Transcripts
1. Introduction: In this course, I will
show you how to create your own designs
and sell them to others so that they can
use them to make crafts with their Cricut, Cameo
or other cutting machine. This is perfect if you own
a cutting machine and you're already designing your own
creations from scratch. But even if you don't, it's a great way to make a
little bit of extra income. And you don't necessarily need to draw your designs either. So don't worry about that. You can create designs from commercially licensed
fonts and graphics. And in this course, I will
show you how to do that. There is a huge market for SVG designs as more
and more people get these home craft machines
and you can sell them across a variety of platforms or even
just on your own website. I currently sell them across three different
platforms and make a steady stream of income
doing so. So in this course, I'll go over several
different ways. You can create them using
different software, both free and paid for, where you can sell them. And then the best ways to upload them to your
chosen platform. Make sure you
download the workbook from the resources
section of the course. As it has all of the links, you will need a few extra
resources as well to help you. This will be more of
a simple overview for those who are beginners. So if you want to sell
more complicated designs, it might not be for you, although it might still
be helpful if you need assistance in certain areas. Your project will be to create
an SVG or an SVG bundle, upload it to a selling site, and then share a
picture of it in the project section so we
can see what you've created. I can't wait to
see what you make.
2. How To Come Up With Design Ideas: Unless you already have a folder full of designs that
are ready to go, the first step is figuring out who and what your designs for. In this lesson, I will go over
a few questions you can ask and things you can think about to help figure that out. When I first started
selling digital designs, I already had a vinyl decal wedding business. So it made sense to just
adopt the designs that I was already using for my
decals into more generic ones. and sell them as designs to other people who already had
their own cutting machines. That's how my wedding
SVG business was born. Although, I do also sell PNG and PDF files alongside those so
people can print the files and do other
things with them too. So although I'll mention SVGs a
lot throughout the course, do know that you can save your digital designs as a
variety of different formats. And I'll show you
how to do that too. If you already sell
iron-on designs for t-shirts, vinyl decals for home signs, shadow boxes etc, then people with Cricuts are unlikely to ever be your customers for those items. However, they could
be your customers for the design files that you
use to create them with, and you can choose
whether to sell them with a commercial license or not. if you're worried about getting too much competition
for your main business. Even if you don't already
have a business though, or an existing niche or an audience to sell
with. That is fine. If you're stuck for
ideas a helpful place to start is to look at what is
trending at the moment. What kind of designs
are currently popular on design sites, on Pinterest and social media. And elsewhere in society. This doesn't have to
be other SVG designs. In fact, it's probably actually better to look at other things completely so that you
don't accidentally copy. Look at things like
themes, motifs, colors, quotes, anything else that is popular out there
at the moment. You can perhaps start
a Pinterest board to save anything that inspires you. So you've got that as
a reference point when you come to
create your designs, You can also check out some of the
most current trend reports. I will link some of
them in the workbook, but Pinterest, Etsy and Creative Market have some
great ones in particular. Obviously, as I said, try to avoid copying any other SVGs that are out there.
Anything you make, you want it to be unique
and to stand out. So doing the same
as someone else, there's no point in it really. Also SVG bundles tend to do a bit better than
single designs. But it honestly just depends on the theme and how
unique your design is. Another thing to
think about would be what holiday seasons
are coming up, because that is when a
lot of people are looking for designs to either sell or to make for their
friends and family. So it's often useful to
keep an upcoming list of holidays handy so that you
can plan ahead of time. You use a space in the
workbook if you want to sketch or not some ideas down, then once you have an idea of the design that
you're going to make, you also need to know, is it for a vinyl decal, an iron-on decal, sublimation, card making. And also who is the
audience for this design? Do they need complex
files for it or will a PNG and SVG be enough. If you need a bit more
information on file types, I will link this article in the workbook which goes through all the different types
and what they mean. And you could also look at designs that are
similar to yours, see what kind of
files they offer. And hopefully that will
help you figure out what kinds of files you need to give your customers as well. Bear all of this in mind
because later in the course, as you're creating your listing, that is all stuff you
will need to know.
