If you are just starting to create printables to sell, it can be useful to niche printables down. But how do you find a good niche for your printables?
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Choosing a Profitable Printables Niche
If you’re brand new to printables, there’s one important step that you have to take first. That’s deciding what niche your printables will be in. Remember that each niche can have dozens of different types of printables you can create.
Children
If you’re someone who already has an established business, online or off, dealing with raising kids, then one niche idea for you to break into with printables might be designing baby stickers, baby wall art or even baby clothing patterns that parents can print off.
Existing Online Niche
For those who work online and who already have a niche, this step might be a little easier for you. You can simply connect the kind of work you already do with the type of printable you want to create and sell.
Fitness
If you’re into fitness, it makes sense that your printable endeavor would focus on all things related to fitness. It can be easiest to branch out into a printable area where you already have some knowledge of the market.
Don't Select a Specific Niche for Printables
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t start from scratch and pick a new direction to take. Some people choose a niche for their printables and then branch out and add other niches over time.
You can start with whatever you want to do and even change direction if you find that you don’t enjoy that niche. There’s no right or wrong way to jump into making money with printables.
Target Types of Printables Not Niches for Printables
Instead of picking a specific niche to target you might select a type of printable to start with – like invitations for all occasions or journals. This way, you won’t have to narrow down your niche topic just yet.
Research Printables Niches First
Do your research before you simply start uploading random printables. The reason that you want to do this is because you want to make sure that you’re choosing printables that are already selling for your topic or niche.
If there’s no market for it, then your printables won’t sell. If you’re at a loss as to what you might enjoy selling or what might actually sell, just look at your own life. So for example, if you’re tracking your sleep for your own health or fitness, then you know that’s something that other people are also probably doing.
It makes sense then that health trackers would be a good printable to start making.
Keywords for Ideas
To start your research, you want to use keywords. Head over to Etsy.com to get some idea of what’s selling.
You’ll want to do this for any site that has a searchable function where you plan to sell your printables. If you’re looking on Etsy, put in the word printable or printables in the search function.
You’ll notice that it will auto-suggest a ton of different types of printables. You’ll get ones for calendars, for wall art and more. This will give you an idea of what’s popular in printables on the site.
You can do some homework and get a feel for the items in these popular listings that are selling. However, you want to be careful because main keywords can be too broad.
A consumer that’s looking for one of those “Baby’s First Year” printable calendars may not get any results.
They’ll have to dig and might just miss your listing if you have baby calendars, but you don’t have that in your keywords. The more keywords that you use that are relevant to your printable listing, the more likely it is that consumers can easily find you through their search.
Keyword Analytics
Use a keyword analytical tool to see which keywords have the highest search volume that pertain to your printable niche. You’ll want to use those keywords and phrases. One of the best ways to make sure your printables are seen is to look at who’s selling what on the platform that you set your printables up on.
If someone else is selling it, even if it’s in the exact same niche, you can bet that it means the market is open for that printable. There’s a customer base somewhere.
When you do you research and discover what kind of printable that you’d like to do, make sure that it sells well.
Competition is healthy in online business. It means the topic has been proven to sell to a target audience. Don’t veer off to something unheard of if you want to increase your odds of success.
It can be tempting to think that if there are dozens of sellers with listings for journal page printables, that there won’t be room for yours. But there is. Taste is subjective. Some consumers will buy plain journal pages, while others want ones that are more decorative.
You can always tap into a niche, even if it’s crowded, and do well if your product is good. When you check out the sellers for the printable niche that you’re thinking of getting into, look under the seller’s name on Etsy.
Study Successful Sellers
This will show you how many sales that person has made. You’ll also be able to see their star rating. Study the sellers who have plenty of sales and who have ample stars. These are the ones doing it right.
Their product is getting noticed and the quality is good. By seeing what the comments are, you can also sometimes glean information about what customers are looking for. For example, if a seller is creating journal pages, someone might leave a comment saying they wish there was a space for the date at the top of the page.
You can use that information to make sure that if you create a journal page, that some of your designs have a space for the date. Just remember where there’s interaction from consumers, there’s interest.
When you start doing your research on your printable niche, you’re going to find seller after seller across various platforms. Don’t waste your time checking out sellers that aren’t creating popular designs.
Emulate the ones that do have the popular designs. For example, if you see that budgeting printables featuring positive phrases are selling well, it’s okay to create a budgeting printable that features phrases, too.
You just want to make sure that you’re not copying that other person’s work because not only is that unethical, but if you use something someone else designed, you could violate a copyright.
Look for inspiration when you do your research, not underhanded shortcuts based on someone else’s work. Seeing so many of the same kinds of printables within a niche might make you feel like there’s nothing new under the sun.
Research What's Missing
But a seller, even dozens of sellers, will not meet every single need or desire a consumer has for a product. So what you do is when you research, you look for what’s missing.
You might want to create birthday party invitations. You see a lot of those on Etsy and you’re wondering what you could do differently that would make you stand out as a printable seller.
You offer something the other sellers didn’t think of. With a birthday invitation printable, you might also add a thank you as a printable option. This way, the consumer can also fill out thank you notes for the gifts without having to go find printables that take care of that.
Find that unique selling point within every printable niche that will help consumers choose you over the competition. When you do your research, you always want to look for ways that you can upsell.
What more can you provide the consumer who chooses you? If you sell scrapbook pages, look for what you can also sell that might tie in with these pages. It might be stickers or special holiday pages, one for each holiday of the year.
Or it could be a family tree printable for the front of the scrapbook. By doing your research ahead of time, you can eliminate most wasted efforts and newcomer mistakes that keep people from succeeding.
Do You Want a Niche to Create Printables?
Now that you have a better understanding of the thought behind a niche for printables, do you love a specific niche?
What printables do you love? Let us know in the comments box.
Penny xx