|

How to Make Planner Stickers to Sell on Etsy

Share on Social Media

I’m so excited to talk about how to make planner stickers to sell on Etsy. My post on how I turned Etsy into my full time job has been very popular, so I knew it was time to share more of what I know about selling on Etsy, creating popular planner products, and creating an online business.

This post contains affiliate links. See our full disclosure policy, here.

How to Make Planner Stickers to Sell on Etsy

Why Planner Stickers?

If you are new to planning or planner stickers, you may be asking yourself “Why planner stickers? What are they for?” People use stickers in their planners for lots of different reasons. They can be decorative, or functional. Many people use their planner more-so like a scrapbook, for memory keeping, or just to make planning fun. It’s a hobby for a lot of people, so there’s a market for those who purchase stickers for their planner. Your job is to determine what stickers are most popular and make them for all of those potential customers!

Planner stickers is a very lucrative market. Did you know- the #1 seller of all time on Etsy (Planner Kate) is a planner sticker seller? I have planner stickers in my shop as well. I’ve sold a variety of planner products over the years, including digital products and physical products that I made and shipped to people, as well. Everything from planner stickers to planner inserts and even planner dividers! You can see this post on how I turned Etsy into my full time job. So, I recently decided to start sharing some of my knowledge here on this blog. By learning how to make your own stickers, you have the potential to create your own planner sticker business through your own Etsy store, your own website, and more.

Choose a Cutting Machine

When we talk about how to make planner stickers to sell on Etsy, the first step to selling physical planner stickers is deciding what cutting machine you will use. The most popular cutting machines are the Silhouette Cameo (or Silhouette Portrait), or a Cricut cutting machine. You should know that I have used a Silhouette Portrait, for the entirety of my business so I may be a little biased but I feel it is the most budget friendly, and user friendly machine you can use. I do know a bit about designing and cutting with a Cricut, too, but my focus is on the Silhouette software and those machines. I’m releasing a series of free videos on how to make planner stickers with the silhouette, over on my Youtube channel, so be sure and check those out.

If you are looking to sell printable planner stickers, you may need to get to know both machines, and do a little more research on how to create stickers, specifically, printable stickers, for each machine to best serve your customers.

Learn the Software

Your first step is to learn the software of the machine you’d like to use. There is always a learning curve, but you can do this before you even purchase a machine, by downloading their software (whether silhouette studio or cricut design space) and designing with them. As I mentioned, if you are interested in the Silhouette cutting machines, you can watch my free tutorial on creating stickers in that software. I’m working on a series of videos, and you can watch part one below.

There are lots of free resources available on Youtube for designing your stickers, whichever software you choose to use.

Choose What Kind of Stickers to Offer

Do you want to create physical stickers or digital downloads? Digital downloads are great, there is very little overhead since you don’t have supplies to purchase or packages to mail. Your customers keep those digital files as long as they wish and can use them over and over.

But, that leads me to one advantage of selling physical products. They’re consumables, so your customers use them up, then hopefully return to your shop to purchase more! You could offer both, but I’ve done that in my own shop and felt it was too confusing for my customers, which is why I only offer physical sticker sheets over there now. Consider as well, other possibilities for stickers, such as sticker templates, and digital stickers for digital planners. There are a lot of different options you could go for.

Then, what type of stickers will you sell? Sticker kits, functional stickers? Browse Etsy if you are unsure about the different types of stickers that sell. It is helpful to do a little market research here and determine what kind of stickers you want to make and offer for sale.

How to Make Planner Stickers to Sell on Etsy

Create Your Stickers

Once you’ve chosen what type of stickers to make, and learned the software for your chosen cutting machine, you are ready to create your stickers. We are learning how to create planner stickers to sell on Etsy, look at us! There are many who design in different programs, like illustrator or procreate, but that is not necessary. I built my sticker business designing only in Silhouette Studio. Create your sticker sheets, and test them of course, by printing and cutting them out (more on that coming), and take product photos, if you wish.

You can also create mockups for your stickers, if you’d like a tutorial on that, let me know in the comments below and I can create one. Then, you are ready to list your stickers on Etsy! I’ll have more Etsy tutorials soon so be sure you are signed up for my email newsletter to get those sent to your inbox!

Consider choosing color schemes for your sticker sheets that will match your branding. Having a cohesive look can be helpful when it comes to helping customers and potential customers recognize you through the competition. You’ll also want to be aware of commercial use versus personal use when it comes to graphics you purchase online.