3. Licensing Fonts & Elements Explained: As I mentioned in
the introduction, you don't have to
draw your own designs in order to sell them to people. You can use premade
elements and fonts as long as you're not just selling those files directly
without changing them. And as long as you have the
correct license as well. It can be a bit of a
minefield because on every website their terms
are slightly different. For that reason, I can't
advise you on this legally. This is just my understanding
of how licenses work and should be
taken as guidance only. You should always do your own extensive research when it comes to your
business anyway, especially on the legality of using other people's assets. But as I understand it, as long as the font
or design comes with a commercial license
that allows you to use it in the creation of
an end digital product. Then that is what
you are looking for in order to make your
designs with them. I will link to a page in the workbook that has
various different sites. you can look at for
fonts and elements. Some of them are
better than others for being clear
about the licensing. For that reason, I
tend to get most of my font and elements from the
same few places every time. Because I find their terms
really easy to understand. And I usually know
exactly what I'm getting because they're quite clear. And
you should do that too. I can't really do it for you. It's something you should try and get your head
around yourself. Just take a look
through a few of them. Or look at design sites you already use and figure out which
ones you think are most clear in terms of licensing and will work
for what you need, then you can build up a list of favorites that you can search whenever you need a new
element or a new font style. And they can be your go-to. If there is a license
agreement included in the download of the
design that is ideal, then you've got that as proof that you have the
commercial license. If there isn't one, it doesn't mean you
can't use the design. It just means you might need
to check back every so often just to make sure nothing has
changed with the license. Although it is a
very rare occurrence that anything would change. That was a very simple
overview of licenses. Hopefully it gives you a bit of a better understanding though. But if you do have
any questions, drop them in the
discussion section, and I will try and answer
them as best as I can.
4. Create A New Design On Procreate: In this lesson, I'll go
over how to create a design on procreate using an
Apple pencil and an iPad. Just open up, Procreate, open up a new canvas, making sure it is 300 DPI, doesn't really matter what
size the canvases though. And you want a smooth as
line as possible. So don't use a brush
that's like this, that has any static. You want smooth bushes
like mono line or like happy bounce
lettering brush which I use a lot and I will
link to in the workbook. I'm going to use a mix of those. I'm very out of practice
with lettering, so please excuse my design. I'm sure you can do something
much more creative. This is just to show
you how to save things. So I'm just trying to get it as smooth as possible as I go through just doing some
little drawings as well. Once I've got it in the
place, I want it to be. I'm just going over each of
the letters to try and get them rounded and
smooth as possible. You can also do
this if you move it into Illustrator and
Inkscape afterwards. But if you wanted
to save this file directly from procreate then
you do want to do that. In Procreate. You don't have to
draw on here though. You can also use fonts as well. I will link to a video in the workbook of how to
upload fonts onto your iPad. If you're not sure
how you access them, You can move them
around how you like. so If you're not really
into drawing, or you just want a bit
of a cleaner design. this might be easier because it's so easy to move
stuff around as well. You can play with different
font styles, sizes, and you can kind of warp things to make it a bit
more interesting. I'm just adding little
drawing underneath, but you can pull in
pictures and icons as well. Then once you're happy
with your designs, make sure the background
layer is turned off so that you've got a
transparent design. And I'm going to
bring it all onto one layer to make things
easier then I'm just going to share as a PNG and
AirDrop that to my MacBook. I'm gonna do the same for
this design as well. Then I'm going to move them
to a SVG converter, I just find this is the
easiest way to do it. I use convertio, and you basically
just drag your PNG file in
and it makes it into an SVG. But I always
double-check the SVGs in Cricut design space just to make sure it has
definitely worked. I'm gonna do that
with both of them. There's all these other
different file types to choose from as well. So again, once it's downloaded, I'm just double-checking
that SVG in Design space. Make sure it's okay, make sure it's working fine. You always want to check your
files before you send them to customers to make sure
they're working okay.
