How Becky Beach Makes Thousands a Month Selling Printables!

Creating and selling printables is one of the most popular side hustles online right now and for good reason! This is such a fun side hustle because there are so many different types of printables that can be created.

My friend Becky is sharing her journey on how she got started online and created a business geared around making and selling printables. Today Becky makes thousands of dollars per month selling printables in her online shop!

I’m sure you have heard of people selling printables before. If not, they are PDFs that a customer downloads and then prints at home. There is no shipping involved like a physical product. 

Printables can consist of planners, journals, coloring pages, kid’s activities, and more. I have even seen printable posters and wall art being sold. 

The sky’s the limit when it comes to what kinds of printables you can make.

My Blogging Journey Before I Started Selling Printables

I had been blogging for a year and a half but my blog, Mom Beach, wasn’t getting enough traffic to qualify for a good ad network, so I was distraught. 

All in all, I was making only $150 a month, mostly from my affiliate partnership with Survey Junkie.

My family said I should quit blogging and get serious about working harder at my “real job” as a User Experience Designer at a finance company.

I just hated my 9 to 5 because it was so stressful. There just had to be a way I could make money with my blog and fast!

I was about to find out.

My Printables Awakening

A top blogger that I follow advertised a bundle called the Genius Bloggers Toolkit. I was intrigued because there were so many blogging courses for only $97.

I bought it and started signing up for everything!

One of the items in the bundle was a PDF planner from Abby Lawson from A Girl and Her Blog. I was amazed that it was a planner that I could print out and use!

My bachelor’s degree was in graphic design, so I knew how to create products like this. I had even designed the layout for a catalog at a previous position.

My First Printable

That evening, I got started designing a home organization and cleaning planner for my blog’s audience.

Many of the moms who were on my email list were interested in those topics, so I thought it was a great product idea.

After I was finished with my printable, I wasn’t sure what cart to use in order to sell it. There were so many options available!

Where Should I Sell My Printable?

In the past, I had used Etsy to sell custom coloring pages for weddings but had a horrible experience.

A competitor of mine gave me a 1-star review, which affected my whole business. She said in the review that my coloring page arrived wrinkled and badly drawn.

After that, no one would buy any more coloring pages so I had to close down.

There was no way I was going to open another Etsy store.

I researched Send Owl, ThriveCart, Pay Hip, and more. None of them had a storefront like I wanted my new printables store to have.

Before I got started with blogging, I used Shopify to dropship women’s handbags. However, I didn’t know how to sell digital products on Shopify or even if it was possible.

With further research on the subject, I discovered that you could use Shopify to sell digital downloads using a free app.

Why Use Shopify Over Etsy?

I picked Shopify because I wanted a nice storefront that resembled Etsy. However, I wanted to own a store that I had control over.

Etsy did nothing about the bad review so my store suffered greatly. 

On Shopify, I installed a reviews app called Loox Reviews that lets you remove bad reviews. You can even set it so you don’t even post reviews that are less than 3 stars or however many stars you want.

Etsy also displays other competitors on your sales listing so the customer may not even purchase from you. I was running ads to my Etsy sales listing, only to find that other competitors received the sale.

With Shopify, there is no competition at all! It’s only your products being shown.

Another benefit of using Shopify is that you can control the pricing.

I list my own printables at $7 to $27 and still get sales.

It is also very simple to set up a Shopify store. 

My First Shopify Printables Store

I spent all weekend creating my Shopify store to sell my printables. It was such an easy process and I didn’t have any trouble at all.

When my shop was finished, I listed my printable in it and hoped that I would start getting sales. 

In my blog’s navigation, I connected my shop to a link that said “Shop”. The first day, I had many visitors to my shop, but no sales.

I started getting discouraged!

A thought crossed my mind that maybe I didn’t have enough printables to sell. There was only one printable in the store.

Filling My Shopify Store with Printables

I created a few more printables that weren’t as many pages.

The other printables focused on self-care and time management. These were other topics my email list was interested in.

I had created a survey using Google Forms to see what products my list would be interested in.

That’s a great idea to see what products you can sell to your email list!

It was time for me to email my list again because it was a Friday. I try to email on that day once a week to stay consistent. 

My First Sale

In my email to my list, I introduced my new printables store and shared with them the 3 printables that I had created.

I didn’t come off as a cheesy salesperson, just explained the benefits of each printable so they could see if it was for them.

To my amazement, I had one sale after my email! It was such a great feeling!

I had never sold anything to my email list before, only gave out free advice and other freebies.

After that sale, I knew I was on to something!

I continued making printables each weekend to list in my store. Now, I had 5 in total! 

More and More Sales

When I woke up on Sunday morning, I had $50 in my Shopify store. Someone had purchased my printables during the night.

It may have been someone from my email list or a random visitor to my blog. How cool is that?

The following month, I broke over $100 in sales!

The sales just kept coming in as my blog’s traffic grew.

I qualified for Mediavine because Google started ranking many of my articles on page 1.

In the top-ranking posts, I put a picture of my printable that related to the post and a link to purchase it in my Shopify store.

To my amazement, I was getting even more sales from that tactic.

Earning Subscribers and Sales from Printables

I had even created free opt-in forms where a subscriber received a free printable. Then, they would get redirected to what is called a tripwire sales page.

A tripwire sales page is a single page that has a countdown timer, sales copy, pictures of your printable, and buy buttons. The subscriber must make a choice to buy the offer before the timer runs out or they miss out.

The buy button linked to the printable in my Shopify store so they could buy it!

My sales went through the roof after setting up some of these sales funnels. I now have 5 main funnels on my blog with topics ranging from budgeting to home organization.

My Continued Success with Selling Printables on Shopify

I have had my Shopify printables store for 2 years now and now earn $3k-$7k a month from printables alone. Most of my sales come from random people visiting my blog and from my sales funnels.

If you don’t have a store on your blog, you are leaving money on the table! I think all bloggers need to sell a product to earn more money.

My Shopify store now has over 80 printables for sale! It’s so awesome how far I have come. 

Are you Interested in Creating Your Own Shopify Store?

If you are interested in learning more about creating a Shopify store to sell printables in, then check out my course Printables Ecom Academy!

Inside my program, I give you step-by-step instructions on how you can set up a successful high-converting Shopify printable store of your own. 

There is even a student-only Facebook group of more than 500 members that receive all the help they need.

We have had several success stories of students getting their first sales in their Shopify stores! It’s such an amazing community that I look forward to checking out each day.

I hope you will consider selling printables on your blog to create another income stream! Here’s to your success!

Author Bio

Becky Beach is a mom and a 6-figure printable business owner at MomBeach.com. She loves to help others start their online businesses from scratch, as she has done. Becky lives in the Dallas, Texas area with her family and 3 pets.