DIY Composition Notebook Covers
3 ways you can make money right now with this hot back-to-school trend
( I'll link all of my personally used supplies at the bottom of this doc if you want to snag them! )
Making The Physical Notebooks
To create the physical notebooks, you can either make the design yourself or buy them from small shops on Etsy.
Optionally you can use laminate sheets to help "seal" the sticker to make them last longer (think of all the nasty stuff that gets spilled in backpacks lol).
A lot of shops are using the pretty sparkly laminate to give it extra razzle dazzle.
I'm seeing SO many small businesses getting tons of sales with these right now. You literally need to jump on this like .. today.
One shop had over 600 orders for these notebooks!
The composition notebooks will go on sale during back to school in most stores for about $0.50-$0.90, and small businesses selling these customized ones are doing it for around $5-8. It's important that you consider all of your costs before coming up with a price. If you're using laminate definitely go on the higher end.
Whichever design route you go, you'll need to print these onto sticker paper at 6.9" x 10" if you're using the standard composition notebooks that are 7.5" x 9.75"
A tip for making the notebooks, spray paint your composition cover white so that the color doesn't bleed through, some sticker paper is thinner than others and it can show. I also recommend getting the lighter colored composition books rather than the black & white ones.
Making The Digital Designs
To make the digital designs, your canvas size needs to be 6.9" x 10" at 300 DPI. You can use any program for this, my preference is Procreate.
Since I'm using my own hand drawn seamless patterns, I'm able to easily crank these out by repurposing all of my old patterns. If you didn't know, you can make money by just selling these patterns by themselves too! I made these last year around late July/August and I was able to make an extra $200, but if I had started sooner I prolly woulda made much more. And this was just selling the digitals, not making any physical notebooks.
I grabbed the composition notebook label from Canva, they have a ton of templates on there. But there's also a bunch on Etsy too (although I think a lot of them are from Canva lol)
For the digital listings on Etsy, I'm offering 2 PNG files, one with the composition label and one without. That way they'll have the back design, or they can put their own labels on it if they want to use something else.
You can also choose to offer a ready to print PDF file so that they don't have to do any sizing.
That's really it as far as making the digitals haha. It's pretty simple if you already know how to make the seamless patterns. If you don't, you can learn how to make them here: learn seamless patterns
One of my students from last year got a sale from these digital notebook covers literally the day after me teaching them about it!
I'm giving you plenty of time to jump on this early so please take advantage of this idea!
Making the Mock ups
If you want to sell the blank mockups for small businesses to use both in their digital listings and for selling their physical notebooks, the BEST thing to do is to buy a notebook, put some white sticker paper on the top, and create your own mock ups.
If you have no idea how to make mock ups, there are a ton of tutorials out there, but I think this is by far the best one (although I may be biased lol)
And for reference on the potential of making money with mock ups.. when i first listed this mockup i made $1k in 3 days. Now it's been almost a year and it's made $3k.
THIS is why it is so important to stay on top of trends, and to immediately jump on empty spaces in the market.
There were no real life mockup images for these notebooks until I made this listing.
I never ever post about money to brag, but to inspire you and show you what's truly possible, and that I'm not just talking out of my butt.
Where to sell?
If you like doing things locally, FB marketplace is a GREAT way to sell the physical notebooks.
But you can also sell them online on sites like Etsy, or even your own website, or through various FB groups.
If you're wanting to sell the digitals I recommend Etsy, their SEO is just unmatched, especially when it comes to trending stuff like this. People are literally searching for THESE files ON Etsy.
But feel free to sell from your website or wherever lol. To get sales faster you can promote yourself in ISO (in search of) FB groups for digital art.
Supply List
Where to learn more
And be sure you're following my Instagram, because I'm always sharing new trends and ideas for small businesses and digital arts to hop on and make money from!