5. Hand Draw And Upload A Design: In this lesson, I
will show you how to hand draw a design
and upload that. So I'm just using
a white sheet of paper and I want as smooth of a black line as possible
when I'm doing my drawing. So I just tested a few pens. The posca wasn't as smooth
as I wanted it to be. I'm not sure if you can
quite see it there. Neither was the Crayola. Brush pen was pretty
good, thick black lines. But I tried my tombow as well and I just wanted
to do little drawings, so the Tombow was
the best choice. And then I just decided to do
some quite simple doodles. Obviously, if I was planning
out a proper design, I would do it in pencil first, then go over in black line, and then rub out the
pencil underneath. This is just for the purpose of showing
you how I upload it. So it didn't need to be
anything too exciting. I usually just take a
picture of it on my phone. I try and get just
the white paper and the design in the frame. Bringing the exposure up to kind of increase the contrast between
the black and the white. I did also try some
of the filters on my iPhone as well just to
see if that would help. The vivid cool did
look quite good. And of course you could
also use a scanner as well. This is just the
picture that I uploaded to my computer and
I'm going to move it into Illustrator and
Inkscape (and Canva) to show you how I then make this into
digital files to sell.
6. Illustrator: Create, Edit And Export: In this lesson, I will
go over how to use Adobe Illustrator
to either create or finish your designs
and then how to convert them into
the correct formats. I'm just going to open a new
canvas here and then drag my hand drawing from
earlier into it, the JPEG. And then I'm going
to go to image trace and go down to sketched art. And that should take the black lines out of the
drawing really easily for you. Then just click Expand to
unlink all of the shapes. And then I'm just going to
move them all onto the canvas so you can see them. And then I just want to make
the shapes a bit smoother. So I'm gonna start with Path Simplify to improve
the curves on them first. This is just doing the
outside of the shape, you will also have to go in and
do the middles of the shape. You can move them around, but you can simplify
those as well. A few more details
on that section. If it's not quite going
exactly how you want it to go. But then you can
also find the path. If you click Command path, you should get this
big handle that helps you flatten things out a
little bit when you move it. And you can drag
the point as well. Then if you find
an anchor point, you should get this little circle
when you press Command. And that helps you round out the corner into
a curve as well. It's just a case, if you're
not already confident with illustrator, these things take a little bit of practice. And sometimes you can
oversimplify things, you can overcurve things. You just need to be
aware of your shape, make sure you're going back
and looking at it all as one shape quite often to make
sure it still looks okay. I'm just going to go through and do a little bit of editing
to these shapes. They're not going to be
perfect because this is just an example piece. I'll save that and move
on to the next one. This is the Procreate design. This doesn't need
as much editing, but you still need
to image trace it and we need to do black and
white logo for that one. Because it's a PNG. And expand again. With this, you need to get rid of all the background layer. So the easiest thing to do
I find is go into layers and then get rid of all of the white boxes where you
can't see any writing, so you're literally just left with those black bits.
Get rid of that. And then that should leave
you with just the wording. Again, you might want to
go through and simplify. if it's not quite smooth. If you spot any bits that kind of need a little bit of amending. So I want to make this P
look like the other one, with the sticky up bit. I can't remember what they're called. But you could also just get rid of that P completely
and then copy this one. Move it to here, and then it is exactly the same. We're gonna do the same
with the E's as well. They look pretty
similar. Let's make sure they are exactly the same. As you can see. There's so many different
ways you can kind of play them in your drawing to make
sure you're happy with it. Before you go ahead and save it. Leave that one there. Then open a new canvas. And I'm gonna start this
design from scratch. I'm just adding a
text box in there. You can change the fonts
from this drop-down box. Remember, only choose
fonts where you have commercial license
and you're allowed to use them for SVGs. Then I'm also gonna drag
in a picture as well. Again, when you're using PNGs, remember that you need to image trace to get rid
of the background. Black and white
logo for that one. Expand, then go to
Layers and get rid of any paths that don't have
any information on there. I'm also going to group all
of the wording and flag warp. just to kind of make it a little bit
more interesting, try out lots of these
different options as well. And the're my design. So just as an example of saving
things I'm going to use this design
which is pre-made. First thing you want to do obviously is save
the Illustrator file. To make sure you can
come back to it. Then EPS file, you don't
really need to do much with. It's very similar to
the Illustrator file. Just make sure it's
on transparent and that the fonts are embedded. Click, Okay, and
you have your EPS. Then to get your PNG, you can export file. Make sure transparent
is clicked and also that the resolution
