How to Make Stickers To Sell Online in 4 Steps

Before you learn how to make stickers to sell, it’s important to understand if it’s worthwhile.

If you’re unsure what to sell online, you may be wondering what the benefits of stickers are for your online store. Selling stickers online can be an excellent way to tap into the growing market for unique and personalized products. Why sell them?

• Large and wide audience: Online marketplaces give you access to a global audience and the stickers bring them in and keep them coming back for more.

• Low overhead costs: Selling stickers is pretty cheap to do, because you can make them yourself and you don’t need to shell out for storage or high-cost dispatch and delivery.

• Easy to produce: Stickers can be easily designed and made using digital printing techniques. You can make them fast too!

• High demand: Stickers are a great example of a high demand product, because they’re so popular among a wide range of consumers.

• Personalization: Customers love the personal touch. Stickers can be customized to include names, images, and other personal elements. You can create a fully personalized shopping experience by going the extra mile and offering tailored product recommendations too!

• Stickers are so fun! If you have a playful brand personality, stickers could be the perfect product to appeal to your target audience. Who doesn’t need a little more whimsy in their lives?

Making stickers to sell online is a chance to be creative and dazzle people with your artistic skills. And if you don’t have artistic skills, don’t worry! Websites like Canva provide the illustrations you need to make something fun. And if you don’t have tech skills, website builders or online marketplaces like Etsy make it easy to start selling your stickers once they’re ready.

Before you get started, as always, conduct market research and make sure you know your target audience. What kind of stickers are they likely to buy? Think about their interests, hobbies, and preferences. Kids will be into very different stickers vs. people who love street style vs. dog obsessives.

Then check out your competition. What are people doing already, and how much do they charge for their stickers? How do they promote them? What are they doing wrong? What’s missing out there? Any gaps your stickers can fill?

First, choose a design software. To design your stickers, you’ll need a program like Adobe Illustrator, Canva, or Procreate. With these tools you can create and manipulate designs, add text and images, and export the designs in different formats. If you’re not sure about how to use these tools, there are many free tutorials on YouTube to help get you started.

Then, brainstorm some ideas. You can make a mood board on Pinterest or just generally search for inspiration on social media to get your creative juices flowing.

Then, create your design, following these tips:

• Always consider the shape, size, and color of your stickers.
• Designs should be eye-catching and visually appealing.
• Try to keep your designs simple and bold so that they are easy to recognize.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with design styles to see what works best. How do you want your audience to feel when they get the stickers? Delighted? Impressed with your brand? Inspired to take action? Do you want them to laugh? These all influence what types of designs, color schemes, and patterns to choose. 

There are several types of sticker styles and finishes to choose from, including:

• Holographic: Change color based on the angle and lighting.
• Clear: Transparent and are commonly used for labeling or decorating.
• Glossy: Have a shiny surface and are often used for product labeling.
• Matte: Have a non-glossy surface and are often used for indoor applications where glare is not a concern.
• Embossed: Have a raised surface and are often used for labeling products or giving a premium feel to packaging.
• Die-cut: Cut into a specific shape and are often used for labeling or decorating.
• UV-coated: Protected from fading and are often used for outdoor applications.

Whichever one you choose will come down to how you want the sticker to look, feel, and be used.

If all of this sounds like too much work or you haven’t got the time, you can always hire a third-party designer, who can handle the entire design process from start to finish. They can custom-make a design that meets your specifications and give you exactly what you want.

To design stickers with a third-party designer, you’ll need to let them know these details:

• Purpose: What is the sticker for and what message do you want it to convey?
• Dimensions: What size do you want the sticker to be?
• Colors: What colors do you want to use in the design?
• Style: What style are you looking for, such as cute, fun, modern, serious, etc.?
• Text: Do you want any text on the sticker?
• Simplicity: Do you want the stickers to be busy or super simple, like just a logo?

The designer will then make a design and give it to you for your feedback. You then ask for changes until it’s exactly what you want.

You can use a home printer. Inkjet printers are affordable, versatile, can print high-quality images, and can print a lot of stickers quickly. Laser printers are also affordable and give very sharp images and high quality. Thermal transfer printers give high resolution, durability and consistency, but are designed for printing vinyl stickers.

