Looking to create planners? Something that just about everyone has used at one time in their lives is a planner. This compact book can be geared toward specific users or created with a broad appeal, and creating planners to sell can be a fun and profitable project for creatives looking to make a printing project that can make money year after year.
Depending on the type of planner you want to make, who you are making it for, and how you plan out your marketing, how you create planners can be the difference maker in a good or fantastic planner that your buyers will love to own.
- 8 Steps to Create Planners for Sale
- 1. Create Planners: Pick Your Niche
- 2. Create Planners: Choose Your Target Buyer
- 3. Create Planners: Make Format Decisions
- 4. Create Planners: Design for Beauty and Usefulness
- 5. Create Planners: Decide on Pricing
- 6. Create Planners: Develop Branding and Marketing
- 7. Create Planners: Select Your Sales Path
- 8. Create Planners: Launch and Evaluate Your Planner
8 Steps to Create Planners for Sale
From the initial planning stages of deciding on the purpose of your planner to picking out design elements that will wow your buyer to choosing how to bring your planner to potential buyers, planner developers have multiple elements to consider in the development process. But taking these well-thought-out, intentional steps will help you craft a winning planner that will be attractive to buyers and help you sell more planners.
1. Create Planners: Pick Your Niche
Choose the type of planner you want to create by deciding on the purpose it will fulfill. Will your planner be school schedule-based, following the academic year? Or will your planner help busy families coordinate school schedules, sports events, and appointments? To create planners that have a built-in audience is the key to developing something that you know will fill a niche that your buyer has.
2. Create Planners: Choose Your Target Buyer
The next step to create planners is to decide who you are targeting as your ideal buyer. From students and teachers to young professionals to travel enthusiasts, who you expect to buy your planner will guide your planner’s design and marketing decisions. Choose a target customer and make a list of detailed characteristics that might help you like:
- Where do they shop?
- What colors, songs, or trends are currently popular with this group of buyers?
- How often will they need a planner?
- Would a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly planner be more appealing to the buyer?
- What kind of planner do they typically use?
3. Create Planners: Make Format Decisions
Now that you know who your planner is for and why they are using it, it’s time to work on the functionality of the planner. The two areas to concentrate on are the layout and the features that the planner will include to make it useful, fun or both!
Create Planners: Layout
The layout describes the way that the planner is structured, and each element of the layout should be carefully chosen for its usefulness in this specific type of planner and the target customer’s preferences.
- Sections to Include: Typical inclusions are goal-setting pages, calendars, and habit trackers.
- Day, Week, or Month Pages: Planners can focus on a single day per page, a week per page or a two-page spread or a month across a two-page spread. Choose the focus based on who is using the planner and what types of content they will need to record on each day, week, or month page.
Create Planners: Features
Unique additions to your planner can help your planner stand out from others on the market. Features that are whimsical, thoughtful, or creative are a good way to catch the eye of potential buyers who can see themselves personalizing their planner right away. Some fun features to consider include:
- Blank space to encourage creativity
- Motivational prompts, sayings, or religious quotes
- Stickers to use throughout the planner that match the vibe of the theme, purpose, or target customer
- To-Do list lines or another checklist
- Weekly, daily, or monthly reflection area
4. Create Planners: Design for Beauty and Usefulness
Now that you have the overall structure of your planner decided, you can add in the design elements that contribute to the planner’s overall aesthetic and its usefulness for the user. Utilize graphic design software like Canva, Affinity, Publisher, or Adobe InDesign to create planners or use their templates to simplify the process of creating. These programs integrate plenty of options for colors, fonts, and page construction so you can make your planner look great without being an expert in graphic design.
Consider the visual style that your planner will have – modern, vintage, minimalist, colorful, trendy, or any other style that makes sense for your planner’s purpose and target audience. Include elements of the visual style throughout the whole planner in places like color choices, font style and placement as well as graphic elements that mark each page, section or unique feature you include.
Choose the right binding so your customer can easily flip through the pages. The most common planner binding choices are plastic coil or wire-o, constructed out of sleek metal material. Consider who is using your planner and how your binding choice adds to the overall aesthetic of your planner so you can present a cohesive, attractive look that will appeal to your target buyer.
Just like the cover of a book helps attract the right reader, the cover of your planner is critical to capturing the attention of your target customer. Consider using graphic elements, color and design elements that reflect the visual style you have chosen so a potential buyer will already have an idea about your planner’s look and feel just by glancing at the cover.
Research your style to come up with popular graphic designs or look at how other planner covers present their purpose to buyers when designing your cover. Another way to make sure your cover attracts the right customer is to hire a cover designer to capture the visual that will appeal to your target buyer.
5. Create Planners: Decide on Pricing
Choosing how much you want to sell your planner for is the next step to take in creating your planner. First, do a quick cost analysis to determine how much printing your planner will take. Working with a printer like Dazzle Printing makes this simple by offering online calculators where you can choose the construction of your planner, including binding options and delivery options like rush orders, to see how much your planner will cost. Next, evaluate the current market to see the pricing for other similar planners.
Be sure to look at the market as a whole as well as planners with a similar aesthetic, features and layout to yours so you can be sure to price yours competitively. The final step in deciding on your pricing is to determine how much profit you need to make on each planner once construction and delivery costs are accounted for.
6. Create Planners: Develop Branding and Marketing
Before you send your planner to the printer, consider your business branding and how you will market this and any future planners.
Branding: Create a memorable logo and brand name to sell your planners so you can use that branding on marketing materials and on all planners you create to help customers identify your products. Consider the colors, logo design and packaging elements to create a cohesive brand identity.
Marketing: Look at multiple avenues to market your planner including social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest to utilize their visual content. Think about working with influencers or asking trusted connections to promote your planner on their platforms.
7. Create Planners: Select Your Sales Path
Once your planner has been sent off to the printer, begin securing your sales channels. Combining the power of both online sales and in-person retail sales is a good way to ensure your planner gets into the hands of your target customer.
Online platforms like Instagram shops, Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, Pinterest, Shopify and Amazon all offer opportunities for you to sell your planner. Consider using your graphic design software to create an appealing thumbnail graphic to show off your planner or capture pictures of key pages to grab the attention of online shoppers as they consider your planner virtually.
Physical retail locations are also a great way to sell your planner. Contact local retailers like bookstores, grocers, or gift shops to see if they will sell your planner for a small fee. Many will take your planners on consignment, settling up payment with you at agreed-upon times while others may consider buying your planners outright to sell in their store.
8. Create Planners: Launch and Evaluate Your Planner
Once your planner has been delivered from the printer, your sales rush can begin. If your planner is evergreen and not tied to specific dates or years, you can begin sales right away. But if your planner is tied to specific dates like school calendars or a specific year, be sure to time sales ahead so buyers can have it in their hands when they need it.
Once your planner has been sold, follow up with buyers to see what worked and what didn’t. Use your social media platforms or ask buyers directly to give you feedback to help you refine future planner design, branding, marketing and sales. Then, use the suggestions to improve and refine other planners you design to help secure your brand’s future success with your current customers and all of your future potential buyers.