is in on 300. The best quality. export that. Just make sure to double-check
that the PNG looks good, quality, That looks fine. Then export an SVG. Usually just leave those as they are. Then for SVGs I always
double-check on design space. I pull them in and make
sure they look okay. And that any of my customers will
be able to use them. You will need to tell
them that it needs to be welded before all
cutting all as one design. Then for the DXF, it's a little bit
more complicated. So make sure it's
ungrouped and that nothing can be
ungrouped any further. Select all and then export as... and if
you go to DXF file, export. Then you want to make
sure that it's a JPEG. Because it's black and
white, I'm just going to do eight colors. Maximum editability is clicked and you're exporting the
selected art only. Then to check them, I always pull them into silhouette studio
because that's what I would recommend
DFX files be used for just the basic version
of silhouette Studio. It will need grouping together, but once that's done, it should cut fine. And as you can see,
that looks good to me. Then I'm gonna come back to this hand-drawn one
just to show you how to isolate elements if you've got a lot on your
canvas and you just want to save one at a time, I'm going to add new layers
for each different drawing. Just drag them into Layer. Then export Selection, make
sure the one you want to save is exported. And then you can only do PNG or SVG when you do
this. But if you were doing
individual elements, that's probably how you would
give them to people anyway. Then if you want
to do a layered SVG, this is how I would do it, I'm just
changing the colors so I can kind of figure out which ones are on which layer. Add a new layer again and
then drag wherever you want, different layer
into the new one. Going to change the
color of this as well. And then when you
export it as an SVG, it will keep it as two layers, so it'll be easier for customers to kind of just
select that section to weld, and then also just select
the wording to weld as well. Then, as you can see that
will separate that into two different Matts to cut as
two different colors.
7. Inkscape: Create, Edit And Export: In this lesson, I will go
over how to use Inkscape, which is a free design software very similar to Illustrator, to either create your
designs or finish your designs and then convert
them to correct formats. I'm just starting
with the hand-drawn design that I did earlier. I'm going to pull it
into a new document. And I'm going to
use Trace Bitmap to separate the drawing
from the original. You want to go in here
onto the details. Make sure you have
a live preview and you keep updating it to make sure it's going to look correct. If you don't want the
threshold to be too high on the brightness section, otherwise it picks up
too many speckled bits. So make sure you get
it at the right place. Remove background, and
then uptake again, apply. And then you'll just need
to delete the background, picture, the original, and you'll be left with the drawing. Hopefully, there might be some little pixels that you need to delete
that it's picked up. But hopefully if it's a thick enough in a
blackened of drawing, I'll be around the parliament. This is though they
are all linked. So if you try and resize them, they will resides together. You break apart. And then you will combine
each one separately. Just go through and
do those and then you're able to resize them. From that. If you look a bit closer, they're not the
smoothest of things. So I'm just going to
start by simplifying. And that should
hopefully round it out. But you probably
going to need to go in and edit the paths as well. So we use these patterns
to show them and just go around and
just move them out. You can pull these lines, just do that with each one
until you are happy with them. Then I'm just going to pull in the procreate image that
I did earlier as well. Basic is a lot easier, but you do still
need to trace it. I'm just going to make
it a little bit smaller so it's on the document. Then go to Trace Bitmap. Make sure remove background
is selected again. The preview looks okay. Then apply once you're ready, then you just need to get
rid of the background, pull it out of the way, and make sure you getting rid of everything you don't need. You might also want to just
double-check as well by selecting the area to make sure everything's
gone both and you need. Then I'm going to try
and simplify that. Didn't really need it actually. But you can paths and just edit any little
bits that you want to make rounder or smoother
until you're happy with it. Then to create a new design, just opened another
new document. We use the text tool
and then go to this drop-down to look
for some fonts. Always remember you need the correct commercial license
when you're using fonts. I'm just going to move around
and we're also going to pull in an element
because it's a PNG. Again, I need to trace it to get rid of everything
in the background. Trace Bitmap to
the preview is on. As always, it makes
you remove background is ticked and pi. Get rid of the background
section, the original picture. It's going to move
that to where I want it and I'm going
to duplicate it. Now another one. And
I'm happy with that. But in order to make
this into an SVG, you need to change these
texts layers into paths. So the best way to
do that is to select all three and then
select Object Path. And then if you ungroup them, that will change everything
into a path instead. Just so your machine
knows where to cut when you go to Export. And Save as an SVG. First of all, just plain SVG. Then save. Then I always test it in
