Canva is a graphic design resource used across many industries—and, it’s a tool that gives creators an opportunity to earn money by selling templates, building apps, and educating others on how to use the software.
The best part: You don’t need any official design experience to start making a profit using Canva. The drag-and-drop graphic design tool lets you create printable planners, social media templates, business cards, or event invitations to sell online. You create something once and can sell it over and over to earn passive income.
This guide shows how to make money with Canva in 2026, whether you want a simple side hustle or a full-time design business.
15 ways to make money with Canva
- Sell Canva templates through Canva Creators
- Design social media assets
- Design logos
- Offer digital marketing support
- Create Canva tutorials
- Sell art prints
- Sell printable educational resources
- Sell printable activity books
- Build websites
- Create video content
- Design invitations, business cards, and stationery
- Create and sell apps
- Become an Education Creator
- Promote Canva as an affiliate
- Build a faceless content brand
Plenty of independent creatives have found ways to use Canva to earn money. Creators can sell Canva templates, share their insights on learning platforms, or use Canva to power their work as consultants.
Here are some of the many ways you can make money online with Canva:
1. Sell Canva templates through Canva Creators
Canva has thousands of premade templates built by creators. With the Canva Creators program, when a Canva user buys a template, the original creator earns a profit. As a designer, you can make money selling Canva templates for:
- Social media posts
- Banners
- Event invitations
- Business model visualizations
Marketplaces like Etsy, Fiverr, and Gumroad also let designers sell Canva templates using the share-as-template link option.
Just keep in mind that digital product marketplaces may take a fee for any sales you make. Gumroad, for example, charges 10% plus 50¢ per transaction for all sales made through direct links to your template landing page. The fee goes up to 30% when new customers discover you through the marketplace.
Bypass those fees by selling digital products (including templates) on your own site. Shopify’s Starter plan costs just $5 per month, and the Digital Downloads app delivers Canva template files to customers automatically after purchase.
2. Design social media assets
If you have an eye for design, use Canva to create social media assets that you can sell to clients. This might include one-time commissions, like social media banners, or recurring posts under a retainer.
Either put your own spin on some of Canva’s free social media templates or build your own. Add your client’s style guide—including fonts, colors, and logos—using Canva’s Brand Kit feature, which is available with a Canva Pro subscription.
You could also expand your offering to include social media management services. Hourly rates range from $47 to $108, according to Fiverr.
3. Design logos
Designers can use Canva’s extensive content library of graphics and fonts to make logos to resell.
Brand designers can command upward of $2,000 depending on the type of client you work with. Logo services—whether logo templates or custom designs made with a logo maker—can cost anywhere from $63 to more than $200.
To get started, create a portfolio of past logo work that potential clients can peruse on a freelance network like Upwork, 99 Designs, or Dribbble, and set your price.
4. Offer digital marketing support
If you’re working as a consultant or part-time marketing hire, use Canva’s free and pro templates to sell more in-depth graphic design services.
For example, you could create and sell custom:
- Social media graphics
- Website assets
- Brand zines
- Slide decks for employee training or management presentations
- Branding kits for clients to use themselves
Find freelance design gigs on Upwork or Fiverr. Hourly rates range from $25 to $150; digital marketers with specialized skills can command a premium.
5. Create Canva tutorials
If you’ve been a Canva devotee for some time, you may be able to help newer Canva users learn the ropes.
Create step-by-step Canva tutorials on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. Monetize video content with Google ads or through paid partnerships with featured brands.
To monetize your Canva skills in a more formal setting than social media, consider creating a Canva course for individuals who want to gain a deeper understanding of the platform’s capabilities. Earn income when students buy a tutorial through your own online store or an online course marketplace.
6. Sell art prints
Sell your original illustrations and mixed media artwork created in Canva (with free or licensed assets like animated stickers) on print-on-demand apps like Printful, Printify, Gelato, and Zendrop.
Print-on-demand services handle the entire fulfillment process, from production and order confirmation to shipping. You could sell traditional framed prints or get your design printed on merchandise like mugs, T-shirts, and magnets.
