Are you a graphic designer or illustrator, and want to know where to sell your work online? You’re in the right place. We’ve listed the best places you can sell your designs and illustrations.

Some of these options are passive, so you won’t have to do much except uploading a design, but some are more hands-on. It might look like an easy way to make money, but remember that any attempt at generating extra income takes time, dedication, and some skill.

1. RedBubble

Screenshot of RedBubble products with Bee design.

RedBubble is an online marketplace where you can upload your designs and illustrations. It also offers a variety of physical products to which you can add your designs. You don’t have to worry about storing the products at all, the site works as a print-on-demand service.

Customers can search based on designs or based on products, so there are multiple ways your items can be found and sold.

It’s entirely your choice on which products to put your designs, and RedBubble introduces new products quite often. Popular items include greeting cards, stickers, phone cases, t-shirts, and plenty more.

Although it doesn’t cost you any money to have a RedBubble account or list your designs, RedBubble does take a large commission fee. You can choose your own markup prices (your profit margin), but since RedBubble base prices are quite high, you're not likely to make too much profit.

2. Gumroad

Gumroad website's pricing structure

Gumroad is an e-commerce site that allows artists and designers to sell digital products to new clients. You'll find many Procreate products on Gumroad, like some of the brush sets in our roundup of Procreate brushes.

You can also easily design and sell ebooks, PDFs, digital courses, and digital assets on Gumroad. It’s an upload-once-sell-multiple scenario that makes it stress-free and less time-consuming for you.

The pay structure gets better the more you sell. Gumroad charges $0.30 per transaction, regardless of the price of the product sold, plus between 2.9% and 9% in fees depending on your lifetime earnings. The higher your lifetime earnings on Gumroad are, the lower the fees you pay.

You can also integrate Gumroad with your personal website, add membership tiers for sales, or allow customers to pay over multiple dates. You can also offer free digital downloads or let customers pay what they want for products. Gumroad is a great marketplace for graphic designers.

3. Selling to Stock Websites

Adobe Stock website home.

Another great way to make money selling graphic designs is by selling to stock websites. See this list of the top stock photography websites and tips for succeeding as a stock photographer. And did you know you can also sell designs to stock sites?

UX/UI design assets are popularly downloaded from marketplaces, or plugins for apps like Figma or Canva. You can easily create and sell assets, templates, vectors, or illustrations for use by other designers.

You can sell stock designs on Adobe Stock, where you’d receive 33% royalties from sales and retain a non-exclusive disclosure for use. Selling graphic design stock to Getty Images will allow you to receive 15-45% in royalties. There are also plenty of other sites where you can sell stock illustrations, design assets, or vectors, including Shutterstock.

Selling via a stock website will give your work the opportunity to be used and viewed by millions of people. Your illustrations or design assets may be used in international advertisement campaigns, book covers, or website icons. There really is no limit on where your work will go.

4. Use Dropshipping Services

Dropshipping branded products.

We’ve already mentioned RedBubble, which is similar to dropshipping. But whereas RedBubble hosts and fulfills orders on your behalf, dropshipping sites allow you to host yourself while the dropshipping company fulfills the orders.

The biggest benefit of dropshipping is that you aren’t responsible for the storage of any items you’re selling with your designs on them. And another great benefit is that it’s a print-on-demand service, so you won’t lose money by having to bulk order before knowing exactly how popular the product will be.

You can use a Shopify plugin on your website with WordPress or Squarespace. This lets you integrate a shopfront into your personal store where you can sell your designs. You can also try a dropshipping company like Eprolo or Inkedjoy. Here's how to spot scam dropshipping sites.

You’ll only receive a small margin of profit using this method since you’ll have to pay for the storage and fulfillment of a third-party seller. But this is a helpful way of starting a product store with your own designs on it.

5. Etsy

Etsy illustrations for sale.

Etsy has been a popular creative marketplace for years. What started as the go-to place for buying custom, handmade gifts, has evolved into a place where anyone can sell anything. Etsy remains a customer-focused selling site that’s easy for sellers to use.

You can sell physical products—printed illustrations, bulk orders of pamphlets, custom wedding stationery. As well as digital products—Procreate brushes, digital planner templates, and custom logos. Read our guide on how selling on Etsy works.

You pay a listing fee for items of $0.20, plus, Etsy also charges a 6.5% fee per transaction. Nonetheless, Etsy is one of the most popular places for graphic designers and artists to make money from their work. You’re in complete control of what you sell and how much you sell it for.

6. Sell on Your Own Website

If you’ve got a website, you can always sell your graphic designs or illustrations directly from there. Whether your website is a portfolio or a landing page with contact information, it’s the perfect place to sell your graphic design work.

Having a contact page on your website allows potential customers to contact you about commissions or to ask if they can buy print or digital assets. You can also integrate an online shop into your website or link out to your Etsy, RedBubble, or Gumroad pages all from one place.

Many sales of illustration and graphic design come from social media and customer outreach. Just having a website with your work on it is often enough for people to want to buy your work. How you sell it, then, is between you and the client.

7. Patreon

Patreon page for visual creators

Patreon is a fantastic tool that offers content creators—graphic designers and illustrators alike—the chance to sell access to their work as a monthly subscription or membership. Selling via Patreon doesn’t mean you’re selling individual products, but rather you’re letting people buy limited access to those products.

Most Patreon creators don’t use the site to sell graphic design work, but you can. While it’s often used for selling exclusive videos, music tracks, articles, or behind-the-scenes access to online content, as a designer, you can easily use Patreon to sell monthly bundles of designs.

As an example, since Patreon lets you offer tiered monthly memberships, you could:

  • Offer a $5 per month subscription where the customer receives an exclusive GIF you’ve designed once per month.
  • A $10 per month subscriber may receive an exclusive GIF to use and a tutorial video on how it was made.
  • A $20 per month subscriber might receive the exclusive GIF, tutorial to make the GIF, and a custom brush or texture pack in order to make the GIF the same way.

By this example, you’re only creating one GIF, one video, and one brush pack, but you’re selling it countless times to an exclusive audience.

Make Money From Your Graphic Designs Online

There you have it, seven different options of where to sell graphic designs online. You can easily make money from your design work, passively or actively depending on where you choose to sell your designs.

And there’s nothing stopping you from implementing all these options at once. You can sell the same design on different sites in most instances.