But if you want something a bit more professional, check these possibilities out:

CriCut

CriCut is a very popular electronic cutting machine that can help you create and print custom stickers, labels, and vinyl decals. It’s easy to use, accurate,  and is capable of making complex shapes and designs.

Sticker Printing Companies

These companies go beyond printing stickers – they offer custom designs and bulk orders. If you want professional quality prints, a wide range of materials, and fast turnaround times, they’re the place to go.

Dropshipping and Print-on-Demand

With both of these you don’t have to worry about managing inventory or printing costs because the stickers are printed and sent directly to your customers.

Dropshipping is always an attractive option if you know how to take advantage of it. It’s a great choice if you don’t have a lot of money or need to scale up quickly, especially with bulk products.

Print on demand is a type of dropshipping model, but in this case the item is made to order – when a customer buys your product, the print on demand company creates the product (often with custom requests, such a personalized name or image) before shipping it. This means print on demand can take longer, but makes it a great option if you want to offer personalized stickers. In fact, stickers are one of the best print on demand products you can sell!

A big part of knowing how to sell stickers is knowing how to price them. If you want to price your stickers accurately for online sales, here are some things to think about:

• Consider production costs: The cost of materials, such as vinyl or paper, and any production costs, such as printing or shipping costs.

• Research the competition: Are there similar stickers selling online and for how much? Is there something that makes your stickers unique, so that you can charge a higher price?

• The size and quantity: Larger stickers may cost more to produce. And if you’re selling stickers in a set or pack, you can charge a little less per sticker than if you were selling them individually.

• Test different prices: Try selling your stickers at different prices to see what works best. You can use online marketplaces, such as Etsy or Redbubble, to test different prices and see how they affect sales.

• Keep an eye on profit margins: Regularly review your prices to ensure that you’re making enough to cover your costs and earn a profit.

Remember, pricing your products accurately is an ongoing process, and you may need to adjust your sticker prices over time as your business grows and evolves.

Now that you know how to make stickers, you need to know how to sell stickers – otherwise you’ve just got an impressive private collection!

As with everything else, you’ve got options of how to sell stickers online. Each one comes with pros and cons, so make sure you pick the option that works best for you.

Sell via an Online Store

With an online store, you have full control over your store and branding. You can offer a wider range of products because you aren’t limited by any specific categories. You choose the payment options. And you can use analytics to track your sales and customer behavior. This tends to be the best option for long-term growth.

But you’re responsible for the ecommerce security and reliability of your store, including handling payment processing and protecting customer data. This is why we recommend choosing a good quality ecommerce website builder such as Shopify that can handle this side of things for you, and provide support if you need it.

You may also need to spend time and money advertising to attract customers to your store. However, this is largely helped by the features you get from an ecommerce platform, such as SEO features, apps, and guidance.

Shopify in particular provides helpful features including email marketing, abandoned cart recovery, and personalized product recommendations. This is important because you can’t rely on customers just stumbling across your products online – you need to work hard to get your stickers in front of the right audience.

Sell via Etsy

Etsy has a trusted brand name and a large and established customer base, meaning you don’t have to work so hard to attract customers. The platform provides a simple and user-friendly interface for setting up and managing your shop. Etsy offers various tools including featured listings, promoted listings, and shipping labels.

However, you might have a lot of competition so you’ll have to stand out. Transaction and listing fees can add up. You’ll have to follow Etsy’s strict policies, including requirements for product quality and customer service. And you’re sharing your customer data and sales with Etsy, which can be a concern for privacy and security.

Sell via Social Media

Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook have large and engaged audiences. It’s a cost-effective way to market. And you can build a community around your brand and interact with customers directly. If you share your story, you can build a personal connection with your audience too.

Bear in mind unless you’re already a marketing whizz you’ll need to spend a lot of time building a following with a good social media strategy. You might have to invest money in marketing tools. It can be challenging to convert followers into customers, and you might have strong competition from other sellers on the same platform.

Now you know how to make stickers to sell online. Overall, selling stickers can be a fun and money-making business opportunity. Once you figure out the best types of stickers for you, how to make them, and the optimum platform to sell them, you’re on your way.

It’s a great way to turn your passion for design and creativity into a successful online business.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to spend our savings on vintage gasoline stickers from Etsy!