The short answer is YES! You can make money licensing your art for greeting cards. But as with anything, it takes WORK! I know I know…no one wants to hear that. But stay with me… The upside here is that the “work” is FUN!!! We’re talking making lots and lots of small happy little works of art. That is the work. I mean if you’re a true creative, this is great news. You should be excited to make more more more. And once you start to gain some traction and license some card designs, if you’re anything like me, you will become addicted to the game (in the healthiest way possible) to see if you can make another design that will sell even better than your first one did. And the game continues the longer you stay at it. You’ll start receiving royalty reports showing you exactly how many pieces of each design of yours sold for a given time period, and you’ll find that some sell WAY better than others. If you’re paying attention, you’ll start to see trends emerge as to what works for you and what doesn’t. You then take that information and put it to work on the new art you create. It becomes this really fun game to work at!
But ok…sorry I got excited and carried away there. The real reason you’re reading this is to find out what kinda money are we talking about here right? So let’s take a look at some real life examples. I will share freely from my own personal experience to give you an idea of what I’ve experienced.
Some things to consider here when it comes to how much money you can make from licensing art for greeting cards:
What category was the card placed into? Smaller categories may not sell as many cards as quickly as the other larger categories. For example, an Uncle Birthday card isn’t a massive category. That said, it IS a category that needs to be fed. And as you’ll see in my examples below, these cards won’t sell as quickly, BUT this category won’t turn over as quickly design-wise in a card company’s product line. Which means if you release an Uncle Bday card, the likelihood is it may live in that company’s card line for many many years. So even though it won’t earn you tons of money upfront, it can provide a slow and steady drip of royalty in the background over the years.
What text gets put on the card? If a card design isn’t amazing, but the text just completely NAILS it, it gives that design a better shot at success. Just as an amazing breathtaking design can be killed immediately if the text isn’t right. When I submit my cards for licensing I always try to come up with killer text to pair with it to give the company a possible option to use. If it’s good text, they will often use what I’ve suggested. But ultimately they have the final say on text and may decide to change it up. At the end of the day, I trust that they know best what text will sell, but it’s for sure a factor in how well your card will sell, so I just wanted to mention it here.
The size of the company you are licensing to will determine how much volume they sell of your card. The more volume sold means the more royalties you earn. The company that I license to is technically considered a smaller alternative card company in terms of distribution vs your bigger players out there. So what this means is that the numbers I’m about to give here could be even larger for a larger company that has more stores to distribute to, which is exciting news as well! This means that I am likely giving you a look at the smaller side of the scale here, which is pretty cool since I’ve been quite pleased with my results thus far!
OK so let’s finally get to it and show you some actual real life examples!
This design right here is one of my best-selling card designs. This design was published in 2015, and to date, this one card design has earned me $8,005.45. As long as it continues selling well, it will stay in the publisher’s card line and continue to be re-printed which means we both continue earning money off this one design. Now what’s cool to think about is how much time I spent creating this card vs how much it is earning. I’d say all in likely about 2-3 hrs went to this card design in total. Not a bad hourly pay rate if you think about it! (about $2688/hr so far!). Now of course, this also has been earned over a 10 yr period, so we have to keep that in mind also.
Here’s another one of my top selling cards. This one was published in 2017 and has earned me $8,002.01 to date, with a similar amount of time invested in the card design as my wine card mentioned above. Again, this is over time since it was released in 2017. Now these 2 cards I mentioned are some of my top sellers so these are standouts in terms of money earned.
Here’s a few middle of the road, more average sellers to give you an idea:
This Congrats Balloon card was released in January 2022 and so far has earned me $1,558.03.
Butterfly Box: Released January, 2022 and so far has earned $1,342.33 in royalty.
VW Balloons: Released January, 2022 and so far has earned $563.05 in royalty.
Pastel Happy Birthday To You: Released January, 2023 and so far has earned $228.82 in royalty.
Vespa: Released January, 2022 and so far has earned $380.34 in royalty.
Sports Balloons: Released May, 2024 and so far has earned $1,252.73 in royalty.
Now most of these cards I just shared have been in the world for 2-4 years already which means they’ve had more time to accrue more royalty. So let’s now look at a couple of average selling cards released in the last year:
Mountain Sunrise: Released January, 2025. Now as I mentioned above, this is an example of an Uncle Birthday Card which is a smaller, more specific category so it’s not going to sell a massive volume at once. However it can have staying power. So in the year this card has been out, I’ve earned $80.95 so far. BUT this design may stay for years because this category also doesn’t turn over as quickly design wise.
Sunset: Released January, 2025 and so far has earned $251.07 in royalty.
Sympathy Night Forest: Released January, 2025 and so far has earned $598.60 in royalty.
The cool thing to think about overall is would you be able to sell any of these individual pieces of art for the amounts of money I’m mentioning throughout this post? For all of mine here, I would say no, which makes licensing them a big win! Especially given the amount of time it takes to create them (vs a large original painting on canvas).
Be sure to grab my free PDF guide to find out exactly how to get started selling greeting cards!
OK, have I piqued your interest in licensing your art as greeting cards? Want even more detail on how much money you can make? If so, be sure to check out the FREE training I've created for you. As a former art director and long time licensed artist, I want to share exactly what you need to know, and nothing that you don’t!