How to Make Best Selling Digital Stickers for Etsy

The number of digital products out there continues to grow, as more and more people move from using things like physical planners to using a digital planner. This also means that people are showing more interest in digital stickers than in the past!

Digital planner stickers are a fun way to turn your creativity into a money-making business! But how do you get started? We’re going to cover how to make best selling digital stickers for Etsy to bring in passive income!

What are Digital Stickers?

Digital stickers are typically PNG images that have a transparent background that can be used easily on digital planners, or whatever else you may want them for. These can be fun images, quotes, basic shapes, designs with words and images, and post-it note style stickers. 

Digital stickers are sold on a variety of platforms, and they are becoming more and more in-demand. You will typically see these stickers sold in sets, and have a wide range of uses. Some may use these to mark dates or important events in their planners, some may use for desktop sticky notes, or maybe even to include in emails or on presentations. 

Digital stickers are definitely a newer product type and more and more uses are coming up for them! They are a great way to make passive income and turn this into a business!

How Much Can You Make with Digital Stickers?

It’s hard to say exactly how much you can make with a digital sticker business, because sometimes it can take some time to build up your customer base and build out your store. But we want to give you an idea of what it could look like potentially. 

A way to look at this is to look at some of the most popular shops selling digital stickers right now and see how much they charge per sticker and how many sales they have. One of these shops is called Happy Downloads, where they sell digital planners and digital stickers. 

Their sticker sets range from $3 to $7, and include from 300-1000 stickers in each set. They have a total of 84,487 sales and have been open since 2014. If you use $5 as an average price for their stickers, that would mean they have made $422, 435. But keep in mind they also have planners in their shop so this number could be even higher taking those into account. 

Another example of a high-performing shop is ZakkaDigital. They are a shop that is focused on digital stickers only and prices range from $2.50 to $7 for their sets. They have 23,980 sales, which would mean a total of around $119,900 if you average their price to $5.00. 

These are just very estimated numbers and these are top-performing shops that have a very large number of listings and have been on Etsy for a while. But, it can at least give you an idea of the potential out there and that digital stickers can definitely bring in income!

How Do Digital Stickers Work?

Digital stickers may be a little confusing as to how you actually use them. Once you have the file on your device, you will want to import it into whichever application you plan to use it or even your desktop. This can be Goodnotes or another similar digital planning app, or something completely different. 

There are a few different ways you’ll receive digital stickers when you purchase them. You’ll typically see the digital stickers as a transparent PNG sticker sheet. It would have all of the sticker designs in one larger PNG file. 

So if you were going to use this in GoodNotes, you would drop this image into the file and select the image and tap on crop. You can use the rectangle crop or freestyle crop to select the correct sticker. And that’s it!

Digital stickers can also come in individual PNG files, which may be more convenient for uploading a single sticker onto a file. All you have to do is drop the image into your file and resize and move as needed!

Another way you may see digital sticker sets sold is using a GoodNotes stickerbook. If you purchase stickers from a digital planning shop, this type of stickerbook/sheet might be included. The great thing about using a sticker book is that all the stickers are pre-cropped in one place, ready for you to use.

To use a stickerbook, you would transfer this file onto your device and open in GoodNotes. Use the marquee tool to select the sticker you want to use, and copy and paste into whatever file you want to use the sticker in. Then it’s ready to use!

How to Print Digital Stickers

One paper option that you can choose from is using sticker paper, or label paper, in a full A4 page or letter size. And you can actually choose different finishes, like matte, glossy, or vinyl. It’s just important to make sure the paper is compatible with your printer, whether it’s laser or inkjet.

Try out different paper types and finishes and eventually you will find something that you like best! But, since these are digital stickers, they don’t need to be printed out. This is only if you really are wanting to use it for something physical!

To cut your stickers, you can either do it by hand or with a cutting machine. But if you don’t have one of the cutting machines, like a Cricut, then you can use scissors or ran X-acto knife instead to cut them out. 

Where to Buy Digital Stickers

If you’re looking to buy digital stickers for yourself or maybe looking for digital sticker templates, what are the best options? The best option and where you will find the most to choose from is on Etsy. This is where sellers know to go to bring their handmade digital stickers to sell. 

You will find such a large selection and typically for a very reasonable price. So if you have specific designs in mind, there is a very good chance you will find what you are looking for! You’ll also find digital sticker templates on Etsy if that is what you’re looking for, to help you get started on creating your own!

Creative Market is another option for finding digital stickers, though they tend to be on the pricier side. But they do have a very professional and high-quality look, and typically come in larger bundles. You can also find a very large number of sticker templates on Creative Market as well!

Another option, especially if you have a specific type of digital sticker or template in mind, is to do a Google search to find any digital stickers that may be on individual websites. You may find exactly what you are looking for this way! Wild and Solo is a great place to start if you’re looking  for digital sticker templates to get your sticker business started.

