• Canva's popularity is skyrocketing, bringing with it a boom in Creators selling Digital products.

• Some have turned creating templates, images, or files to sell into a full-time job.

• Entrepreneurs told Insider the benefits are ample despite variable financial success.

After a tech startup fired 31-year-old Shruti Pangtey from her job as a product marketing manager, she jumped at the chance to start her own digital products business, saying she has no regrets.

His online business, Digital Empires, sells digital marketing courses for entrepreneurs made on Canva, a popular graphic design platform known for being easy to use. Pangtey earns between $95,000 and $120,000 a year working at least 20 hours a week.

“I never want to go back to a 9 to 5 schedule,” Pangtey told Insider.

And she is not alone. Canva's popularity is skyrocketing, bringing with it a boom in creators making real money selling digital goods—templates, images, or files for others to use—with some moving from a side job to a full-time job. It gives creators the opportunity to work fewer hours, spend more time with friends and family, and for some, earn more money.

By putting in between three and 84 hours per week, creators can earn between $1,000 and $10,000 per month, four Canva business owners told Insider. One creator made a total of $1.4 million in sales in about three years.

But “it's not a get-rich-quick scheme,” said Meranda Dysart, the Arkansas-based creator of Canva.

Dysart built a business that generates approximately $3,300 each month. She allowed her to give up a full-time marketing position and become a stay-at-home mom. For her and other creators, starting a business based on Canva goes far beyond design.

Creators spend time doing behind-the-scenes work, like marketing, writing sales landing page copy, and sending emails to potential customers. Digital product creators they sell include Instagram and Pinterest post templates, custom YouTube profile banners, wedding invitations, and printable daily planners.

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These products are in especially high demand among bloggers and small business owners, Rebecca Lake, a certified personal finance educator with a side blog called Boss Single Mama, told Insider. Buying pre-made templates saves them time and money on their design efforts, Lake said.

How the canvas works

Founded in 2012 and based in Australia, Canva uses a point-and-drag approach to graphic design so users with little or no experience can create custom images.

More than 100 million users around the world use the platform, and the company surpassed $1 billion in revenue in 2022, a Canva spokesperson told Insider.

Entrepreneurs, who can use the site for free or sign up for a paid version, choose a template idea and then customize the design using the platform's editing tools. After that, creators can export the design as an image or PDF file and sell it on a third-party platform like Etsy or Amazon.

As independent creators, these digital store owners may need to go the extra mile to get discovered. Creators who have found success selling Canva products find a niche in the marketplace to fill and creative ways to market their businesses, they told Insider.

Jennifer Singer, who is in her early 20s and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, doubled her salary to $4,000 a month by focusing on creating children's picture books, workbooks and more. Creators like Singer found her niche by doing keyword research on platforms like Pinterest, Etsy, and Google Trends to see what products were trending.

Canva did not comment on how the rise of entrepreneurship on the platform affects its business model. But it supports the “wide variety of ways that people use Canva to start and scale businesses,” Rob Kawalsky, Canva's head of product, told Insider.

Digital product sales fluctuate and not all Canva creators have seen financial gains

The market for Canva products has been flooded.

Independent seller site Etsy produces nearly 300,000 results for Canva templates. But the benefits are uncertain, and it's not always clear which digital products will take off each month.

That means it's been hard for some creators like Raquel Kay, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, to turn a financial profit. She took a massive pay cut to focus on her Canva digital products business., quit her management consulting job at Accenture in 2020 that paid her $94,000 per year. As of October 2022, she was making between $1,000 and $1,500 a month selling Canva templates and Canva training services to aspiring full-time entrepreneurs, she told Insider.

“The transition has been difficult,” Kay said. “I love it, but it's very challenging.”

And that's part of the reason money isn't the only motivation to move into Canva content creation full-time. Millions of people have quit their jobs at record levels in the past two years due to burnout, mismanagement, low pay, and a lack of flexibility to work from home.

This is causing some full-time employees to reevaluate their career options in search of a job that fits their lifestyle preferences, such as creating a digital goods store from home. It allows creators like Singer to have full control over their time.

“My life has completely changed,” Singer said.

Read the original article on Business Insider