Social media templates are a huge timesaver. If you are creating them to use yourself, then why not sell them to others and generate a passive income stream?
There is great opportunity with this particular passive income stream as there are so many social media platforms. Produce templates for Instagram and use the Magic Resize function in Canva to quickly change the templates for use with Pinterest. Brand consistency is important, so using the same graphics across several platforms is actually a bonus and a selling point.
Is there a demand for Social Media Templates?
Erank shows that there are an average of 7007 searches on Etsy in the USA every month for the term Social Media Templates. Google searches are at an average of 2408 per month for the period January 2023-January 2024.
The click through rate on this keyword phrase on Etsy is showing at 100%
On the first page of an Etsy search for Social Media Templates, 21 out of 64 are showing a bestseller tag, meaning those listings are selling. My own bestseller tagged items are selling every day.
Selling Points for Social Media Templates
When promoting your templates for sale, consider what will persuade your customer to buy:
- Eye-catching posts
- Time saving, minimal input designs
- Inspiration
- In line with current trends
- Brand Consistency
- Low skillset required for editing
- Minimal effort option for social media presence
How to Create Social Media Templates to Sell
Canva is my favourite software for designing templates for sale. The designs can be made and a template link shared with the buyer, which will add the template to their Canva account. This allows them to edit, delete, whatever the template and your template stays untouched in your account.
Firstly, create the templates using the help offered in Canva OR buy in templates with a PLR licence – this means you can sell the template.
Produce a PDF document containing the link to your template. The purchaser will then buy this PDF document via your Etsy listing which contains the link to add your templates to their Canva account for their own personal use.
Niches With High Potential
I have used Erank and the Etsy search bar (the bar at the top of the Etsy homepage) to research what long tail keywords have a high search level AND low levels of competition. As of January 2024 these are:
- Real Estate Social Media Templates
- Social Media Templates Salon
- Modern Social Media Templates
- Instagram Template for Coach
- Instagram Templates for Virtual Assistants
- Tik Tok Template
- Social Media Marketing Templates
For this particular product, searching the trends on social media would be a great starting point for keywords. What is trending right now? What kind of templates are popping up in your own feed, particularly stories? You can also search on Google Trends to see what is hot at the moment. Don’t restrict yourself to your home country – a digital empire is worldwide!
Profitability
Etsy can be a cutthroat marketplace, particularly with the onset of AI generated products. Taking the search term of Modern Social Media Templates, 15 out of 64 listings have a Bestseller tag, therefore are selling regularly. (searched 11th January 2024)
The average price of the 15 bestsellers on the page is £10.30.
The lowest price item is £2.26 for 50 templates which is 4p per design
The highest price item is £23.85 for 300 templates which is 7p per design.
Selling on Etsy does incur fees which are deducted from your payouts. Current Etsy fees can be found here.
Next Steps
- Set up a Canva account
- Set up an Etsy seller account
- Research a high search, low competition long tail keyword using the Etsy search bar and the first page search results (scroll down to the bottom see what keywords people are searching)
- Design Your Template
- List your Item on Etsy