Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur looking to start a digital business or a seasoned designer expanding your offerings, you may wonder: Can I sell a planner I made on Canva?
The short answer is yes, you can sell planners made with Canva. However, there are some guidelines you need to follow and limitations you should be aware of before listing your creations for sale. In this comprehensive guide, as a professional planner manufacturer, we’ll cover everything you need to know about legally and successfully selling Canva planners.
Can I Legally Sell Canva Planners?
When using any online design tool like Canva that offers templates, graphics, fonts, and more created by other people, licensing and copyright become crucial considerations. So can you sell planners made on Canva without getting into legal hot water?
The Canva terms of use and content license agreement allow both free and paid users to sell print products like planners featuring their Canva designs. However, there are some important rules to follow:
- Your planner must be an original design created by you. You can incorporate both free and Pro elements from Canva, but you can’t simply resell standalone Canva content.
- If your design includes any Pro elements, you can only sell it as a shareable Canva template link, not as a PDF or other file format.
- You can’t feature unedited Pro photos or graphics that take up more than 480,000 pixels in your planner. This prevents people from extracting those elements.
So in summary – yes, you can legally sell thoughtfully-designed Canva planners as print products or Canva template links. Just be sure to comply with their content license when including any templates or assets you didn’t create from scratch.
What Makes a Planner Design “Original”?
One of the key stipulations from Canva is that any planner or other commercial design you want to sell must be original. But what exactly does “original design” mean?
According to Canva’s terms, an original design is one where you’ve incorporated existing assets like graphics, illustrations, and fonts into a new creative work using editing techniques.
Simply changing colors, resizing, cropping, or making minor tweaks to a single Canva element does NOT make your design original.
Here are some examples of what would and wouldn’t be considered original planner pages when it comes to reselling:
Original Planner Designs:
- A daily planning page featuring a CanvaPro graphic edited with masking effects, customized text boxes with your own wording, and a digital paper background from the elements library.
- A mood tracker layout using one of Canva’s preset calendars, emoji icons, washi tape borders sourced elsewhere or created yourself, and unique text elements.
Not Original:
- An undated monthly layout featuring an unedited CanvaPro watercolor background image with basic text listing the days of the week overlaid.
- Canva’s premade fitness planner template shared as-is with no customizations.
The key is creatively blending different assets and design elements into a cohesive and wholly new page. Treat Canva’s graphics and templates as building blocks rather than end products.
Creating and Selling Digital Planners with Canva
If you want to sell planners digitally as printable PDF downloads or for tablet and mobile use, Canva can still be a fantastic design resource.
The same originality guidelines apply for digital planners – you’ll need to incorporate enough of your own custom elements and style.
A few digital planner tips when designing with Canva:
Use templates strategically: Canva’s hundreds of planner templates can provide helpful foundations. But tweak them heavily with personalized flair.
Add interactivity: Consider including fillable fields, clickable checkboxes, and hover elements to enhance engagement.
Optimize file types: Export your designs as high quality print-ready PDFs, or JPEG/PNG files for digital use.
Comply with specs: Double check Canva’s recommended specifications for digital products like planners and journals.
As always, steer clear of publishing standalone unedited Pro content at high resolutions or large pixel sizes.
How to Sell Canva Planners on Etsy & Beyond
Once your professionally designed Canva planners meet the platform’s originality and licensing rules, it’s time to start selling!
Etsy continues to be a top choice for independent creators selling printables, digital downloads, and physical products.
But don’t limit yourself to just Etsy. Here are a few other options for successfully selling Canva planners:
Your Own Website
Creating your own website using platforms like Wix or Squarespace allows you to fully customize your brand. Promote your planners through targeted ads and collaborations.
Creative Marketplaces
In addition to Etsy, check out niche marketplaces like Creative Market and Design Bundles that welcome digital printable products.
Social Channels
Leverage your existing social media following on Instagram or TikTok by offering your planners for sale. Limited edition drops also build hype.
The key is picking venues that allow independent sellers, digital files, editable templates, and printables. Many require shop owners to have proper licensing permissions, so double checking Canva’s guidelines for commercial use is essential.
Canva Planner Examples and Inspiration
If you still need a spark of inspiration or want to see Canva planners done right, here are a few awesome examples:
Chic Daily Planners
This Etsy shop sells beautiful Canva-made digital daily, weekly, and monthly planners with modern glam styles. The combination of digital papers, decorative clipart, stylish text elements, and careful color palettes make the planners original.
Blush Tone Life Planners
With their custom branding, stylized text, commissioned custom graphics, and purposeful layouts, this popular Etsy planner shop creates undeniably original designs safely using Canva elements.
Minimalist Annual Planners
Focusing on clean whitespace, crisp fonts, custom graphics, and cohesive layouts, these minimal Canva-designed planners available on Creative Market feel uniquely branded.
Use these Canva planner design successes – along with always abiding by their content license agreement terms – as inspiration for creating your own stellar creations to sell online!
Final Tips for Legally Selling Canva Planners
Selling your one-of-a-kind planners fashioned fully or partly with Canva can be an extremely rewarding and profitable endeavor. As you embark on your planning empire journey, keep these final Canva commercial use tips in mind:
- Review Canva’s complete content license agreement carefully and fully before selling anything.
- If unsure about usage permissions, reach out to Canva’s support team for clarification.
- Personalize planners with branded elements to make them unmistakably your own designs.
- Steer clear of simply modifying single graphics or templates without considerably transforming them.
- Credit any third party assets within your original planner creations whenever possible.
Sticking closely to Canva’s commercial terms of use for licensing, copyright, and attribution makes it perfectly legal and safe to sell thoughtfully crafted planners. With a spirit of creative collaboration and transformation, anyone can legally design beautiful Canva planners to share across multiple popular online marketplaces.