Stickers continue to grow in popularity - and sales - at an incredible rate. You might be thinking "what's the big deal?" But believe it or not, making and selling stickers can actually earn people a fortune.
People love to express themselves by personalizing items such as water bottles, laptops, phones, etc. Vinyl stickers are a great way to do that! Additionally, if you look at nearly any brand, big or small, they are likely using stickers in some way for their business.
So how can someone go about making money off of stickers? It's actually easier than you think. Let's get into it.
How Much Money Can You Make Selling Stickers?
There are many small business owners who are generating a full-time income from selling stickers. You could make anywhere from $200-800 per month as a side hustle up to (and beyond) $10,000 per month if you are at it full time. We have a large number of customers who make six figures a year simply by having us print their designs that they then sell on Etsy.
What Do You Need to Start Making and Selling Stickers?
Getting Started is actually much easier than most people think. With a $100 startup investment, and a few hours of time, you can create a business that can easily bring in hundreds of dollars a week. So what do you need?
1. Sticker Designs
2. A Print Provider
3. Selling Platform(s)
Let's talk about these one by one.
Sticker Designs
Believe it or not, you don't need to be a graphic designer to start a sticker business. In fact you don't need any special design skills at all to get started. Now, if you are a graphic designer, or artist, it can be a benefit and a way to set yourself apart. But it's certainly not required. There are three main sources of sticker designs.
a) Use Designs That You Make Yourself. If you're an artist, or graphic designer, this can be a great way to profit off of your past or current work. If you already have a portfolio of art or designs that you own and can use for stickers, then that is excellent, and in the next section (Print Provider) we will talk about the simple process of turning your art into sticker.
Even if you aren't an artist, you can still create custom quote style stickers by simply downloading cool fonts from free font providers (like dafonts.com) and making quote stickers. If you don't already have designs, don't fret, just keep reading.
b) Use Stock Art and Designs. Have you heard of Shutterstock? Or Adobe Stock? These are platforms that artists, designers, photographers use to publish their work, which the public can license for a small fee. For example, you can sign up for 10x free Shutterstock images, and download them for unlimited use. If you want to really ramp up, you can pay for a subscription that allows you access to literally millions of potential files that you can use for stickers. Funny and humorous quotes are big sellers on Etsy, you can also find fantastic seasonal and holiday designs.
Designbundles.net is another fantastic source to license art and designs. It's a website that offers designs and files for crafters. There are tons of great options that you can get for almost any theme or occasion. you can often get bundles of tens or even hundreds of designs for just a few dollars.
c) Commission artwork to use. You can commission art work in a number of ways. Many artists offer custom services on websites such as fiverr.com. This can be another good way to get custom artwork if you have an idea but may not have the artistic skills to bring it to life. Keep in mind this approach can be more time consuming and expensive.
Another approach is to connect with artists on reddit, or art portfolio websites such as deviantart.com - many artists are willing to license their art for a one time fee, or for a commission per sale. This too, can take some legwork, but can give you some really cool art to turn into stickers.
Print Providers
There are two options to getting your custom stickers printed. You can do it yourself, or you can outsource it to a print provider. Printing professional grade stickers does require special equipment that will cost at least 5 figures to get started, so for the purposes of this guide we will focus on outsourcing.
Finding the right print provider is critical to your success. Being able to charge a price that gives you a strong profit margin is very important as you start up a small business. Here are the things you need to consider.
1) Provider prices
1) Print Quality and Durability
2) Speed and flexibility
3) Provider prices
At FastStickers.com we think that our products and service will match or exceed any of our competitors, at a better price.
We use top of the line printers and equipment and materials to ensure that our stickers have colors that pop, and are durable enough to last in almost any condition, whether that is outside, or going through the dishwasher.
We print on Epson SureColor SC-80600 printers. This model is the top of the line vinyl printer in the industry. It prints in 10 colors (compared to standard 4 color printers that most sticker providers use) for the widest color gamut.
We then laminate our stickers to give them a 5 year minimum outdoor lifespan. They are guaranteed not to fade for at least 5 years, even outdoors.
For cutting we use Graphtec FC-9000 cutters which allows for extremely accurate and detailed die-cuts. We can cut to any shape.
We offer all of the above with a 2-day turnaround.
Finally, let's talk about price. If you compare our price to some of the other sticker providers out there, you will see that we almost always have better prices. What's more, if you do find an advertised price that beats us, let us know, and we will match it, or beat it.
All that said - we recommend that you shop around! Try some different providers, and try us! We are very confident that you will choose us as your printing partner. We offer 10x free custom stickers to anyone who wants to see our quality.
Remember earlier when I said that having the right profit margins is critical to your sticker business? Let's talk about that a bit more.