The process looks like this:
- Create your artwork in Canva at high resolution.
- Upload your design to a POD provider to choose your products and set your profit margins.
- Sync your POD account with your storefront. You could also sell POD through Amazon Merch on Demand or Kindle Direct Publishing (for books).
- When a customer buys from your shop, the order goes straight to the printer for fulfillment.
“I’ve worked with a couple of print-on-demand companies, and I really appreciate the ability to connect everything together,” says Raven Gibson, founder of Legendary Rootz, in a Shopify Masters interview.
“I have an idea. I’m able to go in, see if they have a product that serves me or serves that idea that I have, and get a sample created. Once it’s approved through me, I’m able to go in and it’s all connected to Shopify. I love it.”
7. Sell printable educational resources
If you have a knack for productivity and goal visualization, use Canva’s free templates to create printable educational resources, such as:
- Digital planners
- Calendars
- Study guides
- Vision board templates
- Checklists
- Booklets
Sell your resources through Canva’s template marketplace or Education Creator program. You could also offer instant downloads on sites like Teachers Pay Teachers or Etsy, as well as your own Shopify ecommerce store.
8. Sell printable activity books
Downloadable coloring pages or activity books are an appealing niche for artists with a strong sense of style.
Do some research to see which topics or images sell best, like mandalas or kids’ mazes. Start by searching for keywords like “worksheet” or “coloring page” in the Canva editor for inspiration. Pinterest also shows you creative ideas, while Google Trends shows patterns in search demands for specific terms.
Use what you find to build on an existing Canva activity book template. Then, find a print-on-demand partner to print and ship orders to your customers when you make a sale through your ecommerce website.
9. Build websites
Websites give businesses a way to talk about their products and services to people across the world. Help those with less web experience by using Canva to make and sell website designs.
Canva’s own website builder lets anyone publish websites for free, but you’ll need a Pro account to use a custom URL or publish more than five sites. The upgraded Canva account also gives you access to millions of stock photos and videos and advanced editing capabilities.
Even if you don’t use Canva to make a website, you can use the software to design graphics and upload them into another website builder. For example, you could create a before-and-after collage to upload into the Media section of a Shopify store.
10. Create video content
Canva’s free video editor has a drag-and-drop feature that allows you to create video content. It also offers hook templates and automated captions, with a built-in AI assistant to help with smaller tweaks.
Use this video editor to start publishing content on social media. You could create short-form stories for TikTok and Instagram, or make longer-format videos for YouTube. Over time, monetize your content with affiliate links, brand sponsorships, or selling your own merchandise.
Amanda Rach Lee, for example, posted bullet journaling videos to her YouTube channel, which now has more than 2 million subscribers. Amanda then built on this community by creating her own stationery line.
“I got instant feedback and I was able to learn really quickly through my own mistakes and see what people wanted,” Amanda says in a Shopify Masters interview. “That is the good thing about doing social media alongside the business: you get instant feedback on your products.”
11. Design invitations, business cards, and stationery
If you have an eye for design, use Canva to create custom printed designs like:
- Wedding stationery
- Birthday invitations
- Baby shower décor
- Corporate event signage
- Business cards
- Thank you cards
Pitch your services to local businesses, freelancers, or startups who need to make a great first impression. List pre-made, editable templates for sale on marketplaces like Creative Market, or use Canva’s printing services to create physical copies of your designs.
12. Create and sell apps
Canva opened its Premium Apps Program to let developers lock features behind a paywall and get paid for engagement. New APIs and app templates mean you can build anything, like AI copy helpers and live-data widgets, and earn recurring revenue.
13. Become an Education Creator
Canva’s Education Creators program allows teachers from around the world to create and earn from their designs in Canva. As a creator, you can make educational templates based on your favorite subjects and share them with over 60 million monthly active users.
There’s one caveat, however. You must be a teacher, librarian, aide, curriculum lead, or Google Certified Trainer employed by an accredited school. Proof is required during onboarding.
