Are you trying to find the top digital goods to sell on Etsy? You’re in the proper location. Although Etsy is mostly known as a platform for selling handcrafted goods and craft materials, digital files can also be successfully sold there.

As a matter of fact, digital download sales on Etsy are typically far more profitable. Very little overheads are present. Additionally, you only need to develop digital files once, unlike physical things, and you may sell them repeatedly without worrying about running out of inventory.

Finding digital goods to sell on Etsy is the only issue.

Let’s define digital art before we get started. Any file that a consumer can download and print is considered digital art on Etsy. This comprises but is not restricted to, custom fonts, sewing patterns, résumé templates, business logos, and printable artwork and wall décor. It’s likely that you can sell anything on Etsy if you can create it digitally.

Even though it might appear difficult, selling digital products and art on Etsy is actually fairly easy. Finding ideas, creating things, and uploading them to your shop may be accomplished quickly with a little imagination and fundamental design knowledge.

Look at what’s currently selling well in the Etsy digital art marketplace as you begin to generate product ideas. The following are some notable categories that are worth looking at and monitoring:

Small Business

• Logos
• Business cards
• Lightroom presets
• Social media templates
• Product labels

Events

• Invitations
• Menus
• Thank you cards

Personal Development

• Resume templates
• Learning materials
• Ebooks
• Calendars & planners

Artwork

• Photography
• Zoom backgrounds
• Patterns
• iPhone wallpaper

How To Start Selling Digital Art On Etsy

Hopefully the list above sheds light on how big of an opportunity selling digital art on Etsy is. To find your place in the market and start generating sales, follow these 5 simple steps:

1. Research The Competition

Before designing anything, spend time in the shoes of a buyer. Use Etsy’s search bar to browse through shops selling similar products in a niche you enjoy or often browse in yourself. Note what you like and don’t like about each listing. Read reviews to gauge what features customers are looking for.

Also, keep an eye out for any patterns you notice among successful Etsy shops. While these trends likely indicate what is working well on the platform, they may also point you toward available opportunities and gaps that you can fill in the market.

Seek out underserved niches where your unique knowledge or experience can give you a competitive advantage. 

2. Create Your Digital Art

Once you have an idea of what type of products you’d like to sell, start creating your digital art. If you’re selling something like a resume template, consider what formats will be most compatible with common word processing programs like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Otherwise, one of the most user-friendly ways to begin making professional-looking designs is Canva.

Canva is a free online design platform that’s beloved by both novice and experienced designers. With a library of built-in templates and easy drag-and-drop tools, it’s an ideal way to spin up digital art. As you develop more expertise, Photoshop and Procreate are two feature-rich software solutions that enable greater customization for complex designs.

If you face “designer’s block” during the creation process, source ideas from platforms like Creative Market and Design Cuts. You can also use both of these tools to make money with your Canva designs. These websites offer an array of high-quality design resources, including fonts, graphics, and photos, that can be easily incorporated into your work.

If you purchase any of these designs to use in your own art, be sure to select the “Commercial” license option to be able to use them in your art.

3. Build Your Shop

Now that you have a few products ready to go, it’s time to set up your Etsy shop. Sign up for an account using your email address, and then click the “Your account” button on the upper right-hand corner of the page. Click “Sell on Etsy” at the bottom of the dropdown menu and then “Get Started” in the middle of the page.

After answering a few simple questions, you will reach the beginning of an easy 6-step onboarding process. Select a memorable shop name, create your first listing, and link your bank account and credit card details. With the logistics out of the way, return to your shop and further customize it with a banner (or a few) and an ‘About Us’ story.

These final steps help bring your shop to life. Highlight bulk discounts, popular products, or a little bit of personality with your shop banner. In the ‘About’ section, share your background with visitors. Buyers love to shop small and connect with the creator of a product, so this is an ideal space to begin building that relationship.

4. List Your Digital Art

Use this guide from Etsy for how to upload your digital products. If at all possible, launch your shop with at least 5-10 initial listings. Listing multiple products will help increase your average order value, and will also lend legitimacy to your brand.

Because your store will have no reviews at first, it is extra important to convey professionalism and address any potential customer objections upfront. To do this, high-quality imagery is essential. Clearly display what the customer will receive upon purchase, and use mockups from websites like PlaceIt and SmartMockups to demonstrate how the digital download can be used.

Next, make sure your product titles and descriptions are as clear and inviting as possible. Research Etsy SEO and ensure that your target keywords are present in each listing.

Read Also: How Much Should a Graphic Designer Charge For a Shirt

Finally, start by pricing your products in line with similar listings. It may be tempting to launch at a steep discount, and some sellers do this to generate initial traction but try to avoid entering a pricing war with your competition. Ultimately these types of actions lead to a race to the bottom and your goal is to earn sales based on design preferences, not price.

5. Market Your Products

Many sellers believe ‘if you build it, they will come’ but unfortunately this is rarely the case. In the world of online sales, you have to win customers by grabbing their attention. Luckily there are multiple ways to do this when selling digital art on Etsy.

The simplest way to get in front of potential buyers is Etsy SEO. Start by optimizing your shop and product titles with relevant keywords used by your ideal customer. Keep in mind that broad searches may be competitive and very specific searches may have low volume. The trick is to find the highest volume keywords that you can rank near the top of the page.