Where to Sell Digital Stickers

Maybe instead of looking where to buy digital stickers, you are wondering the best option of where to sell digital stickers. The same platforms apply to sell digital stickers as where to buy them, as these three options are where you will typically find the best options.  

The first option is Etsy, as we mentioned above. Etsy definitely has a very wide selection of digital stickers on the platform already, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to sell stickers that do well. It just involves finding ways to make your stickers unique and stand out to your buyers. 

Creative Market is another option to sell digital stickers, and it is another marketplace with a wide range of options already out there. But this platform definitely has a different style of products from what you will see on Etsy and this may or may not fit what you have in mind for your sticker business.

Finally, you can also sell digital stickers from your own website! You can use a plugin like WooCommerce, or have a Shopify site to sell digital stickers without having to use a third-party platform. If you don’t have an established site already and would be starting from scratch, it may be difficult to drive traffic to your digital stickers. 

If that is the case, it may be better to start on Etsy where you can use their site to drive traffic to your products. It’s all up to you and what you see to best fit your business!

Can you sell digital stickers on Etsy?

The answer to that is definitely yes! These products fit all of the terms required by Etsy to be on the platform, and that means they are 100% allowed! Too often people have a misconception that Etsy is more about physical products and that digital products may not be considered “handmade,” but that is definitely not true!

The digital products on Etsy have grown in such a huge way, and it is all supported by Etsy, unless a product is not original or goes against any of their other terms. But digital stickers can definitely be sold in an Etsy shop!

Selling Digital Stickers on Etsy

How to Make Digital Stickers in Canva

You decided to start a business selling digital stickers, now it’s time to go over how to actually create digital stickers! Canva is an incredible platform that you can use to design just about anything you can think of. It is the most popular application of its kind, and is very user-friendly, for beginners to experts to use.

To create digital stickers in Canva, the first step is to go to “Create a Design”. You’ll want to choose your own dimensions at 500×500. This is a typical logo size that is a great size for a sticker. Then you can start on your sticker!

Adding elements to your sticker

Now is when you decide the direction you want to go to create digital stickers. Do you have an image already to use for your design? Or do you need to find one? The thing is that the free elements on Canva can be used for commercial use, but there’s a higher chance that these elements could have been used in another sticker design. 

An alternative to this is to bring in your own images to use for your sticker designs. This can mean drawing them if you have artistic ability or purchasing images. You can use something like clipart that you can purchase from somewhere like Etsy or Creative Market, which you can typically purchase a commercial license to go along with them. 

You can always add smaller elements to your sticker design from here to really make it stand out! This is just a small part of how to create stickers, but it can make a big difference!

Adding text to your sticker

Want to add some text to your sticker design? You can do this by navigating to the left hand side where it says Text. Then add a heading or subheading. From here you can move the text around, add more than one text box, change the fonts and size, and change the colors. 

You can also adjust the overlay of the text if you want to have the text in front of or behind the image. To do this you would select the text box, and in the menu at the top right you would choose Position and move the text box forward or backward.

Downloading your design

Once your design is finished, make sure to name your design something that would make sense for your buyers. Then you can select Share and then choose Download. From here, the file type should already be PNG which is what you would want. Then make sure to select “Transparent Background” before downloading.

How to Make Digital Stickers in Procreate

Another option to create digital stickers is in Procreate! This is perfect for those that love creating and using their artistic abilities. And here’s what you need to know to create your own digital stickers on Procreate!

First, it’s time to get drawing! This is where your creativity comes in and just take the time to create a design you are happy with! It can be hand-lettered words, or a drawn image, or both. Whatever it is that you want to create, and add the desired colors as well.

Next, you need to go to the Layers panel at the top right and tap “+” to add a new layer. This layer is to help create a border for your sticker, so you would move this underneath your design. Then you will need to draw a thin white border around the design to give it a sticker look!

The next step is to go back into your Layers panel and find “Background Layer.” You would need to uncheck this box to the right and this will make your sticker background transparent. 

You’ll need to crop your final artwork so there isn’t any extra white space around your design. To do this you’ll go to the top right of the toolbar. Then choose the icon that looks like a wrench. This pulls up the Action Panel, and you will tap on Canvas, and then Crop & Resize to crop your design.

Finally, it’s time to download your design! Go back to that wrench icon to Actions, and then you just select Share and then PNG and you’re ready to go!

Best Online Course Making Digital Stickers

If you’re ready to dive into selling digital stickers but still feel lost, then it may be a good idea to try out a digital course! Courses can walk you through exactly how to get started creating stickers, how to present them, and how to market them to ensure you bring in sales.

Basically, if you want to get started today and have someone tell you exactly what you need to know to start your digital sticker business, then this course is a great option!

Final Thoughts

Digital stickers are an opportunity to make passive income while you travel, spend time with family, and more. You can create these once and continue to bring in sales, without worrying about that design again!

Why not take your creativity and turn it into something that can bring in some extra money, right? Creating digital stickers and turning it into a business is something that is definitely possible for you and you can get started today!

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