Selling Canva templates on your WordPress site is an excellent way to monetize your design skills and connect with a wider audience.
Many people are eager to purchase design templates as they help save time and effort.
At CanadaCreate, we utilize Canva to create designs for our blog’s Instagram account. We’ve also observed how our partner brands successfully sell digital products using WordPress in conjunction with Easy Digital Downloads.
With our extensive experience in both areas, we are excited to share our insights.
In this article, we will guide you on how to sell Canva templates on WordPress, enabling you to start generating passive income.
Why Should You Sell Canva Templates?
Unlike Adobe Photoshop, Canva is an intuitive design tool that anyone can use to create professional-quality graphics. This means you don’t need to be a graphic design expert to start selling Canva templates.
Additionally, Canva is free to use. However, if you want access to over 1 million premium photos, videos, fonts, and other advanced features, you might consider upgrading to Canva Pro, which is priced at $14.99 per month or $9.99 when billed annually.
So, what are the benefits of selling Canva templates?
Canva templates have gained immense popularity, with numerous individuals and businesses seeking inspiration and efficiency from Canva creators. Here are some additional advantages:
- Generate Passive Income:By creating a digital product once, you can earn passive income as it continues to sell for years.
- Scalability:Boost your earnings by simply adding more digital products to your WordPress site.
- Low Costs:The only expense is building your website. Additional costs, like upgrading to a Canva subscription or using a WordPress eCommerce plugin, can enhance your selling experience.
- Flexibility:Canva templates can be tailored to virtually any niche. Whether you want to create a fitness tracker or a diet plan, or design social media templates for businesses to generate appealing visual content effortlessly, the possibilities are endless.
While selling Canva templates on platforms like Etsy or Gumroad is an option, these sites take a cut of your profits and offer limited control over your product page’s appearance and promotional strategies.
Branding is crucial, which is why we suggest selling Canva templates on WordPress. This platform allows you to establish your own rules and manage the entire customer experience. Later, we will guide you through the process step by step.
Popular Canva Templates You Can Create and Sell
Before diving into sales, consider this important question: What type of Canva template should you create?
The great news is that the possibilities for Canva templates are virtually limitless. Here are some of the most sought-after options to kickstart your journey:
- Blog images and featured thumbnails
- Social media graphics, including thumbnails, post banners, stories, and more
- Planners and calendars
- Presentations and slide decks
- Workbooks and worksheets
- Menus, recipes, or event invitations
- Resumes
- Stickers
- Holiday cards
- Business cards, posters, brochures, or flyers
- Contracts
- Notion templates
The simplest way to determine what to sell is by considering your audience’s challenges. What type of template can you offer that will simplify their lives by saving them time and reducing frustration?
Start by validating your idea by checking if others are successfully selling similar products. You can explore marketplaces like Gumroad to find numerous positive reviews.
Once you’ve made your decision, you’re ready to begin creating and selling your Canva templates.
To get started, you’ll need to create a Canva account. After signing up and setting up your account, follow these steps.
Step 1: Set Up Your WordPress Website
To sell Canva templates, the first step is to establish your WordPress website.
This involves acquiring web hosting, a domain name, and an SSL certificate.
Web hosting can be thought of as renting online space to store your website, including all your files, images, and content. The domain name serves as the address for users to access your site, while the SSL certificate ensures that data exchanged between a user’s browser and your website’s server is encrypted and secure.
To assist you in getting started, it’s important to select a reliable WordPress hosting provider.
After testing various options, we highly recommend SiteGround as the top choice for selling Canva templates. They provide managed WordPress hosting specifically tailored for Easy Digital Downloads (EDD), enabling you to set up your website and online store in just a few minutes.
Enjoy discounts of up to 83% when you choose one of their plans, which come with EDD preinstalled, daily WordPress backups, a free SSL certificate, an email domain, and a variety of optimization tools ready to use.
We will guide you through the process of setting up your WordPress site, starting with signing up for hosting and obtaining your domain and SSL certificate.
Visit the SiteGround website and select from the three available hosting plans.
Once you have selected the plan that best suits your needs, click on ‘Get Plan.’
Next, enter your preferred domain name and click ‘Continue.’
Important:If you need assistance, check out our guide on selecting the perfect domain name.
You will then be asked to provide your account information and purchase any additional services, such as domain registration and privacy protection.
Finally, enter your payment information and complete the purchase to gain access to your web hosting account.
Shortly, you will receive an email containing instructions on how to access your SiteGround account.
Follow the provided instructions to log in to your account. You will be directed to the dashboard. Under the ‘Websites’ tab, click on the ‘Site Tools’ button next to your domain name.
From this section, you can manage all essential information about your site, including email accounts and file management.
Click on ‘Install & Manage WordPress’ to proceed.
You will be presented with the option to choose between WordPress or WordPress + WooCommerce.
Select the option under WordPress.
An Application Setup form will appear below.
