Beyond Your Blog 3: Tools for Creating and Distributing Printable Content

Last month, we talked about extending your blogging realm via cookbooks. But there’s another trend that’s even simpler: printable content.

If you run over to Etsy right now and search for “foodie printables,” you’ll come across adorable art prints, food-themed stickers, and conversion charts, to name a few of the products being created by enterprising and design-minded entrepreneurs.

Creating attractive printables can be a fun and rewarding activity on its own, and you could easily incorporate printables with your food blog recipes.

Start brainstorming with these ideas

• Printable sticker labels to accompany a blog post on canning
• Printable invitations to accompany a blog post on the perfect birthday cake
• Printable place settings to accompany your annual Thanksgiving post

Tools for making printables

If you’re a tech savvy design pro, you may have access to tools like Adobe’s Photoshop and InDesign, which provide plenty of horsepower for creating compelling printable content. However, it’s not necessary to have the expensive, professional grade equipment to make something elegant and lovely. Try Canva instead. This easy-to-use design tools comes packed with templates and free-to-inexpensive images that’ll make your printables look professional.

Tools for distributing printable content

You can distribute printables directly from your food blog using intuitive WordPress plugins like Easy Digital Downloads or OptinMonster. In both cases, you can add your printables to any blog post as a content upgrade to capture more emails or as a sales item.

Another option is to go offsite to an online store like Etsy and sell your wares there. That could help to broaden your audience while earning extra income.

The possibilities are limitless when it comes to printables. You can create stickers to help people organize planners, planner pages to help people develop their own cookbooks, or even templates for crafting goodie boxes around the holidays. You could immortalize your favorite cooking quotes in a simple A4 art print using fancy font and little else, or you could create an entire workbook to help your fans track their diet schedules. Have fun with it and your followers will too!

What are some of your creative printable ideas?