Day 2:
Creating Profitable Designs That Sells
Now that you have identified your niche and product ideas, it’s time to bring your designs to life. Today I'll show you exactly how to use my favourite design tool - Canva - to create sellable designs.

You'll see two Canva tutorials - The first one is for beginners so that you can understand the basic controls of Canva without feeling overwhelmed, and in the second one we will make a more complicated design.

I'd recommend you follow along the tutorials by copying my designs in the Canva template library. They are completely free to use for you.

At the end, you'll also see my recommended list of tools and websites that can help your digital product shop.
Part 1
GYC Canva Template Library

You are free to click the templates to copy and edit them. You are also able to sell them as long as you make meaningful changes to the design like the examples above. Some of the ways you can do so:

  • Change the fonts
  • Add your own text
  • Change the colours
  • Change the layout
  • Add additional graphic elements to the templates

‍

I'll show you how to edit them into sellable templates in the next part.

‍

Part 2
Basic Canva Tutorial

Now let’s head to Canva (it's free to use, but you can also try the Pro version free for 30 days). We will make a simple candle label design for this example so that we can learn the basics of using Canva.

‍

You can start by clicking the ‘Create a design’ button at the top right of your dashboard. Search the template that you want to create. In this example, we will start with a square product label. Check your competition on Etsy and see what sizes are popular for the design you want to make. For candle label, popular sizes include 2", 2.5" and 3".



Once you're in the Canva designer, rename your template design at the top of the designer. It’s good practice to keep your designs organised.


Add text by clicking the ‘Text’ on the left and ‘Add a text box’. You can also drag in a text box by dragging the 'add a heading', 'add a subheading', etc.


You can then change the font by clicking here. I would recommend pairing one stand out font (something from the 'Display', 'Headings', or 'Handwritten' category would work well) with a simple font (something from 'sans serif' and 'rounded' like Nunito, Lato, Montserrat are great).

‍

You can change the background colour of your template by click the white area of your template, then the rainbow colour box at the top left above your design.


After changing the background colour and adding some extra text, here's what the template looks like:

‍

To add extra elements to your design, click "Elements" and then browse or search for designs. Because this candle is ocean themed, it makes sense to add some wave graphic to the design. Keep in mind to use only free graphics because customers without a Canva Pro account won't be able to use Pro graphics without paying extra.


Here I added abstract waves to the template. You can change the colour by clicking on the element and then click the rainbow box on the top left corner. To put behind the text, right click the element and click 'send to back'.


Part 3
Advanced Canva Tutorial

Now that you are more familiar with the basics of Canva. I'll turn this party invitation template from the Canva template library into a sellable, mermaid themed birthday invite:

‍

Once you've decided on the theme and your target customer, you can find the relevant graphics and adjust some of the text so that they appeal to your customers more. Here I searched "mermaid" in the graphics section and chose this crown as the main graphic. I also added text that relates to what the customers are looking for "3rd birthday party" "Ariel's underwater party".

‍

After that, I found more related graphics to add to the template. A sea floor or waves would be appropriate for the bottom of this template. Some extra small elements would be beneficial as well to make the template more interesting without distracting from the main graphics and text. Here I used some bubbles. Note that all the bubbles are actually the same graphic; I change the size, rotate them and flip them to make them more natural looking:

‍

If you feel like the font doesn't match the vibe of the design, explore different options. For example, I've changed the fonts to match this youthful and playful design. Another great tip is to change the colours of the text using the same colours as the elements. You can do that by clicking the colours under "Photo colors" on the left menu.

‍

I noticed that the bubble on the right hand side of the template overlaps from the main text "You're invited". So I've moved it away from the text to avoid distraction. I've also added some extra bubbles on the top left of the design as there's a lot of white space.

‍

Finally, I've changed the background to a gradient background. For the colours of the gradient, I first chose the colours from the graphics, then I make them lighter in colour and saturation (more towards towards the top left of the colour picker panel) so that the text and graphics still stand out:

‍

Part 4
Resource List For Digital Product Etsy Shop

Other popular tools to create digital products:

‍

Design Inspirations:

‍

← Day 1: Market ResearchDay 3: High Converting Listings →