How to Make Money with Canva

Did you know you can sell your media online and earn with Canva? Canva's design tool is used by more than 65 million users worldwide in 179 countries and is opening new markets for creating art, selling content, and monetizing creations. You can become a Canva contributor now and sell your content online.

You may be skeptical about many people making a living using Canva, but you can do that in several ways. Even Redditors can make money with Canva but have yet to elaborate on how they do it. You won't make up to $100 a day immediately, but you can create designs and land clients as a solopreneur or small business owner. If you consider getting into professional graphic design, you can use Canva to create art and sell your works. Here is a guide on how to make money with Canva.

What is Canva?

Canva is a tool for making art and design, but how you use it will matter more when increasing your profits. You can use it to create posters, banner images, social media covers, video thumbnails, logos, resumes, cards, and booklets. Canva is great for all skill-level designers and features thousands of templates. You can customize your designs, resize them, add fonts, layouts, animated GIFs, and more. 

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Canva's design tool includes a text generator, image quality enhancer, and filters, and will let you add frames to your photos. You can edit, crop, mirror, and trim. You can also make videos with Canva, add music, and convert them to MP4 and other file formats. Canva is free for beginners but the pro, enterprise, and team plans will require you to pay up. You will get access to unlimited templates, expanded cloud storage, custom apps and integrations, priority support, and collaborate in real-time by unlocking them. Canva Pro lets you remove backgrounds in one click and quickly resize and translate your designs, which is why many artists prefer paying for it. But you don’t need the pro features if you’re just starting and can always upgrade to those plans later.

How Are Creators Making Money with Canva?

One of the best ways to start is to make a Canva portfolio. You can showcase your skills through your designs. There are many stories of designers who begin by making premade and selling those on Etsy. Clients are hitting you for custom graphics, web designs, and Snapchat filters. Canva designers join romance novel forums and use their design process to make book covers. You can promote Canva designs on sites like Pinterest, Upwork, and Fiverr. You can land gigs on Reddit, and there are many subreddits for Canva Designer, like r/forhire and r/donecheap.

The key is to find a niche you enjoy and work on industry trends. Fashion, beauty, and lifestyle do well. Many startups are run by women entrepreneurs who want canva designs for their corporate branding. You can also design for men's streetwear; many print-on-demand shops need help with graphic designs. Even fitness brands, smoke shops, churches, and nightclubs hire Canva designers to make art for their organizations. Social Media Influencers and YouTubers are constantly looking for Canva artists to make thumbnails for their posts and videos. Small businesses can create eBooks and visual resources for their customers; they need unique designs for various digital products.

How to Build a Canva Design Portfolio?

There are no hard and fast rules for building your Canva design portfolio. Before you even design a portfolio, consider the industry in which you specialize. 

A Canva design portfolio for a concept artist will look completely different from one for an artist specializing in children's book illustrations. Context is essential, so your designs must meet your industry’s requirements. Some industries have a high demand for Canva designs, while others do not. S,o if you want to earn more money using Canva, you wish to target domains and markets that perform well.

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Dropshipping is a huge market where you can sell your Canva designs to suppliers and brands. You can find companies looking for print-on-demand merchandising services and design customizations. You can sell your Canva design templates for product size charts and other custom requirements. In game design, you can make image assets or character templates. Many role-playing and MMORPG games require Canva designers to create custom design elements for cutscenes, backgrounds, textures, characters, weapons, and other items.

You can get your creative juices flowing and design Canva banners for Facebook timelines, social media posts, and other content. Many influencers want Canva designs for their post captions, tweets, and even small snippets. The art of making money using Canva is versatility and your range of services. More variety means more money making opportunities using Canva. 

Returning to your portfolio, it should be optimized and showcase your skills as a Canva designer. You want to highlight your years of experience and what projects you have worked on recently and bring those to the attention of your employer or client. A B2B business will look for a different Canva design portfolio than a B2C or media and entertainment firm. If you want to design art for newspapers or graphic novels, your Canva design portfolio should reflect that. Graphic design portfolios usually have black-and-white images, panels, and manga samples.

If you want to become a Canva illustrator, your best course of action is to create vector graphics with Canva templates. You can work on your typography skills, design fonts, and illustrate book covers, posters, flyers, and ads. There is a massive demand for Canva illustrators, and you will always find gigs and opportunities.

After building your design portfolio, the second aspect is your deadlines and turnaround times. How fast you produce art using Canva and how well you do it will also matter to clients. Some clients are easy to work with, while others are difficult. It also depends on the domain you are working in. A content marketing agency will constantly need you to make Canva designs fresh because customers want to read more content as the brand grows. Brands may also maintain a business journal or blog where they post these graphics.

You can find many freelance and full-time Canva design gigs online and offline. On platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, you can work on Canva design projects hourly or long-term if you build good client relationships. But the starting point is your portfolio and without a strong design portfolio, you cannot hope to make a mark in the industry.

How to Get Yourself Noticed by Creating Art and Design with Canva? 

The key to making money with Canva is landing clients. You can only get clients by attracting their attention. Work on your SEO game and improve your visibility on search engines online. You will easily find clients if your designs are original, unique, and look great. Google, Bing, and other popular search engines will penalize your art if AI generates them. Avoid producing AI-generated art and create content using your ideas and imagination.

If you can showcase your workflow with Canva, clients will be highly impressed. The more variety you can show to your clients and flexibility, the more they will be willing to work with you. It can be handy if a brand requires social media assets and needs you to create art with Canva the next day. If you can switch between different art styles and work with color modes and other themes, you will excel as a Canva designer.

How to Network with Canva Designers and Get Connected

You are one of many artists making money with Canva Designs online. It's important to remember that. So why not take advantage of networking opportunities? Word of mouth and referrals can go a long way in landing you new gigs. If there are any conferences or workshops in your city related to design, art, or creating anything with Canva, you should attend those. They might not use Canva necessarily as the only design tool and may use other products like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or Paint Tool Sai. But these are events where you can make a mark and show yourself to clients. If any design contests are happening around your city, you should participate in them and showcase your design skills with Canva.

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There are hidden job markets for Canva designers and positions not openly advertised in online forums. You can land gigs from those places if you play your cards right. You can create opportunities for making money out of nothing if you get creative enough. For example, if you sell glasses, you can start your lineup with custom art using Canva. 

Many restaurants also design their menus by hiring Canva designers. They have regular requirements For making posters, promotions, discount offers, and running ads for their food campaigns. Pet stores also need Canva designers to design animal ads and themes. If you want to work with companies that sell fishing tools and exports, you can create various product images for those brands. We can go on, but these are some ways you can make money with Canva online. 

Ways to Showcase Your Canva Design Process to Clients

If an artist creates designs with Canva you should draw multiple sketches and show different iterations. Walk the client through how you change your designs or improve them step by step. Showcase your workflows using Canva so they can understand your design mindset and how you approach different problems and projects. If you can show multiple drafts and the stages of your renderings with Canva, it will be beneficial in highlighting your design skills. So, for a visual artist, showing how you take your sketch from its raw stages to its final and colored versions using Canva will make a big impression on your client.

You should also showcase your Canva designs from different angles. If you are designing a product using Canva’s tools and assets, you should showcase different angles of how it looks from an aerial view, side, front, and back. The same goes for your concept art characters and any props you design for your projects.

If you design environments using Canva, you should post black-and-white renderings of scenes and highlight the different elements, how you add backgrounds to your designs, whether you mask out any layers, what effects and filters you have applied, and what the final polished version looks like. This will give your client an idea of the different passes you make until you reach the final stages. VFX artists typically do this when they work with Canva, and the same goes for motion graphic designers.

You can create speed-line effects for manga and art projects and demonstrate how you design different panels. The layouts of the panels, shapes, how you colorize them, what kind of text and fonts you add - you can do all that with Canva. You can showcase how you customize those fonts and what the final pages look like.

You can even scan your artwork and then it with Canva’s design tools, thus showcasing your skills as an artist.

How to Get Critiques on Your Canva Designs for Landing Better Paying Gigs Later

Before you add your Canva designs and artwork to your portfolio, get a professional critique from a mentor with extensive experience in the industry you want to enter. This will significantly help you because your expectations of the ideal aesthetics differ from what clients seek. You must align your art and design according to your client's requirements, different from what you want.

Making money online by selling your Canva art is more about selling for the people's benefit than your enjoyment. While you can enjoy creating your designs, you must make them for the people and users.

So, if you give your viewers what they want more of, you will increase your chances of attracting more projects and making fantastic income. 

You can contact artists like Sinix or Sycra Yasin to critique your works. Join art community forums like DeviantArt and Crimson Daggers and interact with other professionals. Many producers, filmmakers, and visual artists offer paid gigs. You can find many networking opportunities and a chance to interact with real celebrities like Artgerm virtually. If you are looking to improve your design skills and need one-to-one coaching or personalized lessons, try approaching mentors like Glenn Vilppu on New Masters Academy or Proko (Stan Prokopenko) on YouTube.

How to Design on Canva Online 

Designing on Canva is easy, even if you’re not a professional designer. 

Follow these simple steps for creating great designs and art using Canva:

1. Create an Account and Choose a Design

• Sign up for Canva (free or Pro) and log in.
• From the home dashboard, search for your desired design type. Options include social media posts, presentations, flyers, logos, and more.

2. Select a Template

• Browse through Canva’s library of thousands of pre-made templates.
• Pick a template that matches your project or audience.
• You can also start with a blank canvas for a custom design.

3. Customize the Design

• Add Text: Use the text tool to add headings, subheadings, or body text. Canva provides various fonts, styles, and text animations.
• Add Images: Upload your photos or select from Canva’s free and premium stock library. Use tools to crop, resize, and edit images.
• Insert Elements: To make the design stand out, add icons, illustrations, shapes, frames, and stickers.
• Change Colors: Use the color picker to align designs with your brand or project theme.

4. Enhance with Effects

• Apply filters, shadows, or transparency to refine images and text.
• Use tools like Background Remover (Pro feature) to create cleaner visuals.

5. Add Animations or Videos

• Animate text or images for dynamic effects for social media, presentations, or ads.
• Include videos, trim clips, and overlay text. Export as MP4 or GIF formats.

6. Preview and Download

• Preview your design to ensure everything looks perfect.
• Click Download and select the file format (PNG, JPG, PDF, MP4, or GIF).
• Use Canva’s share feature to send the design via email or social media.

How to Make Money with Canva in 2025

You can make good money with canva by trying out the following:

1. Sell Art Prints

Use Canva to design unique posters, typography art, or abstract visuals. Upload these to platforms like Etsy or Redbubble, where buyers can purchase digital downloads or printed versions. Art niches like motivational quotes, seasonal décor, or custom pet portraits are in high demand.

2. Sell Printable Activity Books

Design and sell educational or entertaining activity books using Canva’s templates. Create products like kids’ coloring books, crossword puzzles, or wellness journals. Platforms like Amazon KDP allow you to publish and sell print-on-demand low-content books globally.

3. Build Websites

Canva integrates with tools like Webflow and Wix, making designing website mockups and page assets easy. Offer clients custom websites, landing pages, or blog visuals through freelance platforms. Small businesses, startups, and bloggers constantly seek affordable designers for their online presence.

4. Make Videos with Canva

With Canva’s video editor, you can create engaging video ads, animations, and short-form content. Businesses need video marketing materials for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube. Offer services like animated ads, explainer videos, or slideshow presentations for product launches.

5. Design Logos

Businesses and creators are always looking for affordable logos. Canva makes designing logos fast and intuitive. Offer logo design packages that include social media banners, branded business cards, and letterheads for extra income.

6. Create Social Media Assets

Social media managers, influencers, and brands rely on Canva for Instagram templates, Pinterest pins, and Facebook ads. Sell ready-made template bundles or offer custom-designed social media kits that help businesses stand out online.

7. Dropshipping and Print On Demand Customizations

Combine Canva’s design tools with print-on-demand dropshipping platforms like Spocket. Design T-shirts, mugs, or tote bags and list them on Shopify or Etsy. Spocket’s suppliers can also use Canva to add custom branding, product tags, or size charts to enhance their offerings.

Conclusion

Canva opens up a world of opportunities for creative entrepreneurs. Whether selling digital downloads, designing logos, or offering video services, there are endless ways to make money with Canva. Combining your creativity with niche targeting and the right platforms can turn your designs into a profitable business. Start designing, experimenting, and monetizing today! Dropship and sell your Canva designs on Spocket!