cricket design space. So that looks fine. You will just need to let
your customers know to weld the whole design before making it so that it stays together. Then I'm also going to save as a DXF file that just
leaving these as they are. Then I'm testing that in silhouette studio,
the basic version. When it comes to cope files, That's what I would recommend. You start in, just group it
together before you make it. Then I also want to
save as an EPS file. Select that from the
drop-down and save. Make sure you embed fonts. Just tested that in
Illustrator, it looks fine. You might want to find somewhere
else you can test out. Then I also want to export PNG image to get
my pay and J file. I'm just going to
change the filename here and hide all
except selected. And then export that mean to all of your
file is selected. Then I'm just checking
that InDesign space as well. It looks fine. Then if you want to
export single elements, you would also export PNG image. Hide all accept selected, making sure you've got
the right one selected. Then I did have to
go in export as, and then select my downloads
folder in order to do that. But again, that was
fine and design space. And then to create
a layered SVG, use a little cross button
on the bottom left to add another
layer and then drag anything you want
to separate into that new layer or however
many other layers you want. And you probably want
to change the colors on each layer as well
just to kind of differentiate them
from each other. And then you would just
go to Save as SVG file. Then when you open
it in design space, it will make it much
easier for customers to select either the wording, weld, the other bits and weld. And then because they're
different colors when they come to make it, it will separate it onto
two different mats
8. Canva: Create, Edit And Export: Canva is also an option
for creating SVG files. So if it's a program
you already use a lot, then you may want to start there. You do ideally want
the Pro version. However, I'm just
going to start with the hand-drawn design
that I did earlier. You can pull that
in and you can use the edit image button to remove the background
from pictures. This probably isn't gonna
work very well if it's quite a rough drawing
because you're not going to get good
enough quality. But if it's quite
a smooth drawing or a very basic shape
then it might work, and you can use the erase brush to
kind of get rid of bits, but that is basically
the only way you can edit so that one's not
going to work for this, but it might work for you. The next one, I'm going to bring it into Procreate design. That's a lot smoother. It doesn't really
need as much editing. You'll already have the
PNG from Procreate. But you can use this to
create the SVG as long as you have Canva pro
and you can click the transparent
background option. With my SVGs. I always pull them into Cricut design space to
double-check that they're okay. Canva is probably most suited
to create new designs. There are lots of different font choices but the licenses are a bit
confusing on Canva. I would recommend that you do
your own research into it, but as far as I'm aware, the free versions of fonts are all allowed to be
used for commercial use. And then the same goes
for elements as well. If you click the
free on the filter, these are all free
elements that you should be able to use in your designs. And you can move stuff around, but you are quite limited
to what you can do on Canva compared to
Illustrator and Inkscape. But it's great for simple
stuff like this if you're just doing
wording with elements. But as I said, licensing, is little bit confusing. It does say you can use it for
commercial use. And if you look into it further, you can use content in designs, and you can sell merchandise with it, as long as you're not
selling anything which is just an original canva template and you're not changing
something before you sell it. As long as you're creating
something unique, then you should be fine. But if you're unsure, I would just recommend
that you get in touch with Canva
and just double-check. You can also upload your own fonts into Canva if
you have Canva pro though, if you are a bit
worried about licenses, but you can only do that if
you have the right license and if you're giving your customers like
a finished product, they can't in any way
be able to use the font as their own. It has to be un-editable in that way. But that is an option if you
want to look into that too. And of course you
can do the same. Upload your own elements and stuff as well, that's
very easy to do. Then when it comes
to exporting files. So Pngs are very simple, you do need the transparent
background though. Then SVGs are very similar
and simple as well. Again, click that
transparent background and same goes for PDF as well. However, when it comes to
your other file types, you will probably need
to use a file converter. So you can do PNG
to DXF and you can also do PNG to EPS as well. I'm just going to
double-check them. Again I always check DXF
in silhouette studio. Just the basic version
is that is what I would recommend those
files be used in. And I'm just checking the EPS in Illustrator and it looks fine. Just always be confident with your files and that
they've saved correctly before sending them
out to anyone. And the SVG looks fine there too just testing that
out in design space. My only hesitance with
using Canva is the quality. Will they be good
enough if a customer needs them to be really large, these look
like they're okay, but maybe you want to test
some projects out with them first before going
ahead and selling them.
