What can I say? I am obsessed with printables! I download them for everything. Spring cleaning, home renovation plans, money management and meal prep. Printables are EVERYTHING! And they are one of the biggest reasons why I’ve been able to grow my email list and create a 6-figure blog from home. #workfromanywhere

Would you like to learn how to create your own printables and content upgrades today? It’s one of those things that seems easy enough to do, but can be a real struggle for bloggers and online entrepreneurs.

I get questions all the time on, “What should I create? How do I create it? And what should I be doing to promote it?”

So today the struggle ends! By the time you get finished with this post, you are going to have a new superpower that you can use to grow your blog traffic, email list, and sales. I am giving away allllll my secrets right here in this blog post because just one content upgrade, one PDF, one checklist, one planner going viral can change your life.

That’s right…Never underestimate the power of a printable. It can change your entire business and I am going to show you how! I’ve even included a series of video tutorials from my Womanpreneuher University so that you can get the step-by-step plays on how to create pretty and profitable printables. So make sure you read all the way through!

WHY PRINTABLES, CONTENT UPGRADES + FREEBIES ARE IMPORTANT TO THE SUCCESS OF YOUR BUSINESS

Now just so that we are on the same page, what is a printable exactly? And how can you use it to grow your business?

A printable is a digital file (PDF, PSD or JPG) that you can download and then print out for your personal use. One of the easiest ways to passively grow your email list is through printables. I’ve been using printables as content upgrades and freebies to grow my email list to over 15,000 subscribers.  I place these “lead magnets” which are attached to an opt-in box or landing page in strategic places around my blog – in my headers, within my blog posts, at the bottom of a post, in my sidebar or as a popup -with the sole purpose of enticing my readers to become subscribers in exchange for the free gift I’m offering.

The purpose behind offering printables for FREE is to be able to offer something that helps you stand out, build your authority, and show new subscribers that you’ve got the expertise to help them solve their problems. Your freebie is basically a taste test of the caliber of information people can get from you and it gives people a glimpse of the awesomeness they can expect to get from your paid products.

Your freebie is important because it can help them make the decision on whether to purchase your product. A lot of people will see your lead magnets and then they’ll equate it to what the quality will be like for your paid stuff. You want people to be wowed and say, “Boy, if this is what she’s giving out for FREE, her paid stuff must be the biz-ness.”

Blogging is so popular nowadays that you have to offer something that is going to help you stand out. The days of “sign up for my newsletter” just aren’t gonna get it. You have to give people an incentive for someone to sign up.

WHY YOU NEED TO GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST

Email lists are so important regardless of what industry you are in because it connects you with people who are already interested in your products and services. For me, my email list has been the #1 way I have driven profits into my business.

At any given time your blog can and will be doing any number of things to help grow your business. Your email list is going to be the vehicle that will make it possible for you to deliver consistent value to people who need it most.

So here are 3 truths about building your email list…

1. You own your email list. As much as we love Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat you are basically renting space on these platforms and the people that own that space. We’ve seen paid advertising become the priority on these platforms, but with your email list, you are able to reach the right people every single time with just one click of the send button.
2. You don’t need a big list to make money. Big lists are cool and sexy and something we can all envy but you do not need to have a big list to make money a lot of money. Yes, bigger lists give us more cushion, but a list of 1000 can outearn a list of 10,000 if that list of 1000 is filled with targeted, engaged, excited and responsive subscribers.
3. Email is one of the few ways to generate traffic and sales on demand. Just imagine how amazing it would be to send people an email and generate hundreds of visitors to your next blog post. Fill up your webinars. And sell out your products and services. All of that is possible when you have an email list!

Your email list is the path to your profits. If you nurture your email list the right way, you can expect an earning potential of $1 per email subscriber per month. So if you have a responsive email list of 5,000 subscribers, you can expect to make about $5,000 (give or take)! Not a bad payday.

WHAT PRINTABLES CAN YOU CREATE?

So we now know the power of printables and how they can help you grow your business, but before you go off creating a whole bunch of printables you want to know the purpose behind what you creating. What’s the end game? Typically there are 3 different ways to use printables to grow your business:

1. You can sell them on your blog or online store
2. You can design printables for other biz + blog owners
3. You can use them as content upgrades, lead magnets and freebies to grow your email list.

If you are using your printables to grow your email list, your freebie should lead to a product offering. Your main goal with your freebie is to turn scrollers into subscribers and subscribers into buyers! Here are a few examples of printables I’ve created.

And here is an example from Caitlin Bacher. She offers her Facebook Group Host Roadmap to attract an audience who is interested in growing their Facebook groups and this freebie leads those prospects directly into a funnel that promotes her Fab Facebook Group System.

PRINTABLE + CONTENT UPGRADE IDEAS

Now, if you are wondering what you can create for your printables, here are a few examples:

01 | CHEATSHEET Create a PDF that contains easy to reference tips or strategies. Say your post was about increasing blog traffic; you could create a one-page sheet full of traffic generation tips or how to SEO your blog posts.

02| CHECKLIST This could be a step-by-step printable list, a set of tools needed for a project, or even top tips taken from a larger, more comprehensive guide. Here’s an example of a content upgrade I created called “The Rehab Your Brand Checklist.”

03|GUIDE OR CATALOG Ever though about creating a gift guide for a catalog of your products that readers can download? It’s a great idea especially if you want people coming back to your site to shop!

04 | PDF BLOG POST This is one of the easiest upgrades to offer. All you have to do is save the final draft of your blog post as a PDF and offer is as a freebie.

05 | RESOURCE LIST This is one of the easiest upgrades to offer. All you have to do is save the final draft of your blog post as a PDF and provide it as an upgrade. Check out the 103 Best Tools For Bloggers blog post I did here. I turned it into a content upgrade and added it to me resource library!

06| PLANNER  My Biz + Blog Planner has been my most successful content upgrade yet, banking over 90K pins on Pinterest and driving thousands of new subscribers to my site. You can check it out here.

07 | PRINTABLES This could be anything related to your blog post, from inspirational quotes, screensavers, printable diet plans or inspiring images.

08 | TEMPLATES Email templates, design templates, social media templates – everyone loves templates. Let’s say you write a blog post about how to create a newsletter, you could give your readers a template for their welcome or follow up emails as a content upgrade.

09 | INFOGRAPHICS A picture is worth a thousand words and infographics are a great content upgrade idea. They are fun, easy to understand and shareable. You can create an infographic using easy tools like Canva, Easel + Piktochart.

10 | RECIPES Food bloggers, beauty bloggers and health and wellness coaches are always sharing their recipes in Youtube videos and Instagram posts. Why not put together a collection of your most popular recipes or create recipe cards that you can share as a content upgrade!

WHAT SHOULD YOU INCLUDE IN YOUR PRINTABLE?

You want to include high-quality content that offers actionable and immediate results. What makes printables so powerful is that you are making it really easy for people to take action and implement your strategies, tips or to-dos.

For example, if you are a health and wellness coach, and you sell weight loss plans, give your audience a downloadable shopping list so that they can buy the ingredients.

BRANDING YOUR PRINTABLES

Now one of the things that will make your printable stand out is to make sure it is on-brand. Meaning it should follow the same color palette and font palette that you use for your blog’s branding. Everything you create should be on-brand so when people see a piece of content from you, they automatically associate your colors, your style, and your message with your business or blog.

Make sure to also include a copyright notice and your URL at the bottom of your printables. At the bottom of my printables, I just include the copyright symbol then my name, Andrea Bolder, and my url, andreabolder.com.

TOOLS FOR CREATING UP YOUR PRINTABLES

If you’re creating a PDF file, like a checklist or ebook, you can do this with a program like Apple Pages, Google Docs,  Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign or Canva. Just remember to save it as a PDF. If you want to make it editable (where people can type directly into the PDF) use the free tool PDFEscape.com.

If you are not a design-savvy type of person, then Apple Pages and Microsoft Word are great options. Just create it as you would in a normal document and then instead of saving it as you normally would, as a .doc or .pages, save it as a PDF. It is really easy to do that.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO CREATING THE PERFECT PRINTABLE

HOW TO CREATE PRINTABLES USING CANVA.

Ready to create your own content upgrade? This step by step tutorial breaks it all the way down using one of my favorite (and FREE) tools, Canva!

HOW TO DELIVER YOUR PRINTABLES + CONTENT UPGRADES

So once your new subscribers opts-in they are going to be expecting the free gift you promised them. So how do you actually deliver your printables and content upgrade? There are many different ways to do this, but I want to share with you the most common ways I deliver freebies to my new subscribers. Check out the tutorial below:

CONGRATS YOU PRINTABLE POWERHOUSE, YOU!

So there you have it. I know that was a lot. I basically threw you a mini-course on how to create and deliver profit-generating printables to your tribe!! You are now equipped with a new skill that can add thousands of dollars to your bank account each and every month. Not only will you be able to set your email list on fire, you will be able to sell your printables or add them to your online course materials to give them even more value!

If you want to check out what viral printables looks like, take a look at two of my highest converting printables that I’ve created. The EPIC Biz + Blog Planner and The WomanpreneuHER Profit Planner . These FREE printables did so well, I turned them into paid products!

You’ve seen what’s possible? Now get out there, let those creative juices start flowing and begin creating your own awesome printables, content upgrade, lead magnets, and products!

ARE YOUR USING PRINTABLES TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS?  

Now that you know how to create pretty (and profitable) printables for your content upgrades and freebies, please share your most successful printables with our community in the comments! Have you been able to grow your list with your printables? Have you been able to earn money with your printables? Share your success so we can check you out!! If you haven’t created any printables, let me know why not so we can work through the struggle together!