Other promotional tactics involve blogging and organic social media posts. If you already have a website, write about topics that allow you to feature your products. Also, share your designs and mockups on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. In addition to those images, you can even create videos that show the behind-the-scenes process of creating your digital art. These short-form videos are a popular way to draw attention to your store on TikTok and Instagram Reels.

Once you have earned a few sales and positive reviews, consider running paid ads to scale your revenue. With a budget as low as $1 per day, Etsy Ads can help your listings stand out in search and reach a wider audience.

Best Digital Products To Sell On Etsy For Graphic Designers

If you want to sell digital products on Etsy in the category of arts & crafts here are some suggestions for you, along with examples of successful businesses.

Crochet patterns

Etsy’s target market is primarily makers and crafters, so it makes sense that crochet patterns would be one of the best-selling digital product categories. In case you didn’t already know, crochet is a type of needlecraft in which a hook and loops of yarn are used to create fabrics.

Crochet patterns are instructions that show you how to create certain designs and typically include diagrams and step-by-step guides with photos.

This wonderful collection of crochet hoop earring patterns by HappyPattyCrochet shows how lucrative selling crochet patterns can be. They’ve sold almost 50k digital products to date. And at over $12 per sale, that’s over half a million dollars in revenue. Part of that success is no doubt down to the eye-catching listing photos and the fact that the seller is offering 6 different patterns in one bundle.

Coloring pages

If you thought coloring books were just for kids, think again. Coloring books for adults are all the rage these days, so it’s not surprising that this form of digital product tends to sell really well on sites like Etsy, where customers tend to be more artistically inclined.

Here’s a great example of printable coloring pages from Etsy seller MyPrintsCollection. The set contains over 200 pages with geometric patterns. To add value, the seller has included a bonus of 9 crayons Procreate brushes for buyers who want to color them in digitally. It has thousands of sales.

Wrapping paper patterns

When the holiday season rolls around, shoppers rush out to buy wrapping paper. However wrapping paper in retail stores tends to be overpriced, which is why lots of savvy shoppers choose to buy digital wrapping paper patterns and print them at home instead. Try selling your own wrapping paper patterns on Etsy. Naturally, sales will usually peak around the holiday period.

If you want to sell digital products on Etsy in the category of graphic design here are some suggestions for you, along with examples of successful businesses.

Lightroom presets

Lightroom presets are essentially custom filters that you can add to your photos in Adobe Lightroom. With so many Instagram influencers and amateur photographers out there, there’s a huge market demand on Etsy for high-quality Lightroom presets that give photos a unique aesthetic.

This is one of the best-selling Lightroom presets on Etsy, with thousands of sales to date. It’s marketed specifically to influencers, which is a key market for preset sellers.

Procreate brushes

Procreate is a popular graphics editor app for the iPad. It comes with a bunch of default brushes, but that’s not enough for many graphic designers. As such, there’s a lot of money to be made by designing and selling custom, hand-crafted procreate brushes on Etsy.

DrifterStudio has sold thousands of Procreate brushes on Etsy. As you can see, this product has focused specifically on watercolor brushes, which are in high demand.

Printable wall art

Wall art is one of the most popular products sold on Etsy. If you’re a talented artist or designer, you can create digital versions of your artwork and sell it as wall art for people to print themselves at home.

Stylish map prints are all the rage right now. And Etsy seller PaperEmporiumCo has cashed in on the hype by selling custom wall art map prints for any location.

Photoshop actions

Photoshop actions are a series of pre-recorded editing tasks that you can install and play on any file to create unique effects. It provides an easy way for designers to apply certain effects again and again on any photo without having to edit it manually. There are actions for all sorts of things. For example, there are actions that make 2D illustrations look 3D and actions that turn photos into sketch art.

Clip art

If you’re a talented illustrator or graphic designer, why not create your own digital artwork and sell it as clip art? It’s best to sell your clip art in large collections rather than individually.

The collection of 15 pastel rainbow-themed PNG files is one of the most popular clip art sets on Etsy. It’s been sold tens of thousands of times.

Fonts

Fonts are another set of digital products to sell that appeal to Etsy’s target audience of designers, makers, and crafters. You can sell all types of fonts on the platform, like script fonts, serif fonts, sans-serif fonts, experimental fonts, etc. But one of the best-selling font categories is Cricut fonts—fonts specifically designed for Cricut machines.

This popular Etsy font bundle contains 10 beautiful script fonts and has been sold thousands of times.

Logos

If you’ve got a talent for graphic design, you could make a fortune selling custom logos on Etsy. It’s one of the biggest product categories on the platform, but competition is fierce, so you’ll need to price your services competitively.

Logolane is one of the best-rated logo sellers on Etsy. They offer affordably-priced custom logo design services with unlimited revisions and deliver files digitally in various formats.

Final Thoughts

You may start monetizing your creativity and selling digital art on Etsy by following these five simple steps. This business strategy requires little in the way of customer communication, inventory, or shipping, making it an easy method to make money online.

You only need to create the artwork once, and you will be able to sell it repeatedly. Offering digital art for sale on Etsy is a fantastic way to turn your passion into income, even though getting started could require some time and work.