9. Where To Sell Your Digital Designs: In this lesson, I'll go over a few different
places that you can consider to sell your
digital designs. You don't have to,
but if you already have an online business
selling physical items, I would personally set
up a separate one for your digital designs just so that it doesn't
get too confusing. If you do already sell
digital designs though, then you should be fine as
long as your SVGs are kind of in a similar niche or
targeted at similar audience. You don't have to choose
one place to sell either. Most places on exclusive. You can choose a
few different ones to increase your audience reach. Just makes sure that the
prices are similar across all platforms so that you don't get any
unhappy customers. Where to sell. Etsy is probably one of the
easiest ones to set up. You don't need any prior
requirements to do so. Just be aware of your SEO and creating pictures that stand out and also bear in mind the fees that they take
off each listing as well. Make sure to use my
40 free listings linked to open your sharps, but you're not paying
fees just to start it and make sure that is
in the workbook for you. The next is your own website. There are various options
for starting iran website. Just make sure you're choosing one that you are able to sell digital downloads from
like Shopify, Squarespace. These are usually require
paying a monthly fee, so they're not always
the best option when you're just starting out. Unless you already have a large audience that
you could mark it too, if that is the case old
and it may be worth making a load of
designs at once, uploading them all
at once to your site and then launching it to
those people from that. Then for more
design focus sites, there are a lot out there, but you might not
necessarily get accepted into all of them, especially when you're
just starting out. It's worth applying
to quite a few. If you don't have an Etsy
or a website that you can give them links to as kind of a portfolio
of your work. You may need to
think about starting a Behance or a triple
or somewhere that you can showcase your designs
so that they can see them and they know that you're suitable for them
design bundles. This one is a very popular
site for SVG buyers. I have a referral link in my workbook as well if you
wanted to give them a try. My favorite thing about them is that they
give you lots of opportunity to be included
in promotions like bundles, $1 deal events, freebies,
daily deals, etc. All of which they promote. And if you're chosen
for one of them, it gets even more
eyes on your shop and more opportunity for
people to see what you do. They have a really easy
payout system as well. Create a fabric. I also
sat on create a fabric. And I found that customer
service to be super-helpful, especially if you
need assistance with adding things
to your store. Uploading options are a bit more limited in comparison
to other sites, but I get a lot of
sales without having to do much marketing
work at all. So it is a great site to be
part of Creative Market. You do need more of a
portfolio to be a part of Creative Market as they are
a very high-quality site. If you haven't Behance
or dribble account or a portfolio already online, there may be a good
choice for you to try. There would also be a good
choice if you're doing quite complex designs
and you want to be able to charge a bit more for
them as their prices do tend to be on the higher side compared to other design sites. Then as I mentioned
earlier in the workbook, I put a list of
companies that sell fonts and elements and
also do SVGs as well. So you can look into those
and contact a few to see if they open
to new designers. Again, I'm going to
put links to all of these places in the workbook. So don't forget
to download that. Feel free to add any
other recommendations in the discussion
section as well. That would be great.