14. Promote Canva as an affiliate
Canva affiliates make money when people buy Canva products using their custom affiliate link. It’s a lucrative opportunity: The global affiliate marketing industry is set to exceed $36 billion by 2030.
To get started, you’ll need to be an approved Canvassador to apply to Canva’s affiliate program. The community welcomes creators and educators who:
- Use Canva themselves
- Share educational content on how to use Canva
- Follow Canva’s community values: be a good human, empower others, make complex things simple, and be a force for good
Canva doesn’t share the exact commission rate on their landing page, but Rewardful estimates up to $36 commission per referral.
15. Build a faceless content brand
A faceless content brand uses stock or AI-generated content to build a social media presence, instead of your own identity. You won’t show your face or personal life in the content, but you could lean on your personality and expertise to grow a social media audience.
Canva lets you create faceless social media content, such as:
- AI-generated videos
- Informational carousels
- Quote pictures
Once you’ve built an audience, monetize it with ad revenue, through sponsorships, and by selling your own digital products. One creator reports earning $1 million in lifetime sales with this approach.
How much can you realistically make on Canva?
There are two main ways to make money on Canva: by selling products or services. Earning potential depends on which route you take.
Note that Canva Pro costs $18 per month (or $144 annually) and gives you access to premium templates, design elements, and features like the background remover and brand kits. Consider this when evaluating how much profit you’ll make.
Earning potential from selling Canva products
If you’re part of the Canva Creators program, earnings are calculated based on how many people use your template or element. One creator reported earning $2,000 per month through this program.
Alternatively, your own online store lets you showcase your products on a platform you control. Shopify lets you create a professional storefront using AI, manage orders in one central admin, and cut out middleman fees charged by third-party marketplaces.
“I can’t rely on other people’s marketing completely," says Louise Verity, owner of Booklishly, in a Shopify Masters interview. “I’ll continue to sell on marketplaces for as long as it’s useful, but I can’t be completely reliant on somebody else’s website. Once you have staff and real responsibilities, that level of control matters.”
Earning potential from Canva-powered services
Selling services means you get paid for the work you do for a specific person or business. Freelance graphic designers earn $54,314 per year, on average, according to Payscale’s 2026 data. The highest earners bring in over $74,000.
Is it legal to sell Canva designs?
It is legal to sell Canva designs, but there are rules to avoid copyright infringement:
- Designs must be made from scratch. If you plan to create templates, you cannot take a pre-made design from Canva’s template library, change the colors, and resell it. Your design must be your own original composition that started from a blank page.
- No standalone assets. You can use Canva’s photos and graphics commercially as part of your design, but you cannot resell them on their own. For example, you can’t put a single stock photo on a white background and sell it as a poster, nor can you bundle Canva elements and sell them as clipart packs.
- Deliver templates correctly. If you are selling editable files containing Pro content, you’ll have to give customers a Canva Template Link. You cannot sell the exported file as the template itself if the customer is meant to edit it.
Licensing terms can change. Before you start selling, always review the official Canva Content License Agreement and US Copyright Office to make sure you’re compliant with the latest rules. Consult legal help if you’re unsure.
How to make money with Canva FAQ
Can you actually make money off Canva?
Canva Creators allows artists and graphic designers to sell original templates on the platform. You can also sell educational resources that teach people how to use Canva, use the tool to sell logos, join the Canva affiliate program, and build a social media presence using Canva-created graphics.
How much do Canva creators get paid?
One creator reported making $2,000 per month by selling Canva templates, though earnings vary depending on how many people use your templates or elements.
Do you need design experience to make money with Canva?
Canva’s drag-and-drop tools and extensive library of templates let anyone create professional-looking designs, even without prior experience. Start by customizing templates and learning as you go—practice and creativity matter more than formal training.
Where can you sell Canva templates?
If you want to start your own Canva template business, open a Canva template shop on Shopify, Etsy, Fiverr, Upwork, or similar freelancer resource hubs and ecommerce platforms.