You can’t use just any graphics when designing stickers. You’ll need to purchase them, and they’ll need to include a commercial license or have one the seller offers for you to purchase. Some graphics will come with license included, you just have to do your due diligence and be sure. I have some great resources for commercial use graphics I’ll be sharing soon in my sticker creating series.

A great way to help your shop stand out and for you to offer exclusive planner stickers is to create unique stickers and unique designs that your customer can only get from you. You can do this by using clip art that is different from what everyone else is using, or even by drawing your own sticker images via a program such as procreate. You don’t have to be a graphic designer, or have a ton of graphic design skills, you can find all of the information you need just by searching online. By using your own original ideas, you’ll have stickers that are set apart from what everyone is creating.

Print Your Stickers

Even if you wish to sell printable stickers, you’ll want to test them out and make sure they’ll be easy to print and cut for your customers. To print your stickers, you’ll need to choose a sticker paper. I recommend Online Labels sticker paper. You can order a small quantity if you want to sample it, and I’m sure there are other suppliers that are great, as well. Just do a bit of research and determine what paper you want to purchase. You’ll also be able to choose a paper type- do you want your stickers to be matte? I recommend that as many people like to be able to write on their stickers easily. Then you can choose from repositionable sticker paper, or weatherproof matte material, which is a little higher quality than standard matte. You’ll want to keep your paper cost in mind, since that will have an effect on the prices you need to charge.

Then, you’ll need a printer. While there are some really expensive, fancy printers out there. I’ve always used pretty simple printers to save money since I have to usually purchase a new printer about once a year. It is a good idea to compare the prices of the ink for the printers you are considering. Any printer will have a high quality print setting that will give you sharper prints, and then you will be on your way to printing your stickers!

If you are trying to decide between laser printers and inkjet printers, for what it’s worth, my opinion is that for stickers, inkjet is the best way to go. Printing color ink with a laser printer can get expensive. I’ve used a laser printer before for printing inserts that were black ink only, but for colorful stickers, inkjet is going to be the most cost effective for you.

How to Make Planner Stickers to Sell on Etsy

Cut Your Stickers

There is some trial and error to cutting your first stickers, no matter what machine you use. It may take a few tries and some tweaking to get your machines to the perfect settings for your stickers, but I have some tips on printing and cutting your own planner stickers, that has tips for cut settings. Also here, if you create sticker cut files for printable planner stickers, you’ll need to make sure your cut files cut correctly, so be sure and test! If you are interested in selling digital stickers, let me know in the comments and I’ll do some more tutorials on creating and selling those. But, once your sheets are printed and cut, you have your product!

The only thing left to do is create listing images and get them listed on Etsy!

Sticker Shop Owner FAQs

How much money can you make?

I know that the next question you’ll have about how to make planner stickers to sell on Etsy, is how much money will you make? The money you make selling stickers will vary, things like the amount of your expenses and sales volume will all have an effect. However, it is entirely possible to create a great side hustle, make extra money, or even a full time income selling stickers. Printable or digital stickers would give you a passive income source, without heavy expenses from things like sticker paper, ink, etc…

But, creating stickers is the easy part, and your biggest challenge will be marketing your products and all that comes with running your own etsy shop or online business. My background includes a bachelor’s degree in business, specifically digital marketing, so I have lots of tips and advice for that side of business, to share as well. If you need tips on nurturing your customer base, how to ship stickers, the post office, social media, etc.. I can definitely help! Let me know in the comments what you need help with.

Why Sell on Etsy?

There are a lot of options for selling online, the most popular being Shopify and Etsy. There’s Amazon handmade, but I don’t really recommend them or know a whole lot about how to be successful there. But, there are two distinct differences between selling on shopify and selling on Etsy as a small business owner. With shopify, you need to drive all of your own traffic to your website. This isn’t impossible, and will definitely be a part of your journey. However, Etsy is an excellent starting point, simply due to the ease of use and the fact that Etsy helps you get your traffic and will send you customers who are ready to buy. As far as creating an online store goes, Etsy is a great first step in your process.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of how to create planner stickers to sell on Etsy, I have so much more I can talk about in regards to creating your own online business via Etsy, Shopify, and more. I have several tricks up my sleeve for easy to create physical and digital products. Sign up for my newsletter, and then reply to the confirmation email and tell me what you want to learn about next.

Share on Social Media

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *