Creative Market – this allows you to create high quality graphics & fonts from ready-to-use materials, including Instagram templates, shopify themes, canva templates and vector graphics. These could be a really good shortcut if you lack any design skills and want something you can adapt and then sell on.

How To Sell Your Digital Products

It is very easy to open an Etsy shop.

Once set up, you can start selling your creations right away.

When you make a sale through Etsy.com, you will be charged a transaction fee of 6.5% of the price you display for each listing plus the amount you charge for delivery and gift wrapping.

Of course, as you are selling digital products there’s no delivery charge.

It takes a bit of time to build up your customer base but Etsy will soon start to show you to their customers.

They may even start to recommend your items on the homepage of shoppers who are interested in the kind of things you see.

To boost your results, you can pay for your own Etsy ads, which pushes your items higher up in the search results.

If you use Etsy’s Advertising Dashboard in Shop Manager, you can set a daily maximum budget to limit the amount you’re willing to pay to promote your listings. Once you hit that amount you won’t be charged any more.

Recommended Etsy Digital Files

Once you created your product, you upload the file to Etsy to create a product listing. There is a 20mb file size limit for each file.

The best file types to sell are JPG, PNG and PDF.

Etsy also supports these file types: .bmp / .doc / .gif / .jpeg / .mobi / .mov / .mp3 / .mpeg / .psp / .rtf / .stl / .txt / .zip / .ePUB / .iBook

Digital products can’t really be returned. So you’ll find that some creators don’t offer refunds.

However, I recommend offering a refund to anyone who complains or isn’t happy with the product.,

This will minimise negative reviews, which will help you sell more products further down the line.

Boosting Your Income

Digital downloads usually sell for around £2-£5 for a single purpose item.

That may seem very low, but remember that once you put these online, they generate a passive income without you doing anything else.

So there is no limit to how may you can add,

What starts as a trickle can become a significant income when you add more and more products.

However, to boost your profits, I recommend that you consider targeting a specific business and providing everything they need in one bundle, from their public-facing signage, to accounting, marketing, planning and legal forms.

For example, here’s a highly successful digital Etsy seller who has tailored their designs for the Air BnB owners market:

As you can see, this includes materials for them to print and use in their properties and marketing – but also includes materials to help them run their business.