Canva has become the go-to platform for the everyday person to create visually appealing digital content without needing traditional graphic design skills. If you're wondering how to make money on Canva, the platform offers multiple ways to turn creative skills into income. From selling customizable templates and graphics to reselling your work on various digital marketplaces, Canva allows individuals to monetize their creativity in diverse ways.
Canva is one of the most easily accessible design options on the market. Launched in 2013, it's aimed at making design easy for everyone no matter their graphic design experience. Thanks to their wide range of pre-made templates, graphics, and elements, users can customize designs for personal, business, or creative projects.
It's easy for people to use the platform to create everything from social media graphics to printable designs. Professionals use it for branding and marketing, educators create interactive presentations, and influencers produce eye-catching visuals for social media. As the platform evolved, Canva introduced more professional features, including Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise, making it a powerful tool for beginners and experienced designers.
Given the simplicity and creativity of Canva for its users, it's entirely possible to make money on the platform. Earning potential can widely range based on factors like demand, design quality and how one chooses to sell their creations. One of the biggest benefits is that many Canva monetization options have the potential to be passive sources of income, meaning they can be created once and sold ongoing without additional effort. More and more people are creating and purchasing things like Canva templates, meaning there is quite a booming market. While some methods have the potential to bring in more income than others, each option offers flexibility, letting you create a lucrative side hustle that suits your resources and available time.
One of the most frequently used methods of Canva monetization is creating customizable templates that can be sold to other Canva users. Whether it's a social media template, a business presentation, or a digital planner, users are constantly searching for unique, new, ready-made designs that they can quickly customize.
To get started, create templates tailored to popular niches like social media marketing, blogging or business presentations. Platforms such as Etsy, Creative Market and even Canva's own marketplace allow you to sell these templates. This approach requires an upfront investment of time to create a portfolio, but once the templates are live, they can generate ongoing passive income.
Another lucrative avenue of monetization is printables. There are many different options in the printable category, from planners and calendars to worksheets and coloring pages. Once a customer purchases these printables, they can download and print them at home.
Setting up a store on a platform like Etsy or Gumroad is a simple and quick way to start selling these printables. You can create a small number of designs that appeal broadly or even create themed collections to sell to your target customer. One of the biggest benefits of printables is that they require minimal upkeep once they're listed, making this an ideal passive income stream.
While having Canva templates available for purchase can help those looking for more of a semi-DIY process, offering your services to create content on Canva for clients start-to-finish is another way to monetize. A client may hire you to create a specific number of graphics, presentations, or documents on a monthly retainer basis.
This option may be more lucrative than others since it is more hands-on for you and more hands-off for the client. However, it will require more hard work on your part to find and contract clients. You will also only have the capacity to take on a certain number of clients, given how in-depth this service would be compared to something that is a one-to-many option like templates.
While many small business owners and entrepreneurs can figure out how to use Canva, given how user-friendly it is, many need more time to do it. Instead, they can hire Canva designers to create custom branding designs to represent their brands.
As a Canva designer for this type of project, the income can be quite high especially in comparison to creating templates that can be used by anyone. After finding a client who is interested in your services, you may work directly with them to nail down exactly what deliverables they're looking for from social media graphics and presentation templates to business cards or Instagram Story icons and stickers.
As you build your expertise using Canva, there's an opportunity to teach those skills to others. With Canva's popularity growing, there is a strong demand for educational content.
This educational content could be in the form of an online course that you sell to users where they can go through multiple modules where students are walked through multiple skills they can learn on Canva. It can also be a set workshop that you teach as you are hired to do so.
Bottom Line
Making money on Canva is a flexible, creative venture that fits a variety of skills and time commitments. Whether selling templates, printables, or your design services, Canva offers ample opportunity for talented creators to monetize their designs and build a profitable side hustle or full-time income.