Fill in your desired login details for your WordPress site, including a username, password, and the email address you wish to associate with the site.
Finally, click ‘Install,’ and you will be redirected to the WordPress dashboard, where Easy Digital Downloads will already be installed.
Step 2: Designing Your Canva Template for Sale
Next, log in to your Canva account. From the Canva homepage, navigate to the ‘Templates’ tab located in the left panel.
You can explore various categories and select a template that fits your requirements.
For this tutorial, we will choose an Instagram Post template, available underAll templates » Instagram Posts.
Click on any template you like. By selecting a pre-designed template from Canva, you eliminate the need to determine the correct image sizes (which is crucial for social media) and create the design from scratch.
A pop-up window will appear. Click on ‘Customize this template’ to proceed.
You will be directed to Canva’s user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, where you can customize your template to your liking.
On the left side, you can add elements and text, upload your own images, and access various other features. Canva also offers AI tools that generate written content or images based on your descriptions.
In the editor, simply click on any element you wish to modify. You’ll find a variety of options, such as changing fonts and colors, duplicating elements, deleting them, and more.
If you plan to sell templates, it’s advisable to create multiple pages in Canva. Many creators and businesses that sell Canva templates prefer to bundle them together, allowing for higher pricing.
Instead of selling a single Instagram post template, consider creating a collection of a dozen Instagram posts featuring the same design. Alternatively, you could offer a complete social media post bundle, providing customers with a variety of templates for different purposes.
Simply click the ‘+ Add page’ button in the editor.Navigate to Design » Templatesin the left panel, where you’ll find related templates that are extremely useful for creating a bundle.
Remember, you can also upload images, videos, and audio files to enhance your template.
For instance, here’s an Instagram Story template that includes all necessary cuts, text, and music. Customers can utilize this template immediately, only needing to personalize the video and text.
Once you’ve finished customizing your template, you’re ready to export it.
Click the ‘Share’ button in the top right corner. Here, you can select the file type and size for your template. Finally, click the ‘Download’ button when you’re finished.
You might also want to explore our list of tools for creating better images, especially if you’re uploading images to Canva.
Now that you have created your Canva template, you’re all set to upload it to WordPress and start selling.
Step 3: Installing and Activating Easy Digital Downloads
Next, you need to install and activate the Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) plugin. This is the top eCommerce plugin for WordPress, enabling you to effortlessly sell digital products on your site, including Canva templates.
The great news is that you can start with the free version of Easy Digital Downloads. However, if you’re looking to boost your conversions and maximize your earnings, consider upgrading to the premium version.
The Pro version unlocks advanced features such as additional payment gateways, integrations with email marketing services, recommended products, recurring payments, add-to-cart pop-ups, multi-currency support, and more.
If you purchased a SiteGround hosting plan using our link earlier in this tutorial, Easy Digital Downloads will already be installed on your website. If not, you can refer to our guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
After activation, you’ll be directed to a setup wizard that personalizes the plugin for you. It will walk you through each step, and you simply need to provide the necessary information.
Step 4: Configuring Easy Digital Downloads
Once you’ve finished the setup wizard, you’ll need to set up the location of your online store.
You might be curious about the importance of adding your location even if you’re not selling physical products. This is essential because Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) utilizes the customer’s country, state, and province to automatically fill in their information during the checkout process. This information is also necessary for calculating sales tax.
Simply navigate to Downloads » Settings. Ensure you are on the ‘Store’ tab located under the ‘General’ section.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and fill out all the fields related to your business address. Additionally, select your country from the ‘Business Country’ dropdown menu.
After setting your store location, click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Step 5: Setting Up Your Payment Gateway
Next, you’ll need to configure your payment gateway to facilitate easy payment acceptance on your website.
Go to the ‘Payments’ tab and then select the ‘General’ tab. Here, you can check the boxes next to the payment methods you are willing to accept.
The free version of EDD includes Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon by default. This allows your customers to use most major credit cards as well as their PayPal or Amazon accounts to complete their purchases.
With the Easy Digital Downloads add-ons, you can also integrate payment options like Authorize.net and Braintree.
To set up each payment gateway, click on the gear icon.
Let’s briefly explore how to set this up using Stripe.
You will be directed to a new page where you can link to your existing Stripe account.
Click the ‘Connect with Stripe’ button.
Next, log in to your Stripe account. You will see a list of all Stripe accounts associated with your email address. Choose the Stripe account you wish to connect with Easy Digital Downloads.
When customers make payments, the funds will go directly to this account, and any refunds will be processed from this account as well.
Click the ‘Connect’ button. If you don’t have a Stripe account yet, simply select the ‘Create a new account’ option.
After connecting your Stripe account, you will return to WordPress.
Next to ‘Connection Status,’ you should see that your Stripe account is successfully connected.
If you want to enable payments through PayPal, follow the same steps as with Stripe, but navigate to the PayPal tab instead.
Step 6: Upload Your Template as a Download
You are now ready to upload your Canva template to your WordPress site.