10. Tips For Listing Your Designs: Once you have created your SVG
and you've got your shop, it's kind of just the beginning
of actually selling it. It is a very saturated market. I'm not gonna lie,
but that doesn't mean you can't stand out. So first you need an
eye-catching picture. For a lot of my designs, I tend to create mock-ups. It just makes them
stand out a bit more. And it also gives customers inspiration of what they
could use the designs for. You can pre buy
mockups that you just basically open in Photoshop
or somewhere like that. and you just add the design on the top. And it's as easy as that. But you can also make your own mockups out
of items you have at home. I will link to a tutorial on that If you're not quite
sure how to do it. You can also create mockups on Canva as well, that's quite
a good place to do them. They have loads of pictures like this which are
just blank and you can add your design on the top. The best ones are
part of Canva Pro. But you can also find
pictures like this on stock photo websites for
free as well. Just make sure you have the
right licenses as always. And you just basically
drag them in, place your design on the top. And it is as easy as that. They do also have the smart
mockups feature on Canva. however though, where
you add your design, then you choose from
one of these templates. Just going to go with this one. And it automatically adds your design on top
of a template. It kind of curves it around
so it looks like it's actually on the product and
you can just drag it out. Then I always tend
to add my logo. And then you can also
add the files that will be included with the
download if you want. Just have a look at what
other sellers do to kind of get an idea of what kind of thing customers
might be looking for. You also might want to add a watermark underneath
the design. Just bring the opacity right down so you
can't really see it. But also no one would be able
to just copy the design. Then download as a
JPEG for your listing. You don't have to do mockups. As you can see, a
lot of these people just do their designs, especially if you're
doing a bundle, you maybe do one mockup and then the rest you just kind
of put on one big picture. You can use Canva
again for that. Just pull all of your designs in or use whatever design
program you've been using most. All you really need to make sure is that people can
see what they're buying. And so it's going to stand
out next to a lot of these other sellers as customers
are scrolling through. So I'm just gonna walk you
through what I do on Etsy, but it is quite
similar on a lot of the other sites as well. So add as many
pictures as you can. You might want to do a couple of different things and then do the design with
sample of the top. And I also have a little 15% off for signing up to my e-mail
list banner there as well. You can also add a video. You might want to kind of show a video of the
design on something. And then when it
comes to the title, you want to get as many
keywords in there as possible. How do you find key words? There's a few different ways. You probably want to do a bit
more research into this. But there is this
platform called Erank, which focuses on Etsy keywords. And this is a paid version, but it does also give you some stats in the
free version as well, so it's worth checking
out if you have Etsy And you basically
lookup Keywords, see what has had searches, but at the same time doesn't
have a lot of competition. The more green boxes
you see, the better. Ideally, you can use a
combination of keywords as well. So that one hasn't got
that many searches, but it also hasn't gotten
that much competition either. I'm going to add that
one in as my main title. Then you can also
go on Etsy search as well and just type in what your design is and these
are all things that people have searched
for on Etsy already. You can use those
in your keywords. Those are really good ones. Or you can look on Google or Pinterest and see what
comes up there as well. And these long tail keywords are the things that
you're looking for. Again in Google as well, see what comes up
and just try and get a mixture of the
most popular ones. Then as I said, try and get a few in your title. Also, make sure you have
the correct category. Make sure you have
the right celebration and occasion ticked. That your file is
ticked as digital. Again, this is
another good place to add some of your keywords. Also make it really
easy to read. Make sure all of the
information you need to get across to your
customers is in there, what files they're
going to receive? And any of the details and tips on how to use your
files as well. I also linked to another
place in my shop. Then again, those keywords, you can only have them a
certain length on Etsy, but try and get as many of those ones that
you've just searched in there as possible. And also add your file
types into here as well. Then I do files at the bottom, you will need to zip your files. And Etsy only accept five at a time and they
can't be too big. So do bear that in mind
when you're designing. Design bundles looks like this. It's very similar to Etsy again, it's all about keywords, making sure all of the
correct things are ticked so it will
come up in searches, making it as clear as possible as to what you're
offering your customers. Then my last tip is
to avoid copyright. You can go on Etsy and you can see all of this
kind of Disney and all sorts of stuff that are heavily copyrighted and
they shouldn't be selling it. There is a chance they
will receive a cease and desist from the company who owns
all of these things. So I would never
recommend doing anything like this. If you want to look
into it further. There's so many instances
where companies have been shut down and have got into a lot of trouble basically
from doing this. So it's not worth the risk. I know some people will be like, well, what do we make? Nearly everything
is copyrighted. But actually, when you look
into other designs are so many simple things
like these wedding one's - very generic and
this like world's best Mum, that shouldn't
be copyrighted. I mean, you never
know for certain. But things like this are very
generic, should be fine. There's also so many kinds
of unique designs and quotes that you can come up with or just create designs
around words. There is so much you
can do without having to just copy
well-known brands.