Navigate to the Downloads » Downloads section in the admin dashboard.
Next, click on ‘Add New.’
Begin by naming your Canva template to inform visitors about its content. Be sure to include a primary keyword and any unique elements that will make the title appealing.
Then, create your product description. This is your opportunity to showcase your marketing skills. Explain what users can expect from your template and why they should choose to download it.
Under ‘Download Details’ (located beneath the content editor), you will find several options to select from. For the ‘Product Type Options,’ you can choose from various categories, including:
- Single Product
- Bundle
- Service
For Pricing Options, you can set the price for your product. You also have the option to enable variable pricing.
For example, if you are offering a social media template bundle, you can check the ‘Enable variable pricing’ box to sell individual templates separately, such as Instagram templates, YouTube thumbnail templates, and more.
Next, enter your ‘File Name’ and upload the ‘File URL.’ You can either paste the file URL link or click the link icon to upload the file directly from your computer.
If there are specific instructions for downloading the file, make sure to include them in the ‘Download Instructions’ section.
For instance, if you’re selling a bundle, you might want to package them into a zip file. It’s helpful to add a note explaining how users can unzip the file.
In the right panel, you’ll find numerous options to customize.
‘Download Image’ allows you to upload a thumbnail of the Canva template, which can attract potential buyers.
Under ‘Refund Status,’ you can choose whether the product is refundable or non-refundable. Additionally, specify the number of days customers have to request a refund.
Below that, you can select either an ‘Add to Cart’ button or a ‘Buy Now’ button.
If you have the Pro plan, you can also add product reviews to the page.
This feature provides social proof and helps build trust with your customers.
Once you’re finished, you can preview how it will appear.
This is a preview of how our example Canva template download looks.
Finally, click the ‘Publish’ button located in the top right corner of the screen.
This will activate the download feature on your website.
Verifying Your Download Functionality
Next, you should complete the entire checkout process to ensure that customers can successfully download the product.
To check its functionality, navigate to the Downloads » Settings section.
You will need to enable ‘Test Mode’ to verify that visitors can finish the checkout process.
Additionally, ensure that the payment gateway and all preferred payment method icons are selected.
Then, click ‘Save Changes.’
When you add the template to your cart, a summary of the order should appear.
You will need to input your billing and payment information to finalize the purchase.
After completing the test purchase, you will be directed to the confirmation page.
There, you will find the purchase details along with a link to download the zip file containing the Canva template.
Each time you receive an order, it will be listed on the Downloads » Orders page.
You will also get a sales notification via email.
Just remember to disable test mode once you are finished.
Step 7: Marketing Your Canva Templates
Each Canva template is published as a separate page on Easy Digital Downloads, requiring you to attract visitors to these pages.
There are numerous ways to inform your audience about your new Canva template on your website.
For example, you can add an announcement bar at the top of your site or include links to your template pages in your navigation menu.
Alternatively, you can incorporate your Canva templates into a blog post or webpage.
Easy Digital Downloads simplifies the process of embedding your digital product on any page. Just edit your Canva template, and in the right sidebar, copy the ‘Purchase Shortcode.’
You can now place this shortcode in various locations on your website. For detailed guidance on adding shortcodes to a page or post, refer to our tutorial on using shortcodes in WordPress.
In addition, here are a few more strategies to promote your Canva template:
- Create blog posts on topics related to your Canva template. At the end of each article, include a call to action encouraging readers to check out your Canva templates.
- Utilize OptinMonster to design coupon popups that offer a discount code for your Canva templates in exchange for the user’s email address.
- Incorporate sales notifications using TrustPulse, the top social proof plugin for WordPress.
Congratulations! You now have the knowledge to sell Canva templates on your WordPress site, allowing you to transform your ideas into a stream of passive income.
Bonus: Strategies to Increase Your Online Sales
To enhance your earnings, we suggest implementing cross-sells and upsells on your website. This strategy enables you to offer additional products, whether they are more Canva templates or premium services.
For instance, if you provide Instagram templates, consider offering a done-for-you service that assists businesses in managing or growing their social media presence. This approach positions the template as a valuable introduction that builds trust in your expertise before customers are ready to invest in higher-priced offerings.
You can achieve this by utilizing the EDD Cross-sell and Upsell add-on, which is accessible to paid members.
By integrating this extension into your plugin, you can feature other digital products on both the product and checkout pages, potentially leading to impulse purchases and increasing the average order value.
Here’s a practical example of how this works.
Consider creating a complete sales funnel to boost your conversions. For instance, using OptinMonster allows you to display promotional popups featuring discount coupons, limited-time offers, and more.
For further information on this topic, refer to our comprehensive guide on building high-converting sales funnels in WordPress.
We hope this article has helped you understand how to sell Canva templates on WordPress. You might also be interested in our expert recommendations for proven strategies to earn money online through blogging with WordPress, as well as our affordable and simple online business ideas that generate income.
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