11. Get Started With Marketing: Once your listings are created, you will want to promote
them where possible. There are so many different
ways you can do this. You will need to research into it further once
you choose one of them. But this is just gonna
be an overview to give you a few ideas in order
to get you started. If you're selling on Etsy, you could try Etsy ads. So these ones across the top are all people
who are paying for ads. You don't have to, especially if you're
selling things low price, but if you want to,
just go in the Etsy ads section under marketing and
then you can set a budget. And they'll spend
that every day on sending your listings
out to new customers. You won't always get the
top result however, you are bidding against others, but it might be worth it if you want to start to
get eyes on your shop, Then you can also use Pinterest. There are a lot of crafters on Pinterest so it's probably likely that your audience will be
hanging out there anyway. Just try and make your pins
stand out, make longer pins, and make customers want
to click on them as well, not just kind of save
them or scroll past them. Instagram could also be a good platform to use as
well because it's so visual, a lot of SVG sellers
are already on there. Just make sure people
know how to click through to your shop
to purchase SVGs. And also that you're building a bit more of a backstory as well. and that you're not just doing flat
pictures all the time. Make it a bit more interesting so that customers
want to engage. You could also create a
Facebook page if you want, and then you can share
other things as well as your SVG designs. Or you could create a
Facebook group as well. If you want to manage that. And then you can
give your customers access to discounts and special SVG designs and anything you can think
of to keep them engaged. Another option is Reddit. There are a few
sub-reddits that are for SVGs and Cricut, just make sure that if you're posting
your designs on there, you're actually allowed to. And that it's not against the
rules for self-promotion. There are literally so many ways to promote your products. So take a look on Pinterest
for some inspiration. There's lots of blogs
on there that go into more detail about various
ways you can do this. You could also look at some
short courses as well. Lots of people have kind of
free courses you can work through depending on what
platform you're choosing. Just make sure anyone
you're getting advice from has the most
up-to-date knowledge.
12. Bonus Lesson (For Extra Income): In this bonus lesson, I'll just go over a few
more different places that you can sell
your designs to make a little bit
of extra income if your designs are suitable. The first place to check
out is redbubble. They sell t-shirts, stickers, pillows, magnets, masks, all sorts of things that you can
easily add your design too. It's really simple to
upload on that platform. And they do a lot of
the marketing work for you and you get a
little percentage every time they sell something. Another great one is teepublic. Again, really easy
one to sign up to. I've got a referral link
in the workbook for you. It's really easy to upload
products and that, again, is all about SEO, just making sure you
have the right tags and stuff in your description. That means customers
will find your designs. If you're already
using them for SVGs, you can kind of bring the tags across to these
platforms as well. Another one I sell
on is Society6. They have really
high-quality items. The usability on Society6 isn't as good as the
other two in my opinion. But again, it really just depends on what kind
of designs you have. There are lots more
like this as well. I'll add all of the
links in the workbook. But then if you want to make a little bit more with each sale, you can also do a print on-demand store
yourself using Printful and get your designs printed on stickers or t-shirts
or anything like that and list them in your own shop. So you can use any of these to integrate with
printful or printify. And I would say that is a
little bit more work than the other options because you're more responsible
if they go missing. But it is another
option as well. If you want to expand
your income further, It is very saturated, so there's no guarantee
that you will make money or you might only
make a little bit. But for something that won't
really take up that much of your time and could be bringing
in extra money for years, then you've got nothing
to lose, right?
13. What Next?: And we're done. I hope you found that helpful
and that you're excited to start making an extra
income with your designs. Don't forget to
add your design to the project section
of the course so that we can see what
you have achieved. If you wanted to
make even more money with your Cricut machine, then do check out
my how to start a vinyl decal business
course here on Skillshare. If you haven't already. As well as all of my other
existing courses too, which can hopefully help you
on your business journey. And do follow me on
YouTube and TikTok for even more tips as well
If you like the course, I would also be very grateful if you could leave me
a review so that other people can see it and benefit from this
course as well. Thanks so much again for taking my course and best of
luck with everything.
Sarah Bradley, Making & Selling Vinyl Decal Classes
